Project
Preserving the legacy of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Heart of the World
Rising abruptly from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta reaches 5,775 meters (18,946 ft.) at its highest points, the peaks of Bolívar and Colón. It is the highest coastal mountain system in the world, a place where indigenous knowledge and nature’s own wisdom converge.
The sheer changes in elevation create a wide variety of ecosystems within a small area, where the diversity of plant and animal life creates a unique exuberant region. The melting snows of the highest peaks form rivers and lakes, whose freshwater flows down steep slopes to the tropical sea at the base of the mountains.
The indigenous Arhuaco, Kogi, Wiwa, and Kankuamo people protect and care for this natural treasure with an authority they have inherited from their ancestors. According to their worldview the land is sacred and shared in divine communion between humans, animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and the spirts of their ancestors.
Despite this ancestral inheritance, development projects proposed for the region have failed to take the opinions of these indigenous groups into consideration. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is currently threatened by 251 mineral concessions, hydroelectric projects, agriculture, urban sprawl, and infrastructure projects.
Many of these concessions were granted without the prior consultation of the indigenous communities, which represents a persistent and systematic violation of their rights.
Mining, which implies the contamination and erosion of watersheds, threatens the health of more than 30 rivers that flow out of the Sierra; these are the water sources of the departments of Magdalena, César, and La Guajira.
These threats have brought this natural paradise to the brink of no return. With it, would go the traditional lives of its indigenous inhabitants, who are dependent on the health of their land and the sacred sites it contains.
The Sierra hosts the archaeological site of la Ciudad Perdida, the Lost City, known as Teyuna, the cradle of Tayrona civilization. According to tradition, it is the source from which all nature was born—the living heart of the world.
The four guardian cultures of the Sierra are uninterested in allowing this natural and cultural legacy to disappear.
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Doe Run Investment Holdings Company, Fluor Corporation and A.T. Massey Coal knew that lead pollution was harming children’s health. St. Louis, Missouri — Last Friday, the former owners of a lead smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri, were found liable for $320 million in punitive damages for negligently exposing 16 children and other residents living in the area to harmful lead pollution. “They obviously wanted to send a message: Don't choose profits over people,” said Mark Bronson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The jury awarded $320 million in punitive damages last Friday, July 29, against the Missouri-based Doe Run Investment Holdings Company, Texas-based Fluor Corporation and Virginia-based A.T. Massey Coal, corporations that owned the smelter prior to 1994. A day earlier, a civil judge had ruled that the three companies would have to pay $38.5 million to the families as compensation for health problems and lost lifetime earnings as a result of pollution that occurred between 1986 and 1994. It should be noted that according to court documents the current owner of the smelter, Doe Run Resources Corporation, had already reached a settlement with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed sum. This settlement covered the impacts of harmful pollution that occurred after 1994. DOE RUN PERU AND THE CASE OF LA OROYA Doe Run Resources Corporation is a subsidiary of Renco Holding Company, owned by Ira Rennert. After buying Doe Run Resources, Renco purchased the La Oroya Metallurgical Complex in 1997 and established another subsidiary, Doe Run Peru (DRP), to operate it. DRP has kept the La Oroya smelter idle since 2009, and is negotiating with the government to reopen it. AIDA and the SPDA have worked since 1997 to encourage the Peruvian government to hold DRP accountable for the pollution in La Oroya, which involves contaminants similar to those found in Herculaneum. The government demanded greater environmental controls at the metallurgical complex, which have not been fully implemented. This year, Renco Holdings began a process of international arbitration within the framework of the Trade Promotion Agreement between Peru and the U.S., arguing among other things that Peru has treated the company unjustly in requiring environmental improvements to the Complex. AIDA and the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH) have brought a case and a request for precautionary measures on behalf of residents in La Oroya affected by the pollution before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. "The amount of damages awarded by the US court indicates the severity of lead contamination, particularly in children, and reminds us once again of the magnitude of human rights violations that have taken place in Missouri and in La Oroya," said Astrid Puentes Riaño , Co-Executive Director of AIDA. "So we insist on greater protections in La Oroya to address the situation there." Ramón Rivero, with the Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental (SPDA), praised the jury’s verdict and believes that it should be a model for similar cases in other parts of the world. “Measures such as the verdict against Doe Run in the United States are corrective actions taken by a government that aim to justly compensate those affected for the harm they suffered. We have to ask ourselves if the measures taken by the Peruvian government to date, with regard to the harm caused by DRP in La Oroya, comprise such just compensation,” said Rivero. “We need to take steps to protect public health that go beyond measurements and controls and that affect the wellbeing of the residents of La Oroya. We also need to evaluate the possibility of increasing the amount of compensatory damages that have been awarded,” Rivero concluded.
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An article from Waterkeeper on the valuable ecosystems services provided by coastal mangrove swamps and the threats these face from developers.
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Groups submit arguments supporting government’s case for maintaining wildlife refuge. Panama City, Panama — Today, on International Mangrove Day, two civil society organizations announce their legal support for the government of Panama in a lawsuit brought by developers challenging the protected status of Panama Bay. The groups, the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) and the Centro de Incidencia Ambiental (CIAM), submitted legal briefs detailing national and international legal arguments for upholding environmental protections established by the government in 2009 through a resolution issued by the environmental authority in Panama. The developers who are contesting the law, Panama Bay Development and Compañia Lefevre, are seeking to open the area to development of vast tourism complexes. Extensive tourism in the area would bring devastating environmental impacts to the sensitive ecosystem. The Panama Bay coastline is ringed with miles of pristine mangroves, which provide critical breeding ground for species relied upon by Panama’s fishing industry. Each kilometer of mangrove-covered coastline generates about $100,000 USD for Panama annually. Mangroves also help protect Panama from the effects of global climate change by buffering the coast from increasingly powerful tropical storms and by storing carbon from the atmosphere in their roots. A mangrove forest can sequester 50 times more carbon than a tropical forest of the same size, making mangroves a conservation priority if countries wish to halt catastrophic climate change. The protected area of Panama Bay is roughly 211,000 acres, slightly larger than the land area of New York City. Panama Bay is one of the earth’s most biodiverse places and is an essential habitat for migratory birds and threatened species such as jaguars and loggerhead turtles. “In the face of ever more powerful and dangerous climate-change-driven tropical storms, destroying coastal mangroves is one of the worst things a country like Panama could do,” said Anna Cederstav, Ph.D., staff scientist and co-director of AIDA. According to Sandra Moguel, an attorney for AIDA in Mexico, “Article four of the Constitution of Panama requires the observance of the rules of international law throughout the territory of that country. Obligations under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance and the Convention on Biological Diversity, both of which have been ratified by Panama, should thus be taken into consideration in deciding the challenge against the natural protected area.” "The creation or declaration of a protected area does not constitute expropriation. What it does is protect and guarantee the right to a healthy environment contained in the Panamanian Constitution” said Maria Acuña, CIAM´s legal advisor.
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