The Right to Nature

Social Movements, Environmental Justice and Neoliberal Natures

Elia Apostolopoulou, Jose A. Cortes-Vazquez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138385351
• eBook ISBN: 9780429763090
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

Since the 2008 financial crash the expansion of neoliberalism has had an enormous impact on nature-society relations around the world. In response, various environmental movements have emerged opposing the neoliberal restructuring of environmental policies using arguments that often bridge traditional divisions between the environmental and labour agendas.

The Right to Nature explores the differing experiences of a number of environmental-social movements and struggles from the point of view of both activists and academics. This collection attempts to both document the social-ecological impacts of neoliberal attempts to exploit non-human nature in the post-crisis context and to analyse the opposition of emerging environmental movements and their demands for a radically different production of nature based on social needs and environmental justice. It also provides a necessary space for the exchange of ideas and experiences between academics and activists and aims to motivate further academic-activist collaborations around alternative and counter-hegemonic re-thinking of environmental politics.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and activists interested in environmental policy, environmental justice, social and environmental movements.

Part I
Extractivism and environmental justice movements

1
Self-determination as resistance

Re-asserting control over natural resources in Colombia

Charlotte Christiaens, Lucy Mears, Andy Whitmore and Hannibal Rhoades

Introduction

CATAPA (Comité Académico Técnico de Asesoramiento a Problemas Ambientales), The Gaia Foundation and London Mining Network (LMN) support global grassroots movements struggling against the social and ecological impacts of extractive industries. Local communities have long suffered the loss of control over their lands and natural resources at the hands of State-based and multinational companies – a loss that often entails a radical shift from sustainable to unsustainable and destructive land and water use. This chapter focuses on three cases in Colombia: La Colosa, Cerrejón and Yaigojé Apaporis. In each case, local and indigenous communities are mobilizing to exercise and expand their rights to self-determination and to protect clean water, healthy soils and living ecosystems required for livelihoods and life itself to thrive.

Despite Colombia’s reputation as the country with the longest and most productive history of gold exploitation in Latin America, during the years of its brutal internal conflict, most companies were reluctant to invest in the country due to security issues (Global Business Report, 2011). However, an ease in the conflict in recent years, as well as the privatization of much of Columbia’s industry (Pombo and Ramírez, 2003), have exposed the country to increased foreign interest in extractivism, what Zaitch and Gutiérrez Gómez call a new gold fever (Zaitch and Gutiérrez Gómez, 2015). Exports have increased, boosting the Colombian economy, but to the detriment of its biodiverse landscape (Rudas Lleras and Cabrera Leal, 2015). The most exported products are oil, coal, gold and coffee (Observatory of Economic Complexity, 2016). During the administration of former President Alvaro Uribe Vélez, large areas of land were parcelled out to multinational mining companies (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2013), and, in 2007, the Ministry of Mines and Energy announced that a huge gold deposit had been found in Cajamarca (Tolima, Colombia) (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2013).

Local communities in Colombia are generally excluded from policy-making that will determine how their lands and natural resources will be used. Negotiations between mining companies and the Colombian government happen behind closed doors. Policy-making processes are formalized without any access or information being given to local communities. The three cases used in this article are emblematic cases, showing how local communities are ignored and how they are struggling together with local and international NGOs to claim their rights.

First Colombian case: Cerrejón

The Colombian government has been promoting an expansion of privatized, large-scale, open-pit coal mining for export in the belief that this will bring about “development”, both nationally and in the vicinity of the mines. It will allegedly do this through increased revenue, employment and by advancing industrialization (EJOLT, 2015a, 2015b). The government aims to double coal exports by 2021, with about 90% of Cerrejón’s hard coal being shipped abroad to fuel power plants, mainly in Europe and the United States (Coal Action Network, 2016; Heinrich Boell Stiftung and Friends of the Earth, 2015).

The Cerrejón coal mine, a vast opencast mine in the La Guajira province, is meant to satisfy this dream. It was Colombia’s first large-scale coal mining operation, with a primary focus on coal for export, and is now the largest open-pit coal mine in South America (Balch, 2013). The initial contract was signed in 1975, between the State-owned Carbocol, and a subsidiary of US Exxon, known as Intercor. The mine began operating in 1985. Carbocol’s rights were sold to global mining multinationals BHP Billiton, Anglo-American and Glencore in 2000, followed by a buyout of Exxon’s 50% share in 2002, which left them as the sole owners (Coal Action Network, 2016). The mine’s annual production in 2014 was 34.4 million tons, with a total accumulated production of 508.8 million tons, and the whole mining complex extending to more than 69,000 hectares (Coal Action Network, 2016; Betancur and Villa, 2016).

