LATIN AMERICA:
Ingenuity at the Service
of Sustainable Business
By Humberto Márquez*
CARACAS (Tierramérica)
- A company will extract
silver from the same
contaminants it proposes
to clean up; a
cooperative of the
formerly unemployed will
export designer
clothing; some small
farmers are planting new
varieties of manioc that
double the yield with
fewer agro-toxins;
others are linking
agriculture in the
Amazon with protection
of the forest.
These are four creative
sustainable development
projects that have
enjoyed success in Latin
America and that share a
common denominator: the
possibility of
replication elsewhere in
the region.
BOLIVIA: RECOVERING
POTOSÍ’S SILVER
With mining waste
accumulated over
centuries on the slopes
of Cerro Rico in Potosí,
Bolivia is the target of
an environmental
remediation project
taken on by the company
Empresa Minera Manquiri
SA.
The goal is to clean up
"pallacos", "sucus" and
"desmontes" spread
across the mountain by
470 years of mining
activity at this site in
southwestern Bolivia, by
extracting silver in a
closed circuit that does
not create any further
environmental damage.
"Pallaco" is a
silver-rich gravel that
has crumbled from the
sides of the mountain. "Sucus"
are the open-air
remnants of tin
exploitation using
high-pressure
hydraulics. And "desmontes"
consist of waste rubble
from the interior of the
mine. All of these
contribute to creating
acidic runoff into water
supplies.
In Cerro Rico, silver
was extracted by
leaching, mixing the
rock in a giant outdoor
pool with toxic sodium
cyanide, which then
filtred into the soil.
During the rainy season,
it creates acidic
runoff, which flows to
the basin of the
Pilcomayo River, a
tributary of the
Paraguay River,
contaminating crops and
pastureland along the
way.
"Those materials will be
removed, processed to
recover the silver
content, and finally
deposited in dammed
storage sites, built in
accordance with
environmental
regulations," Edmundo
Zogbi, Manquiri's
communications manager,
explained to
Tierramérica.
The project, which bears
the name of San
Bartolomé, patron saint
of Potosí, involves
collecting the material
in dump trucks,
processing anything that
is more than two
millimetres in diameter
in one plant, and
carrying the waste by
pipeline to the storage
sites along a route that
sits upon a geomembrane,
which in case of a leak
would prevent
contamination of the
soil.
The mining cooperatives
of the state-run Mining
Corporation of Bolivia
are partners of the
U.S.-based Coeur d'Alene
Mines in the project,
which assures it will
set aside for
environmental protection
more than 30 million of
the 250 million dollars
of its total investment,
to produce daily, over
one decade, between six
and seven silver ingots
weighing 100 kgs.
ARGENTINA: UNEMPLOYED
COME TOGETHER
In the 1990s, the
Argentine Movement of
Unemployed Workers (MTD)
of La Matanza, the most
populous district on the
outskirts of Buenos
Aires, rejected
government assistance
and created La Juanita
Cooperative, which today
has 42 direct and 600
indirect employees.
Its flagship is a
textile factory that
produces for both the
domestic and
international markets,
exporting to Britain,
Italy and Japan.
"We are producing 2,000
cloth bags that an
organic restaurant in
Buenos Aires ordered to
replace its plastic
bags, but our dream is
to produce 50,000,"
cooperative member
Silvia Flores told
Tierramérica.
The site also holds a
bakery, a childcare
centre and a computer
workshop. Many of its
members have obtained
microcredits which have
allowed them to produce
on their own and sell
their wares at community
fairs.
With 16 sewing machines,
the textile factory
produces tee-shirts for
a local company and for
export.
"These undertakings are
aimed at helping young
people in the
neighbourhood find a
quick way to
employment," Héctor "Toti"
Flores, founder of MTD
and a legislator for the
opposition Civic
Coalition, told
Tierramérica.
"In order to be
sustainable, it's
essential to bring
together people who have
experience and the
dedication to lend a
hand," he added.
That is why they have
allied with innovative
fashion designer Martín
Churba, who asked them
to sew his clothing
designs. Furthermore, he
made his commercial
contacts available to
the cooperative. La
Juanita produced
original dust coats that
were sold not only at
Churba's upscale shop in
the Recoleta
neighbourhood, but also
in the United States and
Japan. Later came a
contract with the
Italian fair-trade chain
Altro Mercato.
