Water Inspires Strange Bedfellows
How a Colombian city united against gold greed
by Natalia Fajardo
BUCARAMANGA, COLOMBIA—Spirits were high last month among students,
environmentalists, businesspeople, and politicians as the news came in that
Greystar Resources had revoked its application for a large-scale open-pit gold
mine in the mountains of northeastern Colombia.
But just twelve hours later, Greystar’s intentions became clear—it was
withdrawing that application to bring in a new one for a redesigned, underground
mine.
The short-lived but significant victory for those against the mine was
possible thanks to the tireless efforts of the broadest, most diverse coalition
in Colombia’s recent history. This coalition brought together an engineer’s
association, committed student activists, the head of the local business
federation, NGOs, teachers, environmentalists, and water utility employees.
Foreign investments in Colombia’s mining sector grew slowly in the 1990s, but
in the eight years of former President Alvaro Uribe’s regime it skyrocketed in
part due to a perception of safer exploration conditions. Even the Canadian
government showed interest in making Colombia prime for investment needs by
having the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) draft Colombia’s mining law of 2001, granting generous privileges to foreign companies. Uribe’s disciple, current President Juan Manuel Santos, has made resource extraction a centerpiece of his economic plan, deeming it the main “motor” of development and plans to follow the lead of Chile and Peru, two truly mining-oriented countries.
Santos’ strategy includes generous tax breaks to mining companies and
modifying laws to be more “investor friendly.” It also involves persecuting
traditional small miners—some who lack a mining title—aligning them with the
neo-paramilitaries and guerrillas who mine illegally to fund their “dirty” work.
Mainstream media plays into this dynamic by focusing on illegal mining
but remaining silent about the large-scale corporate takeover of Colombia’s
resources. Currently, 40 per cent of Colombia´s entire area is under mining
permits, some of it on environmentally protected land or Indigenous and
Afro-Colombian communal territories.
Into this mining binge came Greystar Resources, a Vancouver-based junior
exploration company. (Junior exploration companies typically explore potential
mining sites, deal with permit processes, and then sell their acquisition to an
actual mining company, making financial speculation their real business.) Among
Greystar’s investors are the International Financing Corporation—the World Bank’s
private financing arm, and JP Morgan.
The company has mineral rights over 74,000 acres of land in the mountains of
California and Vetas, two small and remote towns forgotten by the government,
where Greystar has invested in infrastructure and had brought promises of
employment and progress. Many locals in that area badly want the mine.
The project is just 40 kilometers northeast of Bucaramanga, Colombia’s
fifth-largest city. Greystar plans to dig out an estimated nine million ounces
of gold, making its mine one of the largest gold deposits in South America.
But that gold sits under the Santurban paramo, a tropical version of high moorlands. This unique ecosystem supplies water for Bucaramanga and 21 towns. The proposed use of cyanide at the Greystar mine caught the attention of the region’s citizens, who see it as a major threat to their “liquid of life” source: water. In fact, mineral extraction was legally banned in paramos in the amendment to article 34 of the Colombian Mining Law in 2010.
Besides the national effort to render all paramos mine-free zones, various
environmental organizations in the Bucaramanga area worked for years to have
Santurban declared a protected area, which would exclude mining, logging and
cattle grazing from its grounds. More recently, opposition to the mining project
gained ground when university students and other environmentalists joined the
cause, concerned not only about the threat to their local water supply, but also
about the sovereignty and long-term economic implications this mine represented
within the national mining policy. They realized that the need for water was
shared by everyone, regardless of their political views, and they framed their
anti-mining campaign through water’s unifying lens.
The coalition started growing and taking a new shape when the municipal water
utility workers union joined. Then they sought support from the state assembly
leadership, where their calls landed on receptive ears; the assembly’s
president, a member the leftist Democratic Alternative Pole (Polo) party,
publicly denounced the mine.
Following this victory, the economic federations of Bucaramanga, which,
besides understanding the intrinsic environmental value of the Santurban paramo,
came to the conclusion that damaging the city’s water source would have a more
negative financial impact in the long term than the ephemeral gains of mining.
The state engineers association also opposed the project. At this point, it
became clear the general public sentiment in the region was that water was worth
more than gold.
“Take to the streets in support of your treasure, the Santurban paramo,”
called out members of the coalition during a public demonstration on February
24, 2011. Previous protests had seen low turnouts, but the issue became so
well-known and the opposition so diverse, that over 30,000 Bucaramangans marched
in their streets, petitioning the Environment Ministry to deny Greystar’s
license application. Around this time other segments of the government,
including the Attorney General, publicly denounced the mine.
With all eyes on Bucaramanga, the ministry held a public hearing on
Greystar’s case. There was a clear division between the small crowd from
California and Vetas that was bused there by the company to support the project,
and the large, mostly urban majority opposing the mine.
The majority of politicians, most prominently the state’s governor,
explicitly called to shut down the project for its technical flaws and risks it
posed to the community. Tensions ran high as the hearing progressed. Two
attendees started a fight, and the ministry ended the hearing early. Media coverage focused on the fight rather than on
the near unanimous resistance to the gold mine.
The hearing was a public disgrace to the company, whose stock value dropped
30 per cent. To top it all off, Colombia’s energy minister and even Serafino
Locono, a prominent oil-and-mining CEO, highlighted Greystar project’s flaws at a miner’s conference in
Toronto.
Greystar decided to preempt the environment ministry’s decision on the
company’s license application, and withdraw its request for the mining
operation, only to announce later that Greystar was reconfiguring its
project to “address the concerns of the community.”
This company is just one of a group of businesses after Santurban’s gold. Its
counterparts include Galway Resources and Ventana Gold
Corp, recently purchased by energy billionaire Eike Batista. The
success of these companies will likely be impacted by Greystar’s fate.
Laura Galvis, a student member of the anti-mining coalition, says that the
group’s lack of hierarchy, its clarity in its position on the issue, and its
ability to take an angle that resonated with everyone were essential to the
recent success. “It’s not just about the environment, it’s about our very
survival,” she explained.
Coalition founders worked hard to bring everyone to the table, and found a
common point of interest with their traditional political opponents in the
belief that the public’s right to clean water takes precedence over private
interests. Through educational campaigns and public demonstrations, they slowly
gained ground.
This broad alliance against the mining project is not quite a movement, for
it rose to meet a temporary need, and its members have little in common beyond
their rejection of the mining operations. The coalition is a something of an
interim union aided by current elections, with politicians seeking supporters.
Whatever its nature, this grassroots experience opened the door to a multi-party
dialogue rarely seen in Colombia.
The most committed segment of the coalition—the students and
environmentalists who oppose large-scale multinational mining in general—want to
move the argument beyond the threat to Bucaramanga’s water supply. They see a
need to adapt to the reconfiguration proposed by Greystar, and to deepen the
debate to include other harmful effects the mine would bring, such as a
deterioration of the area’s agricultural web and the loss of a local supply of
gold for Bucaramanga’s thriving jewelry industry.
Publicly, the coalition’s success in bringing the Santurban case into the eye
of the media hurricane has forced Greystar to change its strategy. Whether the
coalition is able to stop the mining project compltely and protect its beloved
paramo remains to be seen.
Natalia Fajardo is a mining consultant for Cedetrabajo, a political
analysis institute in Colombia. Cedetrabajo is a member of Reclame, Colombia’s national network of organizations
facing large-scale mining.
This article was originally published by Toward Freedom.