ALEXANDRA DEMO – DANANBERG
Business News Americas
Tuesday, February 19, 2013 17:15 (GMT -0400)
Despite receiving municipal approval to begin exploration, Chilean state copper producer Codelco and Ecuador’s state miner Enami EP should brace themselves for failure in developing the Junín deposit in the Toisan mountain range in Cotacachi municipality’s Intag area in Ecuador, according to a spokesperson from local grassroots environmental organization Decoin.
The companies got the green light to go ahead with exploration on February 13, but that decision is being questioned by community members on several points. According to the spokesperson, the 5-4 approval violates legally binding land use and development plans for the area as well as a local ordinance designating the region as a protected area.
Furthermore, no prior consultation process was carried out, violating communities’ constitutional right to be consulted on any decision that could impact their environment. “That has been violated from day one,” the spokesperson said.
When contacted regarding the latest development, a Codelco spokesperson told BNamericas that the company could not comment on the matter. Referring in general to Codelco’s work in the country, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the company “carries out exploration in Ecuador in accordance with its status as a world leader in mining that respects the communities where it operates, fully complies with local regulations and applies the same standards and values that it keeps in Chile.”
Enami did not immediately respond to requests for a comment.
COMPLICATED HISTORY
The Junín deposit was first discovered in the ’90s by Japan’s Mitsubishi, which met enough community resistance to lead it to abandon the area following the completion of an environmental impact study for a mining project that identified deforestation and the drying up of the ecosystem as likely impacts, the Decoin spokesperson said, noting that the area’s cloud forest ecosystem is one of the most biodiverse on the planet.
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