One of the most prominent casualties of Canada's entry into the Colombian mining sector has been a priest named Jose Reynal-Restrepo. Last September, Rev. Reynal-Restrepo was gunned down by unknown assailants outside the tiny Colombian mining hamlet of Marmato. The 500-year-old UNESCO world heritage site had been slated for exploration, and the local activist was vociferous in his opposition—despite repeated threats against his life.

The ore value beneath Marmato is estimated at $10 billion; production is expected to begin in 2015. Representatives of the company in question, Gran Colombia Gold, have denied any ties with militias.

According to international observers, such violence is not isolated and shares a common trait. "We're seeing increased attacks against leaders whose lands have been taken from them," said Jennifer Moore, the Latin American Coordinator for Mining Watch Canada, a public interest group.

"Marmato is a kind of prototype and should not be developed in this fashion," Jorge Robledo, an opposition senator and critic of Bogota's approach to Canadian mining investment told The Toronto Globe and Mail. "This is a situation of a sort that is triggering intense conflict and violence throughout the country."

Devil in the details

Despite the massive infusion of investment, most mining growth has come from a few large companies. To ease a bottleneck, Bogota has since dismissed some 20,000 other permit applications. Regardless, NGOs say new permits will likely trigger conflicts for people resisting relocation by foreign mining companies, or those seeking to return to their old communities after decades of civil unrest.

Even Colombian officials have voiced concerns publicly. Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo cautioned that careless issuance of permits could deny peasant families access to 24.7 million hectares of unused agricultural land—equaling 80 percent of the rural countryside.

The implementation of a 1994 law barring civilian land re-distribution within 5 kilometers of a mine, he added, will worsen the equation—possibly pitting millions of peasants against mining companies. "If this continues," Restrepo said, "the social crisis in the rural sector will be unmanageable."

Communities have frequently mobilized—through protests and legal action—against mining companies over environmental threats. In October, thousands marched against AngloGold Ashanti's La Colosa gold project in central Colombia. Its permit was suspended for environmental reasons three years ago and partly reinstated later.

In June, 40 civil society groups filed a complaint against the World Bank's $11.79 million investment in Eco Oro Minerals (previously Greystar Resources, Inc.) for not conducting an environmental assessment on a wetland. The high-altitude Angostura project is cited as a threat to the fragile Santurban Paramo, a water source for 2.2 million people.

"You're already facilitating a lot of changes in land, to allow concessions in indigenous territories," said Carla Garcia Zendejas of the Due Process of Law Foundation, a non-profit Latin America advisory group in Washington. "Then you put the FARC in the mix and you take everything to a new level."

In 2011, a fact-finding mission representing 15 countries documented "numerous cases of mass detentions against those protesting mega projects such as mines," according to Mining Watch Canada.

And despite last year's Victims and Land Restitution Law—which sought to return millions of acres of land to displaced civilians, with compensation for human rights abuses—threats facing non-combatants are at crisis levels, say foreign observers.

"They have disastrous territorial planning in Colombia," added Patricia Vasquez of the U.S. Institute for Peace. "Unless they pay attention in terms of mining [permits], they could turn Colombia into another Sudan."

The road to nowhere

In January and February of this year alone, 5,500 Colombians were dislocated, reported the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Precise statistics are elusive, but at least 4 million people are believed to have been uprooted by internal conflict in recent decades—whether by paramilitaries, the FARC or security forces. Social Action, a state agency, has recorded 3.7 million; Colombian NGO COHDES says, between 1985 and 2011, 5.3 million have been forcibly displaced.

One survey by the non-profit Washington Office on Latin America offers dismal assessments for Afro-Colombians near the Panamanian border where the government had previously granted 236 mining licenses—with 1,868 applications pending. Both ignored by the government and menaced by armed groups, community members face a "high risk of displacement due to the activity of illegal armed groups" and "violence related to mining," said the report, issued in March.

"In these areas, confinement and displacement are commonplace. Anti-personnel mines are another major concern," the study added. "Civilians' activities are restricted, food products are controlled and residents are extorted, illegal groups commit abuses against civilians, forcibly recruit youth and sexually exploit women and minors, [resulting] in an increase in prostitution as well as social and cultural disintegration."

After large-scale cocaine eradication by government forces with U.S. military aid, many rural people have turned to what they see as their only other source of income. Some do it legally, while others have taken a different route.

Pitfalls of illegal mining

Colombia's illicit mining industry—with some 6,000 sites nationwide—is fueling a substantial part of the conflict. It's acknowledged at the highest levels of government. "This criminal practice has generated pressures and extortions for illegal miners, while polluting the environment," said Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in February, calling it a "cancer."

Across Colombia, according to U.N. statistics, wildcat miners using liquid mercury to separate gold from soil and river sediment make the Andean nation the world's greatest per-capita emitter of the man-made pollutant—at 130 tons annually—second only to fossil fuels.

