Source: Latin American Herald Tribune
LIMA – Peru’s mining industry has undergone a period of rapid expansion – with 20 million hectares (77,220 sq. miles) now having been set aside for exploration and production – but the threat of new social conflicts continues to loom, several non-governmental organizations warned Wednesday.During the presentation of the latest report by the Observatory on Mining Conflicts in Peru, a representative of the group CooperAccion, Jose de Echave, said the southern region of Arequipa is the area of Peru where the most mining concessions have been awarded.
“(A total of) 37.3 percent of Arequipa has been awarded in concession,” De Echave said, adding that rights to explore and extract minerals has been granted across 61.1 percent of Islay province, where a conflict erupted in April due to local opposition to the Tia Maria copper project.
The Observatory on Mining Conflicts focuses its work on five regions: Junin, Piura, Apurimac, Cajamarca and Cuzco, where “severe tensions” remain between mining firms and local communities.
De Echave also said the government has been awarding more and more concessions in frontier areas even though the Peruvian constitution typically prohibits foreigners from acquiring or owning mines, land, forests, water, fuel or energy sources within 50 kilometers (31 miles) of the border.
He said the government has issued supreme decrees declaring “public need” exceptions for those concessions and thereby sidestepped restrictions contained in Article 71 of the national charter, adding that 72 percent of the mining rights in those border areas have been issued over the past five years.
Many of these concession areas are located in the Amazon, along Peru’s northern border with Ecuador, “and even in national parks such as the Cordillera del Condor.”
The expert recalled that the National Ombudsman’s Office has repeatedly warned that mining “is the main source of conflicts in the country.”
“Something’s not right from our perspective. The legal framework is very favorable for investors,” he said, adding that Peru is immersed “in the logic, the mentality of a totally extractive model.”
De Echave noted that NGOs believe that mining can be an important activity but that the way the industry is being developed “is generating all these problems.”
“If we don’t find alternative mechanisms in the coming years, conflicts are going to keep erupting,” he said.
Some 250 social conflicts are currently simmering in Peru, 126 of which involve socio-environmental disputes, according to figures from the ombudsman’s office.
Many of the conflicts have arisen because authorities have not consulted local communities before launching mining or other extractive activities, which residents often oppose because of potential harm to the environment and their crops.
In addition to denouncing cases of local leaders being killed, attacked or harassed, the report said the government has taken a “dangerous step backward” by presenting objections to legislation passed by Congress requiring that indigenous communities be consulted about proposed mining projects.
That law, known as the “Ley de Consulta,” was passed just two months before the first anniversary of deadly clashes in the jungle town of Bagua.Starting April 9, 2009, indigenous people opposed to laws giving Lima the power to grant mining, logging and drilling concessions on Indian lands without consulting residents disrupted transport links and seized control of oil-industry installations, effectively shutting down a pipeline that carries crude oil from the Amazon interior to Peru’s northern coast.
The dispute became violent on June 5 of last year, when police used force to evict the protesters from a key highway near Bagua.
Official figures indicated 24 police and nine Indians died, but the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest, or Aidesep – which has led the biggest recent protests in defense of Indians’ land rights, including those in Bagua – said dozens of protesters were killed. EFE