By Carmen Segovia Fernandez
“Nobody does anything for us. We are dying from mercury, malaria, and dengue. We are screwed” laments Tomás, a skipper who moves people and cargo up and down the Quito River. This river, along which Tomás and his community live, is located in the Chocó department of Colombia and controlled by the Autodefensas Gaitanistas of Colombia (AGC), a guerrilla group whose main interest is mining for gold. Tomás further narrates that living under armed group control means constant exposure to violence, as the AGC often enters into confrontation with other armed groups like the Ejercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN), subjecting him and his community to confinement, displacement, and even death. Tomás also recounts that while living under armed group control, the only way to survive and make a living is by mining for the AGC or paying them for access to mining sites. On top of its social consequences, illegal mining has also slowly ravaged ecosystems in El Chocó. Riverbanks have been dug up by dredges in search of precious minerals, and waterways are heavily polluted with mercury. Unfortunately, Tomás is not the exception but the rule in most of the Colombian territory, where illegal mining, corruption and weak state control thrive.
While Columbia’s guerilla activity was previously mainly centered on cocaine production and weapon trafficking, a rise in the price of gold at the end of the 1990s prompted armed groups to shift their focus to illegal mining, and profit from the country’s abundance in precious minerals. This generated a mining boom in the early 2000s, which still runs unchallenged to this day.
The business model works in a simple chain. First comes finance and equipment: leaders working from urban centres oversee all operations, buy machinery and keep “facilitators” who are usually state officials under their payroll, and who ensure that law enforcement keeps at bay from this business. Then comes the production stage: here, armed groups rule with an iron fist, which translates to violence being their main law enforcement mechanism. Moreover, since most groups control the territories where they mine, they acquire gold by making small scale miners pay a gold tax on everything needed to mine like machinery, fuel, mercury as well as access to mining areas themselves. Indigenous peoples who are already economically deprived communities are forced to work in these mining operations with dangerous conditions and little pay, as they have no other alternative way of subsistence. Finally, comes the laundering and export stage: after being transported from the place of production, the illegally extracted gold ends up in the hands of legal businesses who export it internationally, using fake extraction companies to legitimize its origins. Put together, this chain makes illegal mining a high profit, low risk enterprise for those in charge.
Where is the state?
For many decades, the Colombian government has struggled to keep a grip on territorial control. Today, 9 years after signing a peace agreement with the Fuerzas Armadas Revlucionarias de Colombia (FARC) – the most prominent armed group of the country – the situation has still not improved. After the FARC ceased its criminal activities, the government did not step into the territories this group controlled. Instead, other guerillas like the ELN, FARC dissidences and El Clan de Golfo have taken over these territories and are now pushing to expand their domination further.
Corruption is another one of the main factors that enables environmental crimes like illegal mining. As explained before, the production chain upon which illegal mining relies needs facilitators to make everything run smoothly. These individuals are generally untraceable but have the power to hinder environmental protection policies. For example, in Colombia, the very organisms that are charged with managing and protecting natural resources, the Corporaciones Autonomas Regionales para el Desarrollo Sostenible (CAR), have been repeatedly investigated for corruption. In 2018 alone, 256 active investigations were made against the CAR. These institutions are often infiltrated by political and economic elites who have vested interests in the long-term exploitation of the country’s natural resources like gold. These “facilitators” are then able to challenge laws that guarantee environmental protection, as well as gridlock mechanisms that are meant to hinder corruption within CARs.
Since legal mechanisms have had limited success, the government has opted for military solutions by deploying military personnel in various high criminality zones of the country. These operations have yet to make a significant arrest. The military’s strategy most often relies on targeting the lowest ranking workers within the guerilla chain of command or capturing discarded mining vessels, none of which tackle the actual actors who are pulling the strings of the operation.
Overall, the Colombian government has been unable to effectively manage the issue of illegal mining across the country, and the ones carrying the heaviest burden of this are all too often the communities who are the most vulnerable.
Social and environmental consequences
The illegal mining business comes with detrimental social and environmental consequences which are slowly degrading Colombia from different angles. Socially, this business has stripped communities of their most basic rights. Armed groups rule with violence and continually threaten, displace, confine and even sexually abuse people already living in terrible conditions, given the lack of governmental investment and support. For instance, those forced to work for criminal networks are subjected to the most precarious of working conditions: 12h work days, little to no pay, security hazards and even child labour. All of this goes unchallenged since there is no organism in the country that is able to battle these armed groups nor help these communities.
Environmentally, the situation is no different, illegal mining activities are not regulated, allowing its operators to ravage the Colombian landscape with impunity. The most pressing issue is mercury contamination of Colombian waterways. This highly toxic chemical is routinely dumped into rivers after being used for gold extraction, which then makes its way into the food chain by bioaccumulating in fish, an essential food resource for locals. Riverbanks are also being ravaged not only causing sedimentation in rivers but also causing erosion and thus increasing the risk of flooding of riverside towns. Lastly, with illegal mining also comes exacerbated deforestation. As mentioned previously, illegal mining can take many forms, and although the most prominent one is in rivers, other types like alluvial gold mining require the clearing of forest areas for mining exploitation. All of these activities are slowly killing Colombia’s most valuable asset: its abundant flora and fauna.
Illegal mining is destroying Colombia by deeply and irrevocably damaging its social and environmental fabric. Action must be taken immediately and from all different angles. On one hand, there is work to be done with the local communities directly affected by illegal mining activities. By creating a dialogue with them, it would be possible to better understand their situation and provide them with alternative ways of subsistence, as means of avoiding their involvement with criminal organisations. Additionally this relationship could also lead to better understanding of the specific actors behind illegal mining. On the other hand, anit-coruption measures should be stregthend as means of controlling “facilitators”, since they play such a key role when it comes to the success of the illegal mining business.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own, and may not reflect the opinions of The St Andrews Economist
Image credits: InfoAmazoia – The separation of gold from other river sediments during the extraction process.