CODELCO’S TROUBLED MINING PROJECT IN INTAG UNDER NEW SCRUTINY
For nearly 30 years, communities have worked to conserve, restore and defend the cloud forests of the Intag Valley in Ecuador, in what locals say is the longest continuous resistance movement against mining in Latin America.
The tropical Andes are considered the world’s most biodiverse hotspot, ranking first in plant, bird, mammal and amphibian diversity; however, less than 15% of Ecuador’s original cloud forests and only 4% of all forests in northwestern Ecuador remain.
Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, plans to open a mine in the Intag Valley that would destroy primary forest and lie within the buffer area of Cotacachi Cayapas Ecological Reserve — a plan that experts say would be ecologically devastating and not worth the cost.
Communities are using the presence of two threatened frog species — previously thought to be extinct — at the mining site to challenge the project under the “rights of nature,” Ecuador’s constitutional guarantee that natural ecosystems have the right to exist, thrive, and evolve.
Comisión de biodiversidad fiscalizará a sectores minero, petrolero, hidrocarburos e hidroeléctricas en Ecuador
Comunicado de Prensa Bnamericas Publicado: lunes, 20 septiembre, 2021 Comunidad Asamblea Nacional Con ocho votos, la Comisión de Biodiversidad resolvió iniciar el proceso de fiscalización a los sectores estratégicos y la regularización ambiental a todo tipo de minería en Ecuador; el seguimiento y control de concesiones mineras y plantas de beneficios; así como, en los […]
Read MoreEcuador’s Ecuador’s Problematic Llurimagua Mining Project
Now that the international arbitration requested by the Chilean mining giant Codelco against the Ecuador is attracting worldwide attention, it feels like the right time to inform the public a little bit about what is behind the arbitration, and call the press for such shoddy reporting on this mining project
Read MoreWhen I think of the copper laying below Intag’s forests
When I think of the copper laying beneath Intag’s cloud forests the last thing I think about is clean energy for the poor of our planet. I know better. Rather, I think of death. I think of contamination of pristine rivers and streams with arsenic and lead that will last a thousand years. Of acid […]
Read MoreCODELCO ABOUT TO FINANCE CATASTROPHIC MINE IN ECUADOR
Copper mine would deforest thousand of hectares of primary forest that are home to hundreds of species in danger of extinction, contaminate rivers and streams with heavy metals, and relocate hundreds of families from four to six communities(1). An American expert concluded that it is the most dangerous mine he has ever evaluated in his years as a consultant.(2)
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