Article authors:
Reuters
Kimberly Brown, Thomson Reuters Foundation
* Demand for nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper is skyrocketing
* Mining rights are indigenous Covers 60% of the Sure region of
* Indigenous communities push back in protests and litigation
by Kimberly Brown
MAIKIUANTS, Ecuador, June 24th (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Brightly colored Cibabas rocks A branch rubs the sides as you follow a narrow dirt road across the Cordigera del Condor Mountains in southern Ecuador's Amazon.
Approximately 150 km (93 miles) along the border with Peru, the region is a rare species, and Ecuador and its neighbors are half a century old until the 1998 border agreement. I had a fight.
Today, the region is plagued by another type of conflict. Indigenous Sures are fighting to protect their lands, forests and rivers from the creeping expanse of Ecuador's mining industry.
Since 2019, Maikiuants, a community of about 50 Shuar families, is ahttps://news.trust.org/item/20201210124816-if8rpの試みを阻止しようと試みてきました。 Shuar community by Canadian mining company Solaris Resources.
The company has already built a base camp and has begun exploration activities.
"These industries are exactly the same industries that are destroying the world with their activities," said Shuar Arutam People's president, a prominent voice against mining. Josefina Tunki says. (PSHA).
Her organization represents about 10,000 indigenous Shuars in the region, including the Maikiuants community.
Many of the Warints support the work created by mining projects, but Maikiuants and the other Shuar communities are categorically opposed to this.
"Here are waterfalls, rivers, medicines. Here is meat. For us (mining) is not development. For us, forests are life and markets," Tunki said. Told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Industry experts say minerals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper used in the manufacture of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbine systems and batterieshttps://news.trust.org/item/20210608125037-zd7ksの急増する需要に応えるために、持続可能な鉱業の必要性が高まっていると述べています。世界が地球温暖化を遅らせるために再生可能エネルギーに移行しようとしているので。
"Energy conversion is impossible without (again) talking about how to significantly raise the level of mining activity to produce the metals needed for energy conversion. Head of the Ecuadorian Mining Council. Nathan Monash said.
But as the global mineral thirst digs into the Amazon, mining projects say the climate change group is the best caretaker of the world's largest tropical rainforest. Swallowing the land of the indigenous community, sayshttps://news.trust.org/item/20170321212913-bffv3。気候変動。
More than 60% of the ancestral Hivalo territory of 230,000 hectares (568,000 acres) is covered by mining rights, international human rights Carlos Mazabanda, Country Coordinator of the organization Hivos, said:
In most cases, companies and governments need to do so under both Ecuadorian constitutions and international law. He said the community was not consulted before the territory was sold for mining purposes ..
Tunki said Solaris had the approval of the Warints community before starting the project. However, neither the company nor the Ecuadorian government consulted with other local communities or PSHA.
Solaris has its websitehttps://www.solarisresources.com/sustainability/community-and-stakeholder-engageで、運営するすべてのコミュニティとの「オープンで、敬意を払い、積極的かつ生産的な関係を構築および維持することを常に最重要視している」と述べています。
First After agreeing to the interview, the company did not respond to some follow-up emails.
"Brutal" deforestation
The Ecuadorian government builds a national mining sector However, we are committed to reducing our financial reliance on crude oil exports. Mining Revenues $ 40 Billion Over the Next 10 Yearshttps://news.trust.org/item/20201210124816-if8rpを生み出す可能性があると推定しています。
In August 2021, Ecuadorian President Guiller Morasso passed a decree outlining the new mining policy. He cracks down on illegal mining and makes it easier for foreign investors to buy concessions, while emphasizing that domestic mining activity needs to be sustainable and responsible.
However, his plans have sparked a backlash from environmental activists and indigenous communities that the industry has already caused irreversible social and environmental damage.
According to the Global Forest Watch, two Amazon states, Morona-Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe, including Cordigela del Condor, have lost more than 44,000 hectares (108,000 acres) of forest in the past. rice field. 20 years.
Jorge Brito, a biologist at the National Institute of Biodiversity in Ecuador, said that most of the tree loss was due to legal and illegal mining as well as illegal logging. Said.
"The first thing (the mining company) does is to open the road for better access. That's when the impact begins," he said, calling the result "brutal." called.
Proponents of Lasso's plan to grow Ecuador's mining industry say that potential benefits (employment and a stronger economy) outweigh environmental and social costs.
The Mining Council Monash is the country's first two large mines in Samora Chinchipehttps://news.trust.org/item/20120321222100-x1r8y,を指摘し、すでに貧困レベルを削減し、一部の地域で平均所得を2倍にしたと述べました。州–トムソンロイター財団が確認できなかった主張。
But some locals say These mines say they stand as an example of the devastation that the industry can cause.
Human rights groups have forced more than 30 Shuar families out since the development of the vast Mirador copper, gold and silver mines owned by Ecuadorian and Chinese companies Ecuacorriente began in the mid-2000s. I blamed the project. The community of San Marcos.
Carlos Kahamalka, a Shur farmer living in Januakim, about a kilometer upstream from the mine, said four adult children were expelled from San Marcos by the military in 2014.
He said the mine also polluted the water supply in the area.
People bathing in local rivers develop rashes and lesions on their skin. His small crops, yucca, plantain and other fruits, are not as produced as they were before the mine opened.
"Pollution is everywhere in plants, people and animals," he said.
Ecuador and the Ecuadorian Ministry of Energy and Mines did not respond to some interview requests.
Protests and Road Blockings
Indigenous communities around Ecuador are expanding their mining industry through efforts to develop economic alternatives such as protests, proceedings, and strengthening tourism. I am against it.
Over the last five years, they have several major mining projectshttps://news.trust.org/item/20181105155750-iruzhを停止することに成功し、1月に憲法裁判所は、採掘事業は、プロジェクトの影響を受けるすべての先住民コミュニティからの同意を求める必要があると裁定しました。いくつか選択してください。
Last year, Maikiuants strengthened their unarmed Self-Defense Forces. And blocked miners using the roads in the community. This is the only way to get to the Warinz facility. ..
Currently, helicopters fly through the area several times a day, carrying people and supplies by air from the city of Macas to mining camps.
Maikiuants resident Victoria Tseremp said the fight is essential to save her community and the surrounding nature from the growth of the land-hungry mining industry in Ecuador.
For her, her work and money promises are not enough to justify the destruction of nature that occurs when the mine comes in.
"We have everything we need to eat," Tseremp said from her kitchen when she stripped off the chakras, or plantains she chose from community plots. "You don't need money to eat here." Original issue date:https://news.trust.org/item/20220623162631-7v1p8/（キンバリー・ブラウンによる報告、ジュマナ・ファロウキーとローリー・ゲーリングによる編集。トムソン・ロイターの慈善団体であるトムソン・ロイター財団の功績を称えてください。http://news.trust.org/climate)