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ENVIRONMENT-CHILE:
Conflict Over
Andean Glaciers Heats Up
Daniela
Estrada
SANTIAGO, (IPS) -
Environmentalists and the police
clashed violently Friday in the
centre of the Chilean capital
when activists presented the
government with a petition
containing 18,000 signatures to
protest a planned mining project
on the Argentine border which
could destroy three glaciers in
the Andes mountains.
Carabineros militarised police
charged the activists when they
tried to place chunks of ice in
the Plaza de la Constitución in
front of the La Moneda
government palace. The ice
represented the glaciers that
might be destroyed by the
Canadian mining giant Barrick
Gold Corporation.
The Anti Pascua Lama Front, made
up of several environmental
groups, accused the police of
insulting and shoving them, and
Marcel Claude, director of the
Oceana Foundation, said the
police aggression was "one more
proof that in Chile the
much-touted democracy that
President (Ricardo Lagos) talks
about doesn't exist and that
what we have is an authoritarian
and repressive model that does
not listen to the citizens."
Speaking with IPS, the
environmentalists also cast into
doubt the credibility of a
report that the Canadian
corporation announced to the
press Friday, which included
modifications of the Pascua Lama
mining project.
In the report, the company says
it scrapped its plans to move
three glaciers in order to gain
access to the rich gold, silver
and copper deposits underneath.
The original plan involved
"transplanting" the three to
another glacier, with which they
were to bond.
The signatures were delivered by
a group of activists led by
Senator Nelson Ávila of the
co-governing Radical Social
Democratic Party, who complained
about Barrick Gold's attempts to
cover up the environmental
impact that would be caused by
mining the rich mineral deposits
in the border area located 660
km north of Santiago.
Pascua Lama is a binational open
pit mining project with an
estimated total investment of
1.5 billion dollars. The
deposits, which would have an
expected mine life of 17 years,
straddle the Chilean-Argentine
border high up in the Andes
mountains, with 75 percent of
the deposits in Chile and 25
percent in Argentina.
The proposed mine is located 150
km southwest of the Chilean city
of Vallenar, in the province of
Huasco, and 300 km northeast of
the Argentine city of San Juan,
the capital of the western
province of that same name.
Environmentalists say that
moving the glaciers would hurt
the water supplies for 70,000
small farmers in the Huasco
Valley. They also complain that
Barrick Gold provided "social
assistance" to the local
community and nearby towns to
help persuade them to approve of
the initiative.
Fernando González, chairman of
the council of Huasco Valley
farmers, backs the changes
proposed by Barrick, including
the decision not to move the
glaciers, and the construction
of a dam that would make more
water available for irrigation,
the Santiago newspaper La
Tercera reported Friday.
Environmentalists say the
biggest consumers of irrigation
water in the Huasco Valley, who
were initially opposed to the
project, are now working closely
with Barrick, and that if Pascua
Lama is given the green light,
they will receive 60 million
dollars from the company for
infrastructure works.
Oceana spokesman Diego
Valderrama told IPS that it is
unclear as to how feasible the
company's modified project is,
and that the press reports fail
to clarify what will happen to
the Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza
glaciers. "We are wary of this
supposed change. A mining
project that does not consider
the exploitation of underground
deposits is very strange," he
said.
Barrick allegedly handed in the
report just before the Friday
deadline set by CONAMA, the
national environment authority,
for the company to respond to
observations and questions on
the project's environmental
impact.
But when asked by the Anti
Pascua Lama Front, CONAMA did
not confirm that it had received
the report, which was based on
"a supposed scientific
investigation that they were
unfamiliar with as well," said
Valderrama.
The local environmental group
Sustainable Chile Programme
denounced last week that Barrick
Gold had manipulated scientific
reports to indicate that the
Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza
were not glaciers but merely
masses of ice that could be
destroyed - contradicting what
the company itself had stated
just two months earlier.
And Diaguita indigenous
communities in the area accuse
Barrick of illegally acquiring
part of the land needed to carry
out the mining project, which,
they say, historical documents
prove forms part of their
ancestral territory.
The non-governmental Latin
American Observatory of
Environmental Conflicts (OLCA)
noted that Barrick has been
working on the project since
1996, pushing for a border
treaty between Chile and
Argentina that would make the
project legally and economically
feasible.
In December 1997, the two
countries signed the "mining
integration and complementation
treaty", and in 1999 they signed
a "complementary protocol" to
that agreement.
Three years later, Minera
Nevada, Barrick's local
subsidiary in Chile, presented
the first environmental impact
study, which neglected to
mention the three glaciers
standing in the way of the
projected open pit mine.
It was the farmers of Huasco
Valley, along with church
groups, who warned the
environmental authorities of the
environmental and social risks
posed by the project. The
warnings were backed by
residents of Argentine towns
like Calingasta and Iglesia, as
well as the wine producers in
the province of San Juan.
In 2001, COREMA, the regional
environment authority, approved
the company's environmental
impact study on the condition
that it would submit a glacier
management plan. In December
2004, Barrick presented a
proposal for the expansion of
the project, which would involve
"relocating" the glaciers.
In February, CONAMA issued its
observations, which the firm
responded to in April. The
following month, the government
agency set forth new
observations.
Barrick operates 12 gold mines
on four continents, which
produced approximately five
million ounces of gold last
year. It is also involved in
prospecting activities in 16
countries. According to company
data, South America has reserves
of 42.1 million ounces of gold,
or 47 percent of the company's
proven and probable reserves.
Indonesian missionary Cristina
Hoar with the Servants of the
Holy Spirit is one of the
driving forces behind the
movement to defend Huasco Valley
from the mining project.
"When I was living in the area,
I saw how the company provided
funds to the community to get
them to change their mind about
the project," the missionary,
who now lives in Santiago, told
IPS.
Hoar found out about Barrick's
plan in 2000, with the release
of the first environmental
impact study, which she
immediately had doubts about.
She began to work on the issue
along with local residents, and
discovered that the company was
not providing reliable
information.
That prompted her to go public
with the case in Santiago, which
drew activists as well as a
greater number of local
residents.
OLCA director Lucio Cuenca said
that in Chile as in the rest of
Latin America, there is an
unequal distribution of natural
resources and of the
environmental and social costs
of their exploitation, and poor
rural communities and indigenous
people are hurt the most in
projects of this kind.
"In Chile, the worst cases of
social and environmental
injustice are seen in the
commodity export sectors, like
forestry, mining and
agriculture," he added.
To illustrate, he cited the two
highest-profile recent cases:
the disaster in the Río Cruces
nature reserve in southern
Chile, where hundreds of
black-necked swans died as a
result of the pollution caused
by a pulp mill, and the current
conflict over Pascua Lama.
According to Cuenca, the large
number of environmental
conflicts reflect the weakness
of Chile's environmental policy.
"During the military
dictatorship (1973-1990),
companies got used to excessive
profit margins, which makes it
difficult to introduce
improvements in the country's
laws and regulations. The
companies do not want to assume
the costs that they are
currently transferring to the
environment and society," Cuenca
told IPS.
The activist said the protests
triggered by these and other
conflicts are giving rise to a
new social awareness on the need
to preserve the environment.
"The government has been
incapable of channeling or
incorporating citizen
participation," he said,
recalling the case of the
demonstrators who were arrested
in October for interrupting a
speech by President Lagos in the
southern city of Valdivia, when
they protested against the pulp
mill accused of killing the
swans.
Cuenca called for structural
changes that would ensure that
business initiatives are
environmentally, economically
and socially sustainable, and
said that if such changes did
not occur, conflicts like the
one over Pascua Lama would
continue to flare up.
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