The mine has been hugely contested at the local level, as it has impoverished the surrounding soils and contaminated or dried up water sources. This has had devastating impacts on the local economy of farming and livestock keeping (Heinrich Boell Stiftung and Friends of the Earth, 2015). La Guajira has a 64% poverty rate, which is the highest in Colombia (EJOLT, 2015). This contradicts the government’s thesis on the regional developmental benefits of such mining.

The impact on the land rights of the affected communities, particularly on the ancestral territory of the indigenous Wayúu people, has been severe. The mine is in a region where 42–45% of the population are indigenous people and 7.5% are Afro-Colombian communities (Heinrich Boell Stiftung and Friends of the Earth, 2015). The advance of the mine has had a determining – and restricting – effect on the territory of the region’s ancestral inhabitants, the indigenous Wayúu people. It is in the middle of their land, and the train track delivering coal to the coast divides their territory (Coal Action Network, 2016). The Wayúu people have had little in the way of security over their land as their territory only began to be titled as ‘reserve land’ from the mid-1980s, with 21 reserves carved arbitrarily out of Wayúu ancestral territory, and – most importantly – the coal-rich areas excluded from that demarcation (Betancur and Villa, 2016).

At least five indigenous communities and a number of Afro-descendant communities have disappeared with the dispersing of their inhabitants (Coal Action Network, 2016). In terms of direct land conflict, there have been violent forced evictions of communities, including fairly recent examples involving the primarily Afro-descendent community of Tabaco in 2001, and even this year at Roche (Solly, 2016). There have also been social and cultural impacts due to labour migration associated with the mine.

The struggle of the Wayúu and Afro-Colombian communities has been one for self-determined development, and for their environment, notably to have their right to free, prior, informed consent – as recognized by the Constitutional Court – respected. Food sovereignty has been impacted by land loss and environmental pollution. The area is very dry, but the coal mine uses up to 17 million litres of water daily, despite people being faced with a scarcity of water (Heinrich Boell Stiftung and Friends of the Earth, 2015). This has led to a deterioration of flora and fauna. Air pollution has led to an increase in respiratory diseases. A 2015 decision by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights directed the Colombian government to take immediate precautionary measures to ensure the lives and personal safety of the Wayuu people in La Guajira (Mines and Communities, 2016).

Local indigenous and environmental groups have increasingly linked up to fight for the rights of affected communities around many of the issues listed above. They have even managed to form a “roundtable” with the local mining union, who have their own concerns, including health and safety and working conditions. Although they do not always agree – given many local communities want the company to leave their land – it is a commendable model of how local groups with concerns about large mega-projects can create broad alliances to advance joint agendas. A noteworthy example of local action is the resistance to the company’s decision in 2012 to begin a diversion project of the Ranchería River, in order to reach the 500 million tons of coal under it. Because of the concerted protest, including direct action of indigenous Wayúu women stopping coal trains, Cerrejón decided to suspend the project.

However, in 2014 they announced another diversion project on a tributary of the Ranchería called the Arroyo Bruno. Peaceful protests, such as the Marcha de Mantas Rojas, have been protesting against the diversion, but at the time of writing it appears that Cerrejón is just starting to divert the river (London Mining Network, 2016).

The recent protests in La Guajira were matched by actions of international solidarity. For example, LMN member group, Colombia Solidarity Campaign, organized a vigil outside the Colombian Embassy in London. Such solidarity work was happening in the UK before LMN came into existence, but since its inception in 2007, LMN has been offering various forms of support to affected communities. Being based in London, where all of the three controlling companies have some form of presence, we have been able to make direct interventions with the company at the request of the communities. We have been most effective when ensuring that the voice of community leaders is heard directly by the companies, and that has meant frequent support for representatives to come to London to attend company annual general meetings, and to take part in associated press and advocacy opportunities. Those who have visited frequently attest to how effective such interventions can be, although the positive effects at the local level are often short-lived.

What is taking place in La Guajira is a conflict over lifestyles and control of territory and the local economy; it is a battle of the local land-based communities to determine their development for themselves. In this struggle they are frequently supported by international human rights norms and international solidarity, but face an uphill struggle against powerful vested interests, in both the company and the State, as well as entrenched ideas of what constitutes “development”. As is blatantly clear it is also a struggle for both the local environment, and – given coal’s impact as a fossil fuel – a struggle for the global environment. This may not be the major concern of those affected communities, but their victories may just help save our planet.