BRAZIL: COEXISTENCE OF
FOREST AND CROPS
Working in the shade is
a sought-after benefit
for those who usually
have to toil under the
implacable sun of the
Brazilian Amazon. Other
things on the wish-list
include going beyond
simple extraction of
seeds and fruits from
the jungle, and opening
profitable ways to make
the best use of the
ecosystem, stimulating
reforestation with
native trees.
The RECA reforestation
and economic project,
which won an award in
2007 from the government
of Brazil and the United
Nations Development
Programme for its
contribution towards
fulfilling the
poverty-fighting
Millennium Development
Goals, is a positive
outcome emerging from
the negatives of
unregulated migration of
farmers from southern
Brazil into the area,
subsidised by the
government in the 1970s
to settle the Amazon
region, with the result
of intensified
deforestation.
One group of migrant
farmers who settled in
the northwestern state
of Rondonia created an
association of small
agro-silviculture
farmers in 1989 and
launched RECA. There
were 86 families
involved back then --
now there are more than
360, according to its
president, Arnoldo
Berkenbrock.
Each family received 100
hectares of land and
began to plant beans,
rice, maize and other
crops that were more
appropriate for the
southern climates than
for the Amazon. "We
thought the 'seringueiros'
(rubber tappers, who
extract natural latex
from living trees) were
lazy because they didn't
want to cut down the
forest to plant fields,
but later we began to
change our point of
view," Berkenbrock said.
The migrant farmers
decided to harvest
Amazonian fruits and
nuts like cupuaçú (Theobroma
grandiflorum), pupunha (Bactris
gasipaes) and cashew (Castanea
sativa), which enjoy
growing markets both
domestically and abroad.
Some former tappers have
joined in the growing of
fruit-bearing plants,
making them more dense
and productive, and
reforesting areas where
native vegetation had
been destroyed, for
example, by the
colonisation promoted by
the government in past
decades.
RECA combined farming
from southern Brazil
with the knowledge of
the extractors working
in the Amazon, mixing
cultivation and forests,
without limiting
themselves to extraction
and maintaining
sustainability, says
Mario Menezes, of
Friends of the
Earth-Brazilian Amazon.
The difficulties facing
the project are the long
distances to major
markets and the red
tape, which drive up
costs because of
paperwork and high
taxes, said Berkenbrock.
VENEZUELA: CASSAVA TWICE
OVER
With new varieties of
cassava (also known as
yucca or manioc) and
sustainable farming
techniques, small
farmers in the central
Venezuela state of
Cojedes began to produce
18,000 kgs of the root
crop per hectare in an
area where the average
is 9,000 kgs.
"Instead of planting one
cutting so that one
plant emerges, we take
to the field a sprig
with buds capable of
producing up to 50
bushes. These are
varieties that are not
only more productive,
but also more adaptable
to the land and more
resistant to the
onslaught of pests,"
Antonio Romero, head of
the project at the La
Salle Foundation of
Natural Sciences, told
Tierramérica.
The plants, of the
Manihot genus, come from
varieties developed by
the International Centre
for Tropical
Agriculture, in
neighbouring Colombia.
"We work on genetics,
not only of cassava but
also of root crops like
the sweet potato and the
yam. Forty-five families
have benefited from the
jump in the crop yield.
On some hectares we
harvested more than
30,000 kilos," said
Romero.
Because the varieties
are more resistant, less
pesticide needs to be
used, and the farmers
use natural pest
controls, which also
boost yields, said the
expert.
A 60-kg sack of cassava
can be sold in Venezuela
for 40 to 100 dollars,
while the minimum
monthly wage is 370
dollars. The Foundation
hopes to involve in this
more profitable and
sustainable practice the
people known as "conuqueros"
(migrant farmers from
the highlands of
Cojedes), some 5,000
families who have spent
years deforesting the
areas where the
tributaries of the
Orinoco River begin.
(*With reporting by
Bernarda Claure in
Bolivia, Marcela Valente
in Argentina and Mario
Osava in Brazil.
Originally published by
Latin American
newspapers that are part
of the Tierramérica
network. Tierramérica is
a specialised news
service produced by IPS
with the backing of the
United Nations
Development Programme,
United Nations
Environment Programme
and the World Bank.)
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