The communities of Intag, backed by most local governments, have forced two transnational mining companies to abandoned the Llurimagua mining project since 1995, the year the resistance to mining initiated in Intag. Since 2012, the government of Ecuador, with support of Chilean-owned Codelco, have been trying to impose the mining project on the people of Intag with police force and with an impressive set of lies and misinformation. This then, is an attempt to try to inform of the reality behind the lies and distortions being generated around the Junín (now called Llurimagua) mining project, and just 21 of the reasons why this project, as BN Americas pointed out, is bound to fail (click here). And for more background information go to www.codelcoecuador.com
IMPACTS
A. Based on the Bishi Metals Environmental Impact Assessment of mining in Intag, and on a small (450,000 ton) copper mine (a couple of years later they inferred the existence of 5x more copper)
1. Intag is no like the Atacama desert, where Codelco has its copper mines. Besides being super biodiverse, there are communities all over the place. According to the Study, the mining project would relocate hundreds of families from four communities. Afterwards, the Japanese found more five times more copper, which could increase the number of communities affected by two- at the very least. Relocation of communities is more than enough to stop most extractive projects.
2. It would impact primary cloud forests. What’s so special about cloud forests? Less than 2.5% of the world’s tropical forests are cloud forests. They are not only exceptionally biologically diverse- as well as severely threatened- but they play an outsize role in protecting important headwater watersheds.
3. In the words of the experts preparing the Study, the open-pit mine would cause massive deforestation. The small mine would directly impact 4,025 hectares.
4. The deforestation, according to the Japanese, would lead to drying of local climate, affecting thousands of small farmers (the EIA used the word desertification). You think communities will let this happen once they truly get the picture???
5. Intag’s forests belong to the world’s top Biodiversity Hotspot; the Tropical Andes. The scientist working on the study identified 12 species of mammals and birds facing extinction that would be impacted by the project, including jaguars, spectacled bears, mountain tapirs and the brown-faced spider monkey. (Based on incomplete studies, Decoin identified more than 30 species of threatened or endangered plants and animals, and we believe there could be close to 100 species of plants and animals threatened by extinction in the mining area.
Every year new species are found in Ecuador’s cloud forests, and this includes the spectacular Prince Charles frog, as well as the only carnivore discovered in the Western Hemisphere in the last 35 years. In addition, on March 2016, a team of biologist from the Jambatu Foundation discovered a species of frog (Atelopus longirostris) in Junin’s forests that was listed as extinct in Ecuador since 1989. Tthe area has several other endemic species, such as the recently discovered Shape-shifting frog (Pristimantis mutabilis),
and the Black-breasted Puffleg Hummingbird, which exists in only two patches of high altitude cloud forests- one of them located in Intag.
6. There are pristine rivers and streams everywhere within the concession. The EIA predicted they would be contaminated with lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium and other toxic substances.
7. The project would, unquestionably, destroy pre-Incan Yumbo archeological sites. This is one of the least studied cultures in Ecuador. Mining is prohibited in Archeological sites.
8. It would impact the Cotacachi-Capayas Ecological Reserve (one of the world’s most biologically diverse protected areas and the only large one in all of western Ecuador).
Besides these very worrying impacts identified in the Study (for a mine a fraction of what it could end up being)… there are other significant hurdles.
B. Legal hassles
9. Large-scale mining would violate the legally-binding Cotacachi County Ecological Ordinance created in 2000. Only the Constitutional Tribunal can rule on the validity of the Ordinance in light of the new Constitution. And the Tribunal has not.
10. Article 398 of Ecuador’s Constitution demands that communities be consulted before any project impacting their social or natural environment takes place; a Constitutional guarantee that has been disregarded from day one. The Constitution also grants nature rights, and the people right to Sumak Kawsay, or a Good Life (also translatable as Harmonious Life) . Good luck trying to convince a decent government and world opinion that open pit mining will not violate these two fundamental rights (no matter how obscenely the government decides to define the indigenous concept of a “Good Life”). Just because a government does its best to distort the Constitution does not mean a future one will do the same.
Waning political support.
One of the things the government likes to underline is that it has the area´s political support. As of February 2014 this is no longer true, as the president’s party, Alianza País, lost badly in local government elections in Imbabura province, site of the mining project. In fact, Imbabura was one of the provinces where Mr. Correa’s party lost more municipalities (5 out of 6) than anywhere else in the country. One of those Municipalities is the Cotacachi, which encompasses the Llurimagua mining concession. The new Mayor, Jomar Cevallos, is firmly opposed to mining.
