Opinion Sur Joven

We’re all seduced by epic battles. Any story, whether fictitious or real, is always more appealing when there’s a battle between a brave but resourceless party and a powerful opponent. That’s how South American environmentalists work in their fight against open-pit mining operations conducted by several large companies, such as Canada’s Barrick Gold, the world’s largest and most notorious one.

Javier Rodríguez Pardo is a member of Red Nacional de Acción Ecologista - RENACE (National Ecology Action Network). He traveled to Canada in May to lodge a complaint for Barrick’s mining projects in his own land. The complaint was filed against Parliament representatives from all political parties. That’s how he started what he called “a David versus Goliath fight”, together with Sergio Campusano, from Chile, and Jethro Tulin, from Papua New Guinea.

Accused in its own land

There were two key events: first, the meeting in Ottawa between the environmentalists and a group of representatives from the three most important parties: the Liberal Party (progressive), the Conservative Party (currently in charge of the government) and the Parti Québécois (Québec independence supporters, who agree with the anti-mining activists). The second event was a press conference with local reporters in Montreal, the second largest city in the country, where the Fifth International Conference on Environmental Education will be held.

Rodríguez Pardo describes the experience for Opinión Sur Joven: “We talked to the legislators for almost three hours, even during lunch. I thought it would be just a protocol meeting, but they asked us many specific questions. I explained how mining works, and we talked about all the things Barrick Gold is doing in the Andes and the company’s relationship with the Argentine and Chilean governments”.

We also talked about the mining policies in Argentina’s province of San Juan (according to him, they favor Barrick Gold’s anti-ecological exploitation) and the mining projects in that region, such as Pascua Lama. Finally, the anti-mining groups described the environmental damages Cristina Kirchner’s veto of the glacier protection law will cause; said veto, decided by the Argentine president, is called “the Barrick veto”, which we mentioned in last December’s editorial note.

“While hearing all we said, the legislators opened their eyes in awe. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing, and realized how everything was arranged in favor of Barrick. I think they knew all this but, for us, having the chance to tell them face to face was very important”, says the environmental activist who also had a vital role in the Movimiento Antinuclear de Chubut (Chubut Anti-Nuclear Movement). “I insisted on the fact that our communities are sick of it, that now they’re burning Canadian flags, which I always reject because I’m against disrespect for nations”, he regrets.

The subject of the complaints against mega-mining has a name: Pascua Lama, a gold, silver and copper deposit comprising the regions of Pascua (on the Chilean side) and Lama (on the Argentine one, about 15,000 feet above sea level). The formal name of Barrick Gold’s project is Mining Integration and Complementation Treaty between Chile and Argentina. “Barrick Gold has already been exploiting Veladero (mine); Pascua Lama is right next to it, and it’s a sort of third country they own between Chile and Argentina: they even have an airport. They rule the place, they own it thanks to the treaty they’ve been granted”, he says.

They left the meeting with John McKay’s promise to have the conservative party submit a bill to control Canadian mining companies that operate abroad. “It’d be about the basic regulations they’d have to fulfill, a project closely related to the complaints the Québec Coalition has lately been filing. The Toronto Stock Exchange was ‘bombarded’ with emails warning about the situation, and, for instance, the Norwegian government has recently withdrawn its financial support from Barrick”, Rodríguez Pardo explains.

After that meeting with authorities from the very core of the Canadian political power, he was invited to a press conference in Montreal. The three environmentalists flew to that city, along with members of Mining Watch and Quebec Coalition. The media coverage and the meeting with politicians weren’t ignored by the company, which surprisingly decided to publish from its Toronto headquarters the beginning of the exploitation of Pascua Lama polymetallic deposits, just as they had announced a few days before in Argentina.

Lead numbers

Opinión Sur Joven published an article on mining last October and described the negative effects of this activity on the environment. Now we’re dealing with Pascua Lama, a specific case that has turned into an icon of the battle against mega-mining worldwide.

Barrick Gold informed to San Juan government they seek to extract 447 tons of gold in 21 years of exploitation (the mine construction took three years). This will imply approximately 2,000 million tons of removed rocks (four tons per gram of gold), 45,000 million gallons of water, almost 380,000 tons of sodium cyanide, half a million tons of explosives, 250 million gallons of gas-oil, 5 million gallons of gasoline and 110 megawatts of electric power as of the third year. The water required equals to the daily consumption of 170,000 families; the electricity use equals to the daily consumption of 137,000 households; the gas-oil use equals to one-month consumption of six million cars, and the gasoline use equals to one-month consumption of 60,000 tractors.

But the excessive use of natural resources isn’t the only complaint: “Barrick conducts open-pit exploitation with toxic substances, which constitutes an atrociously perverse behavior. They blow away mountains and use chemical “soups” with reagents such as sodium cyanide to extract gold and silver from the rocks”, Rodríguez Pardo explains. “This requires gigantic amounts of water. For instance, in Pascua Lama they’ll use 32 square feet of water per second. To extract copper and uranium, they use sulfuric acids”, he assures.

He believes the fight against mining doesn’t stop employment generation, because although these types of companies hire people with subsidiary companies to build roads and constructions at the beginning, then the mine is operated by computer with highly specialized staff. “They need almost no local labor at all. What’s more, they pay no value added tax or check tax, their gas-oil is subsidized by the State and they are granted a 1.2% royalty for thirty years”, he adds.

The environmentalists’ work boosted the anti-mining movement in villages near the Andes. Currently, the social organizations that have managed to pressure governments into passing laws in six provinces to stop open-pit mining and with toxic substances amount to seventy.

“Minerals aren’t renewable, and residues are disseminated instead of concentrated. The more disseminated they are, the more water and energy are necessary, and the more mountains need to be blown away. In the United States, 19 tons of mineral are consumed per capita each year, whereas Argentina doesn’t even consume a bag per inhabitant. That’s an enormous waste. We can’t but imagine what would happen if China reached those consumption levels”, he warns.

85% of the extracted gold is sold to worldwide jewelry companies, 12% goes to bank vaults and 3% to industries. The dilemma posed here is simple: Is it OK to allow the destruction of glaciers (which represent invaluable sources of fresh water) and mountains to satisfy sumptuary consumption? But the answer is difficult, because it confronts two visions of the world: a materialistic and consumption-driven one, and a humanistic and conservational one; that is, a confrontation of paradigms that is as old as the world.

Meanwhile, group of South American environmentalists -unconditionally supported by NGOs- starred in their own epic battle. Whether with great success or not (only future will tell), they dared to challenge Goliath himself.

Illustration by Hernán Pitarque

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