systemicdisorder | Yet another standoff between clean drinking water and mining profits
has taken shape in Colombia, where two corporations insist their right
to pollute trumps human health and the environment. As is customary in
these cases, it is clean water that is the underdog here.
Two million people are dependent on water from a high-altitude
wetlands, which is also a refuge for endangered species, that a Canadian
mining company, Eco Oro Minerals Corporation, wants to use for a gold
mine. The wetlands, the Santurbán páramo in the Andes, has been declared
off-limits for mining by Colombia’s highest court due to the area’s
environmental sensitivity. Eco Oro is suing the Colombian government
because of this under the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
The dispute will likely be heard by a secret tribunal that is an arm
of the World Bank, even though the World Bank has provided investment
capital for Eco Oro to develop the mine.
Eco Oro has not said how much money it intends to ask for, but
another mining company, the U.S.-based Tobie Mining and Energy Inc., has
separately sued Colombia for US$16.5 billion because the government
refused to allow it to establish a gold mine in a national park. To put
that $16.5 billion in perspective, the total represents more than 20
percent of Colombia’s budget.
To the north, El Salvador is still awaiting the decision of another
secret tribunal in a case heard in September 2014. An Australian mining
company, OceanaGold, sued El Salvador for $301 million because it was denied a permit to create a gold mine that would have poisoned the country’s biggest source of water.
Under “free trade” agreements (which have little to do with trade and
much to do with enhancing corporate power), governments agree to the
mandatory use of “investor-state dispute mechanisms.” What that
bland-sounding phrase means is that any “investor” can sue a signatory
government to overturn any law or regulation
it does not like because the law or regulation “confiscates” its
expected profits, with no limitations on who or what constitutes an
“investment.” These cases are not heard in regular judicial systems, but
rather in secret tribunals with no oversight, no public notice and no
appeals. The judges who sit on these tribunals are corporate lawyers
whose regular practice is representing corporations in these types of
disputes.