In late 2015 and early 2016, the four communities closest to the mining site; Chalguayacu Alto, Chalguayaco Bajo, Cerro Pelado and Junin all elected board members to the township governments that oppose mining. In the case of Junin, Javier Ramirez, the most public anti-mining activist, was elected president of the community. In 2014 to early 2015, Javier spent 10 months in jail in a case that several human rights organizations denounced as a intent to silence the opposition to mining.
C. Opposition.
There is widespread opposition to the Intag mining project. This includes:
12. The Parish township governments the concession is located at, plus County-wide indigenous and
campesino organizations. The new threat has actually mobilized more organization at the local, county and national level, than ever before.
Community Opposition. As mentioned above, most communities surrounding the mining project are still, after all these years, opposed to the project. Nearly twently years of resistance has honed their skill in resisting (the right to resist is now a right protected by the Constitution). In fact, on November 2013 the government tried to carry out an environmental impact study were stopped by the communities- in spite of heavy police presence, and military in the area. The only way the government was able to put scientist to take samples to carry out the EIA, was with the use of nearly 300 Swat-type police force on May 8th 2014
14. Human Rights
After years of stopping dozens of attempts by government and private companies of accessing the mining concession that overlap communal land in order to carry out the environmental impact study and begin exploration, the government and Codelco only succeeded in carrying out the study in May of 2014 with the help of hundreds of police that terrorized the area for two months and violated rights, such as the right to freely circulate. To intensify the intimidation, a month earlier Javier Ramírez, president of the Junín community was arrested and jailed under highly irregular circumstances, which have been denounced by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and The International Human Rights Federation, as well as several national human rights groups. Javier was released after being sentenced in February of 2015 but only after serving 10 months in jail. His brother Victor Hugo remains in hiding accused of sabotage, the same criminal offense as his brother, for putting up resistance to the presence of Enami employees in their territory.
(A full-lenght, internationally acclaimed documentary on the resistance in Intag and the arrest and incarceration of Javier Ramírez can be watched at https://vimeo.com/155937763)
14. 90% of NGO’s in Cotacachi County and Intag oppose the project. In late 2012, the most important civil society organizations in Intag wrote a letter to Chile’s president to make sure he understood that the organizations would again rise to defend the area if Codelco or anyone went ahead and tried to revive the project. .
D. Exaggerated Copper Claims
15. In 2007, Micon International, the entity contracted by Ascendant Copper to evaluate the Junin copper deposit, said that it could not confirm their earlier estimates due to degradation of samples. Copper Mesa had been saying all along that the Junin copper deposit had four times more copper than what the Japanese inferred after years of exploration. In all, 2.26 million tons were inferred by the Japanese, which is a little less than 1/10th of what the world consumes annually (and it would take decades to mine it all out).
E. Further environmental challenges
16. The area receives between 3000 and 4000 millimeters of annual rainfall. Heavy rainfall, abundant underground aquifers, and heavy metals in the ore make for a deadly mix. Not only that, but they raise the price of mining considerably, while greatly increasing the risks of man-made disasters, such as landslides. For an idea of what a landslide can do in an open pit mine, go here:
17. The porphyry copper deposit contains toxic heavy metals and sulfur (which will cause Acid Mine Drainage). The metals include lead and arsenic.
18. There is a superabundance of underground water (according to Japanese EIA). This is bad news for mining companies and even worse news for the environment.
19. Besides being very rainy, the area where they found the copper is exceptionally steep and mountainous, making mining much more difficult and expensive than most mines.
20. There are clear indications that Junín’s copper is very deep, making mining much more environmentally destructive and economically risky.
21. The Toisan Range has many geological faults, posing significant earthquake risks.
There are, in fact, more than 21 reasons for Codelco or any companty to stay out of Intag. But these should suffice for any company that considers itself responsible and to realize that Intag’s forests and inhabitants should be a no-go zone.
Further Reading
BnAmericas article here http://www.bnamericas.com/news/mining/codelco-enami-exploration-project-in-ecuador-faces-bumpy-future-possible-failure
www.codelcoecuador.com
www.decoin.org
www.codelcofueradeintag.blogspot.com