Colombia’s Ministry of the Environment, Housing and Territorial Development has ordered one of the largest open-pit gold projects in the world to stop, citing a new law that prohibits mining in fragile, water-rich highlands known as páramos. The ministry ruled April 23 that Vancouver, Canada-based Greystar Resources could not build its billion-dollar Angostura gold and silver mine in the northeastern department of Santander because more than half of the project is situated in the Santurbán páramo. That páramo, like all páramos, is legally off limits to mining under a February 2010 law modifying the nation’s mining code. Though Greystar submitted its environmental-impact study last December before the new law was passed, the ministry says Greystar would have to redesign the...
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Under pressure from environmentalists and local Indian tribes, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has sent more than 3,000 troops into the southern state of Bolívar to curb illegal gold mining that is causing widespread deforestation, mercury poisoning and erosion along tributaries of the Orinoco River. The so-called Operation Canaima, which began April 22, is intended to expel thousands of wildcat miners from Guyana, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, who have moved into the area in search primarily of gold, but also of diamonds and coltan. It also is intended to shore up long-term water supplies in the midst of Venezuela’s worst electrical crisis in 50 years, caused in part by deforestation in the state of Bolívar, where the 10,200-megawatt Central Hidroeléctrica Simón Bolívar, also...
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A Canadian judge has blocked an effort by three Ecuadorians to sue the Toronto Stock Exchange, Canada’s Copper Mesa Mining Corporation, and two of Mesa’s directors. Plaintiffs Israel Pérez, Marcia Ramírez and Polivio Pérez, residents of the Intag Valley in Ecuador’s Imbabura province, alleged that they were threatened and assaulted by personnel hired by Copper Mesa’s Ecuadorian subsidiary on account of their opposition to exploration of a proposed open-pit copper mine in their rural region. The three filed the suit in Ontario in 2007, arguing that actions by the defendants were substantially connected to that province by residence and business. They alleged that the stock exchange provided Copper Mesa access to substantial capital and that the harm suffered by the plaintiffs was foreseeable because...
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This year’s winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize include a Cuban agricultural scientist who promotes sustainable farming and a Costa Rican conservationist battling the lethal practice of shark finning. Humberto Ríos, Cuba’s first-ever recipient of the Goldman Prize, was honored for helping to wean Cuba from chemically intensive agriculture and return it to farming traditions emphasizing organic methods and seed diversity. “Farmers are indispensable to the rescue of biological diversity,” said Ríos in a statement published on the Goldman website. Meanwhile, Randall Arauz, a turtle biologist, was recognized for leading efforts to ban shark finning in the waters of Costa Rica, once the world’s third largest exporter of shark products. (See Q&A, this issue.) Arauz, who founded the Association for the Restoration...
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