We want the #CourtToSupportTheCommunitiesOfLaGuajira (#CorteRespaldeAComunidadesDeLaGuajira).
In 2016 the Constitutional Court ordered different public entities to elaborate a scientific and sociological investigation to evaluate the impact of mining activity on the country’s ecosystems.
Not only did the government not guarantee the participation of local communities and ethnic peoples who have directly suffered the impacts of mining in their territories, but the environmental directors of the multinational companies Drummond and Carbones del Cerrejón were selected as “experts” from the group of experts who participated in this study. In other words, the companies are being judge and jury.
This occurs due to the great power they have over governments, which makes them practically owners of the State. This is known as corporate capture, and generates serious conflicts of interest in decision-making and policies that should be aimed at protecting the rights of communities and nature.
In this case, for example, the studies in which the company participates concluded that the mining project does not cause a significant conflict over the region’s water!!!! According to the chapters made by the multinationals on La Guajira, the coal exploitation during 40 decades has not caused any damage to the region’s water. Could this be true? Would a study without their participation have reached the same conclusions?
From the leadership of the Wayuu communities of southern Guajira, together with the social organizations Cajar and Terrae, we filed a tutela action that we lost in the first and second instance, under arguments of the judges such as that it was “useless” to issue orders in this regard or that this undue corporate interference “is nothing more than a hypothesis that does not have any evidence that leads to the conviction that it has occurred”.
The tutela seeks that the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, the Ministry of the Interior, the National Natural Parks Unit, the Alexander Von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute, the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the National Mining Agency, the National Environmental Licensing Authority, and the Regional Autonomous Corporation of La Guajira, redo the studies so that they are impartial and have sufficient scientific evidence on the impacts of open-pit coal mining that for years has been affecting the environment and the health of the communities neighboring the El Cerrejón mine.
We also seek that the Court order the environmental authorities that the updating of the public policy to control air and water pollution from coal mining be done with the participation of the affected communities, organizations and academic entities that have carried out serious studies with scientific support.
And no more closed-door meetings like the one held in December 2020, where the coal companies and the government agreed to update this policy!
Sign the petition here (Original language: Spanish)
