mining

Industry weighs profits against responsibility

LA PRENSA

Untouchable: Cerro Colorado in the province of Chiriquí is loaded with the world’s fifth largest reserves of copper.1025474

The global demand for metal, especially copper, may be good for Panama, since the country has the fifth largest reserves in the world. Studies indicate that Panama's Cerro Colorado holds roughly 100 million tons of the mineral.

"If the demand for copper keeps up, the world is going to demand the exploitation of Cerro Colorado," confirmed Zorel Morales, executive director of the Cámara Minera de Panamá. The benefits of copper mining are considerable and include jobs for people in some of the poorest areas of the country and income for the state, which collects 2 percent royalties from the mining industry.

However, mining may also harm Panama if its mineral wealth is not responsibly and sustainably managed.

Since yesterday, international experts in the development, regulation, and supervision of mining have been discussing models of responsible mining at a regional conference being held in Panama.

Assheton Carter, an environmental leadership expert and one of the conference participants said that mining companies must respect Panama's biodiversity and guarantee that they will not wipe out or do harm to species in danger of extinction.

Roberto Cuevas, president of the Cámara Minera de Panamá, seemed to want to assure Carter and others critical of mining when he pronounced that the industry in Panama depends absolutely on demonstrating to the entire society that it is "capable of the greatest excellence in the development of its activities."

Representatives from Petaquilla Minerals, which has for a while come under considerable fire for its gold-mining interests, noted that the "hot meal" program it developed benefits 101 schools in the province of Coclé. Petaquilla also claims to have reduced the school dropout rate from 75 percent to 12 percent in 2007.

Nonetheless, many environmentalists and residents of the communities affected by mining remain doubtful about both the long and short term benefits of the extraction industry. Throughout the world, mining has ravaged public lands, ruined the traditional homelands of indigenous people, contaminated rivers and other water sources, destroyed plants and animals, shattered tourism prospects and put the health of agricultural and cattle-ranching concerns at serious risk.