Second Colombian case: La Colosa

Further south in Cajamarca, Tolima, another local community is challenging the mining industry. Cajamarca is a city close to the capital of Bogotá, with a population of almost 24,000 inhabitants. A total of 80% of its area is a forest reserve. It has many strategic river sources, essential to the neighbouring areas, which are used by farmers, inhabitants and companies. Due to the numerous water resources and its ideal climate, the area is seen as the agricultural heart of Colombia (McNeish, 2016).

In 2007, concessions over Cajamarca were granted to AngloGold Ashanti (AGA), a South-African mining company, which is the third biggest gold mining company in the world (Zaitch and Gutiérrez Gómez, 2015). Due to the increasing internal conflicts in various countries in Africa as a result of AngloGold Ashanti’s mining projects (Prosansky, 2007; Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2011), AGA had long been looking overseas for other mining sites. Cajamarca proved to be a fruitful option for the company. Having spent time test drilling in Colombia since 1999, the preparation of the field was planned to start as early as 2017 (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2011), with the first gold production scheduled for 2020 (AngloGold Ashanti, 2012). This project, named La Colosa, poses a huge threat to the highly complex ecosystems and to the agriculture upon which inhabitants rely in Cajamarca.

The impacts of the project in Cajamarca are two-fold. First, the project poses a threat to the environment. This comes in the form of water usage, waste rock and toxic waste. The mining process requires a huge amount of water, specifically, the transportation of ore via pipelines, which could cause drought, resulting in decreased crop production, thus creating a food shortage for animals and humans (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2011). It is estimated that La Colosa will consume more water per year than the total water consumption of all of the households in Tolima (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2013). Further, the waste rock produced by the process takes up a vast amount of space and remains after projects are abandoned. Toxic waste is impossible to recycle and requires impounding with tailing dams. Since the waste cannot be cleaned or filtered, it is kept in containers, at high risk of breaking, leaking and heavily polluting the ground and water, causing the destruction of animals’ habitat and potentially resulting in their deaths (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2011).

Second, the project poses a threat to the inhabitants of the area. Health problems are rife as a result of exposure to toxic waste and to mined precious metals. Exposure to cyanide (which can leak into the air in the form of clouds) can cause problems ranging from headaches or heart problems to death (Hesperian Health Guides, 2012). Exposure to mercury can lead to neurological and behavioural disorders, miscarriage and birth defects among other serious problems (World Health Organization, 2016). Exposure to other minerals released during the mining process can cause problems ranging from cancer and dementia, and at the correct level of toxicity, death. In terms of social and economic damage, mining projects increase living costs due to the steep rise in rent (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2013), and such economic problems can lead to criminal activity, including prostitution and drug dealing.

One of the starkest examples of a threat to human rights and to democracy in this case is the corruption of the Colombian government. The government often backs companies and industries in their fight against local protesters, and AGA uses its financial resources to influence the decisions of local politicians and decision makers (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2013). Freedom of speech is also heavily censored through intimidation and threats in order to protect foreign investors (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2013). Over the past few years, a number of local protesters have been killed in Cajamarca (Colombia Solidarity Campaign, 2013). These actions illustrate the Colombian State’s concerted failure to protect and promote the rights of its citizens, a duty required of the State as sovereign.

CATAPA supports local resistance committees in a number of ways. One of the most recent examples of this was CATAPA’s contribution to the planning of a referendum, or Popular consultation in Cajamarca, which was given the green light by the city council of Ibagué. Thus, on 26 March 2017, local inhabitants were asked to vote on whether they supported La Colosa mining project. CATAPA facilitated the exchange of best practices and lessons from Peru and Bolivia with the local residents organizing the consultation. The aim of this referendum was to return collective power back to communities in order to allow for greater self-determination of the local people. The notion of returning power and rights to the local level corresponds with the concept of sovereignty. Local people should have a say in the fate of their lands and water resources, because it is they, and their children who live on that land. Empowering local communities by sharing “lessons learned” from other local affected communities is very efficient.

The referendum resulted in 98% of citizens voting against the project. Despite this clear call for self-determination, and the fact that Colombian law states that the results of this democratic instrument must be respected by national authorities, the outcome’s validity has been contested by various stakeholders, including the Ministry of Mining. At the time of writing, the project’s fate remains unclear.

More and more communities in Latin Ame...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of figures
• List of boxes
• Contributor biographies
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Neoliberalism and environmental movements across the world after the 2008 financial crash: defending the right to nature
• Part I Extractivism and environmental justice movements
• Part II Green struggles against capitalist urbanization and infrastructure construction
• Part III The economic valuation of nature: from academic debates to activist action
• Part IV Tracking alternatives to the neoliberal agenda: radical environmentalism and community action