Censat Agua Viva

Mining, yes or no?

The small mining of precious metals in our country has a history that goes back to the conquest time. From then on until today, it has marked the life of many towns that have seen the possibility to redeem its poverty from this activity. On the contrary, it has been cause of its uneasiness, generating large changes in its culture and environment. Elements such as corruption, illness, dependence, lost of values and dignity, discrimination and environmental chaos are part of the landscape of the different mining regions of Colombia.

It is not true that extensive mining produces less impacts and small mining is more environmentally aggressive, as false stigma have tried to say. Impacts are the same and proportional to the size of the alteration. As Augusto Ángel said “you cannot play with the nature without a punishment", the mitigation measures are always insufficient and in most of the cases deterioration is irreversible, in the environment, as well as in the human body and societies. Each being has a limit, an acceptance level to the changes, and this limit is franked permanently in the mining process.

Mining impacts become unmanageable in the time, and the problem is not only an investment capacity or compensation of impacts, it is also a problem of human survival. Without keeping in mind their size (subsistence, small, medium, big) the mining of precious metals is developed with big social, political and environmental costs for the whole humanity.

In this sense “the most significant challenge for the mining is to show that it can be articulated to the search of the sustainability of societies. For this purpose, mining should cease to be guided by the necessities of capital accumulation in few hands, and address to the satisfaction of the essential necessities of the society. And with this to contribute to solve the problems related to the human habitat, adequate and cheap technologies, alimentary security, communications, appropriate and perennial housing, conservation of ecosystems and life."1

Colombia has developed researches around the mining economy, (in this work one recent research is shown), in these work evaluations are made about the production and the level of exports. However, in any case the environmental and social costs generated by mining activities in regions, countries and the world, have been considered. Econometric studies only allow to see the reality based on the system of lost and monetary earnings, but it is not made in the sense of what means to live and to allow to other generations live as well.

If we consider that mining of precious metals is made to fulfil men and women’s sumptuary necessities, these costs become much more questionable. It is necessary to think how many human lives and nature is needed to destroy so that some few people can enjoy the vain pleasure of a jewel.

Environmental and social costs of mining are unsustainable. There is not a single example that shows the opposite, neither in this small mining of beautiful metals, nor in the great mining in any sub-sector (coal, quarries). However, the illness does exist and it is necessary to begin to eradicate it. But the first thing that it is necessary to eradicate is the imaginary of poverty of our towns, that being rich in minerals, water, fauna, cultures, and so on, they have to continue being scarified through this type of exploitations.

Some researches consider that the investment capacity of these small managers is one of the main problems for development of the small mining within the country, in a sustainable way. In contrast, we consider that beautiful metals mining business is so profitable, that if it would be organised in an appropriate way it would generate big money for the country, but so unsustainable that its environmental and social costs are impossible to value in a monetary way.

What has been achieved at technological level in the mining, in any of their sub-sectors, is insufficient for the future of our societies. There is not technology able to recover ecological niches, species, ecosystems, or human life. Generating alternatives of life which do not attempt to the planet and its inhabitants is the only form to preserve them of its disappearance. The technological incapacity to recover nature and man impacted makes mining one of the most aggressive activities on earth, and therefore an activity infeasible and untenable.

If we had clear the size of this mining, the potential contribution to the national production, the potential of the reservoirs, the natural and environmental potential of the territories of its incidence, it would be very easy to establish its real benefit. But it is impossible, due to the current conditions of the sector. It is necessary to continue recognising it, does not mean to make it punishable, but to consolidate it or to eradicate it.

Because of the illegality of small mining, it is condemned to be out of government's plans as a sector to recognise. Most of the times small mining is hidden, it does not have access to information related with prospecting and exploration, and the miners only can appeal to their empirical knowledge to determine the mining development.

Because of small mining illegality, incapacity to control, supervise and advise, the small mining is out of the hands of the government and has became unmanageable. It is immediately necessary that the government sets technical, planning and political capacities which allows it to initiate a process between government representatives and small mining.

A few time ago, mining authority was exercised from the central organs of the nation. As a part of the restructuring, it has been delegated to the departments and municipalities. But because of the conditions of the transference, municipalities and governments do not have the financial, technicians and humans resources to carry out its control.

In spite of the existence of policies related to the small mining in the different government plans, it seems that in many areas the situation is unable to change. Municipalities like Segovia, Remedios and Marmato have finished their Plans of Land Classification (POT in Spanish) after four years in that they should be ready. That means that the actions and local policies related to the way mining authority would be exerted, is actually being developed. That is an example of the rhythm that the local reality goes compared to national government policies.

Multiple areas of participation of the mining sector are in place, such as: Environmental National Council, Advisory Technical Council of Policies and Environmental Norms, the Framework Agreement of Cleaner Production and many other sub-sector agreements. But there is not a single participation area at municipal level that contributes with their perspective to the problem in a national level. The participation of the small managers and mining workers does not exist, neither clear and efficient mechanisms of communication amongst different government levels related to the control of the sub-sector.

Colombia continues having one of the most advanced environmental codes in Latin America (law 99/1994), but these laws and norms have not been observed carefully by managers of the medium and small mining. In Colombia, large mining projects in the sub-sector of the precious metals do not exist. This means that if there is not a governmental political attitude to solve these problems by participative actions. The norm alone will not achieve it.

Another important element evaluating the conditions of the mining of precious metals and its possible alternatives, is the problem of the Colombian conflict, common in most of these areas. This problem is a structural element of the environment of non-governability of the country, and it is a manifestation of the social inequity that the mining territories live.

In the mining regions, the state has allowed a not very harmonic development between the city and its peripheries, without generating any type of offer of well-being for the inhabitants in marginal areas in the urban centres. In this way, the State has not offered tools that allow citizens to acquire skills and capacities, besides generating a social capital through different alternatives to the mining, able to meditate with the environment and give answers to their problems and necessities.

In this sense it is necessary to start with programs which allow generating social capital and productive forms different to mining, as well as the access to tools and basic knowledge about the process and their operations.

The small miner's problem has already been sufficiently diagnosed by the government, from the classic optics that sustains principles like that of the sustainable viability of the mining process, this from the classic economy. In contrast, the ecological economy has demonstrated that the mining processes cannot be sustainable under the optimum operation conditions. Therefore, the measurements which could be taken with this activity, should be guided toward the search of new alternatives and not, exclusively, to the organisation, although this is a necessary step in the way of their eradication.

In this context, and being consequent, it is possible to think that “without an environmental and ethical sense, mining activity will bring poverty, illness, environmental destruction and social disintegration. For that reason, the mining manager's ethical imperative should take to the construction of conditions of equity and well being of the present and future societies.

It is impossible to think in the future of the humanity without thinking before of a new concept of mining. “The exploitation of mines should be made in the margins of resilience2 of the ecosystems, preferably for companies with high participation of local sectors and workers, and for the social benefit”. The mining economic activity must agree with the community life plan, and contribute to the solution of the historical demands of the society, as well as to lay the foundation of the wished future in the region in order to make a rational use of the minerals and to build a sustainable, solidary and diversified economy.