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Report puts figures on mining damage throughout the country

la prensa

The Cerro Petaquilla mine in the Colón province.

The figures simply don't gel. The $250,000 Petaquilla Gold has allocated for its closure plan for the Cerro Petaquilla mine in the Donoso district of Colón raises doubts as to whether it will be sufficient to restore the ecosystem damaged by the company's activities there.

That was one of the questions raised in The Nature Conservancy report analyzing the economic and distributional impacts of mining activities in Panama.

The report's findings were not encouraging. 

"Taking into account the environmental impacts (loss of vegetation, affected water quality and disturbances to aquatic habitats) the loss is calculated at $52.8 million for mining projects throughout the country," concluded Eduardo Cedeño, who conducted the study for The Nature Conservancy.

The report questioned the concession signed in 1997 during the Ernesto Pérez Balladares administration, in which the country relinquished part of its natural heritage and gave a series of incentives and exemptions to the company totaling $12.5 million. Under the terms of the contract, Petaquilla Gold could extract 100 hectares of mature forest, and were given 13,000 hectares to mine for metallic minerals, including gold and copper. 
 

Vice Minister of Commerce and Industry Ricardo Quijano, however, pointed out that the report failed to mention how the company's presence benefited communities near the mine in terms of public infrastructure built in the area. 

Carlos Salazar, spokesman for Petaquilla Gold, denied knowledge of the report, but acknowledged that there has been a lot of "untruths" being rumored about the project, citing reports that cyanide has been detected in the Molejón River. In his view, cyanide is a naturally occuring chemical found in rivers.

Raisa Banfield, director of the Center for Environmental Advocacy, said that while the research is a step in the search for environmental economic valuation, The Nature Conservancy's report fell short of its goal because it was based solely on information from the country's environmental impact studies.