The fight against mining is for life, not for a few more dollars

In the debate generated by the rejection fight a new contract with a mining transnational companysome sectors are emerging that suggest that metal mining should be considered as a strategic sector to achieve development sustainable human development in Panama. For them, the problem is simply that the company gives the country a larger share of the mining revenue. Of course it is true that the offer is of the part that is would give the country is funnybut the problem is much more complex.

If we refer to what Eduardo Gudynas referred to as local impacts, it can be pointed out that the inhabitants of the mine-affected areas will experience serious damage to the ecological services that are necessary to sustain their lives and well-being. If we look back at Mining Project Appraisal Guidein the edition World Alliance for Environmental Law (2010), it is evident that surface exploitation shows about 17 different types of impact on the environment, which can threaten the life and health of people, and to that should be added the effect on climate changes.

The problem is that this influence on morbidity and mortality it cannot be measured by simple economic value. And those who have developed a vision political ecology, like Joan Martínez Alier, like those who developed electricity Ecological political economyas is the case with John Bellamy Foster, they agree that these are elements that are immeasurable. Following Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heizeling in their work Priceless, It can be said that neither life nor health are commodities that can be traded at a price with a transnational company.

Then we have the first expropriation that the new mining contract would cause: expropriation of the population mine areas of the necessary environmental services. This is not the only expropriation.

Herman Daly who can be considered one of founders of the ecological economy, In his book Beyond Growth (1996), he drew attention to what he calls the ethical-social limits of economic growth. This includes not only a commitment to future generations. This also includes the fact that you can no longer destroy the habitat species, violating the intrinsic right on their lives, just like open-pit mining does. Once again we encounter the problem of incommensurability.

Then we have the second expropriation. the one in this the case affects nature itself. This is what John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark recognized in their book Robbery of Nature (2020) as the robbery of nature, denying it the conditions for its normal reproduction. This causes a so-called metabolic breakdown, which eventually affects life itself. (overheating, loss of biodiversity, etc.), since it is people are part of naturewhose degradation affects us all.

There is also a third expropriation, which refers to the sovereignty of the nationsince the mining contract simply directly transfers decisions about how to treat nature to a transnational company whose goal is simply to increase its profits, even at the expense of our ecological sustainability. Thus, the idea of ​​a society of citizens i free citizens who determine their own destiny. The fight against the mining contract should focus on the defense of life, not on the debate over the economic value of the supply.