La Prensa newspaper lost copper with mining

An important element that anyone interested in environmental sustainability must consider is the large environmental impact of open pit mining. These are traces that not only significantly affect health Mother Earth, but long-term effects over time.

It’s no coincidence that Herman Daly, one of the founders currents from ecological economy, states that acid drainage still occurs at mining sites where the Romans worked more than 1,500 years ago, adding that nearly 500,000 mining sites abandoned in the United States they estimated cleanup costs between $32 billion and $72 billion.

Between multiple consequences caused by miningand all this affects environmental protection services in a practically irreparable way, the following can be highlighted: the impact on transforming land surface and destroys its bark; significant pollution of surface waters and underground aquifers; negative impact on flora and fauna, which disrupts biological diversity; very high energy consumption associated with emission of greenhouse gases; landscape changes that affect cultural and recreational ecosystem services, degrading tourism opportunities.

This involves huge costs irreparable consequences on people’s lives and health and other types, which affect many generations, which can be qualified by their meaning, the following Joan Martinez Alier or John Bellamy Foster, as immeasurable. We are therefore faced with social and environmental costs those that cannot be measured financially, that is, practically infinite. Taking this into account, it turns out that from the environmentalist’s point of view, it is concluded that in the case of mining, it is not a conflict over the distribution of mining income, but a struggle to remove an open pit in the country. mining. This is why an important group is rallying around the idea that “Panama is worth more without mining.”

This last position is not, in our opinion, the one that shared by the newspaper La Prensa. So in an article published on December 28, 2022, written by lawyer Rodrigo Noriega under the title “Plan ‘B’ for Panama: Hello Codelco, he himself claims that such a mine as big as Donoso can only be managed by “a handful of mining companies in the world”, further claiming that “very likely out of loyalty to the group, some of the other mining giants do not want (SIC) to replace First Quamtum”. Obviously, the interest is not to rule out surface mining, it depends on whom and under what circumstances the conditions must be the same.

Under this premise, the author tries to find out who he could be The first replacement for Quamtum. In particular, he proposes a possible contract with the Chilean state company Codelco, with which he believes that an adequate exploitation contract could be concluded.

In this sense, he writes: “Panama would offer Codelco administrative contract, by which the Chilean company would reactivate the mine, a percentage is earned, and the rest of the profit belongs to the Panamanian state”.

Seen from the perspective of the author of the analyzed document, it can be understood that the mining conflict was not understood as one in which the goal would be elimination surface mining. In our view, it is simply a matter of a struggle for income distribution. It is not, from our perspective, a a truly ecological vision.