Jul 21 2009
Corporation Fights El Salvador Under CAFTA for Right to Pollute
President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador has refused to issue a permit to a Canadian company seeking to mine gold on the grounds of environmental pollution. In response, the Pacific Rim Mining Corporation is suing the Central American nation for $100 million dollars claiming that it is in violation of CAFTA’s nondiscrimination provision. The Central America Free Trade Agreement, which binds countries like El Salvador to the US’s rules of free trade, is being invoked on the grounds that allowing domestic companies the privilege to pollute El Salvador puts international companies like Pacific Rim at a market disadvantage. Because of the use of cyanide-laced water to extract the precious metal from subterranean rock, gold mining results in soil and ground contamination, which, experts contend, eventually finds its way down into the drinking water of El Salvador. The National Working Group against Mining in El Salvador, or MESA, has led the fight against banning metal-mining. This popular organization has brought the issue into the consciousness of ordinary Salvadorians and has found an ally in the Catholic Church. The Church recently released a statement against mining saying that “No material advantage can be compared with the value of human life.”
GUEST: Claudia Rodriguez, Advocacy Director of the SHARE Foundation.
For more information visit www.share-elsalvador.org. Read an article about the mining story here: http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6273
One Response to “Corporation Fights El Salvador Under CAFTA for Right to Pollute”
As long as clean water is provided by Pacific Rim Mining Corporation their should be no worries in the community. Plans should be implemented, however, to endure that clean water is always available long after the mining operations have ceased.