In all, said Biodiversity Minister Sandra Bessudo, it would take $10.8 billion –and anywhere from 25 to 40 years—to repair the damage caused by deforestation and poisonous contamination from small mines.

Among these 30,000 miners across the countryside, many see few alternatives. "It's now much harder to grow coca because of eradication, so what are my options?" one miner told The New York Times recently.

Massive money laundering has surfaced. Curious numbers, in fact, portray a country exporting more gold than it produces. In 2010, for instance, the government recorded exports at 62.8 tons, surpassing production by 9 tons. But Colombian officials and the Canadian government insist mining investment, when implemented responsibly, will be a boon to the Colombian people, their economy and their local communities.

Complexities of responsible mining

Some cooperation exists between Bogota and Canada's Embassy to assist mining companies entering the Colombian market. But observers see today's situation as untenable. Licensing, environmental or community-driven problems—or armed protagonists—mean Canadian extractive companies are wading into a minefield, one wholly different from what they might expect.

Canadian government officials, for their part, are upbeat. "Canada continues to foster and promote sustainable development and responsible business practices in countries where Canadian mining countries operate," said Me'shel Gulliver Belanger, a spokeswoman of the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in a statement. "Canada expects Canadian firms operating abroad to respect all applicable laws and international standards."

Such programs include a "Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy" in which Canada donates money to companies mining abroad. To date, the government has funded $26.7 million for pilot projects in Colombia and other Latin American and African countries to reduce poverty.

Similarly, the Canadian International Development Agency and Natural Resources Canada have assisted Colombia and other Andean nations through capacity building via the extractive sector. Last year, the Ministry of International Development announced $20 million for an Andean Regional Initiative for Promoting Effective Corporate Social Responsibility.

The Colombian government appears to be making progress: Under 2010 reforms, CSR is now mandated in Colombia's mining code. And its entire licensing process is being overhauled, too—albeit through a mining ministry that has existed only since May 3.

Next year, under competitive bidding, Bogota will award 20 percent of its 7.4 million-acre "strategic zone" to companies based on criteria including proposed exploration spending and revenue sharing offers. In 2013, the government will also establish more exacting regulations for bidding and mining in sensitive areas, while cracking down on armed groups profiting from illegal mining.

Colombia is being proactive in other ways, too. In August, the Environment Ministry, The Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International—the largest environmental groups operating in Colombia—issued a "Manual for the Allocation of Compensation for Loss of Biodiversity." Four years in the making, it offers a methodology by which companies must compensate for environmental damage.

In June, meanwhile, Colombian officials denied Alabama-based Drummond and Glencore International—the country's biggest thermal coal producers—permission to expand their Prodeco site, because of pollution. Separate decisions for Drummond, Vale of Brazil and Goldman Sachs-owned Colombian National Resources are also delayed.

In terms of overall corporate responsibility, some success stories have emerged. BHP Billiton, Xstrata and Anglo American have run a coal mining complex hosting a 20-year rehabilitation program restoring thousands of acres of land with 140 native plant and tree species. In 2009, it earned an award from the Siembra Colombia Foundation and the British Embassy.

Though its project remains deeply unpopular, Gran Colombia Gold has invested $2 million in the Marmato community, including resettlement in new housing with running water, sewage and utilities. Many places in the region, the company notes, have none. Gran Colombia has invested a further $1 million in a new hospital and school ahead of more programs.

Canadian companies have a good reputation in terms of instilling principles of Corporate Social Responsibility. But in practice it's been mixed. With the January release of a report by its International Social Responsibility Committee, "While more work can be done, Canada has not been idle and has taken meaningful steps to advance corporate social responsibility," said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada.

NGOs like Mining Watch Canada remain skeptical. "Canadian companies are at a high risk of aggravating, causing or benefitting from serious human rights abuses," it said in another report, "ranging from dislocation of local populations, inadvertently rewarding groups who have committed human rights violations, imposing serious environmental impacts, especially on crucial water supplies, and imposing undue costs to livelihoods and economic and food security."

To date, Canadian companies have been allowed to report human rights abuses voluntarily. But with increased violence near Canadian-owned mines increasing worldwide, new legislation has been introduced into Parliament in the form of Bill C323, which would allow foreign complainants to take legal action against Canadian companies in Canadian courts.

It’s the second such effort in two years. "There are good companies out there; there are companies that act in a very socially responsible way," said MP Peter Julian, who introduced the bill before a gathering of Parliamentarians and activists in March. “But clearly there are some companies, some bad apples, that aren’t. And so you can’t simply function with a voluntary code when these abuses are taking place." (Part One)
By: Joseph Kirschke

About Joseph Kirschke
Joseph Kirschke is a communications consultant for the Extractive Sector and Corporate Social Responsibility.

He can be reached at joseph.kirschke@outlook.com.

The above article was also published on worldpress.org. Views and opinions / conclusion expressed herein are personal views of the author and not that of COALspot.com.