CCAJAR says proposed coal mine “would condemn La Guajira to remain a sacrifice zone”

Published by Brent Patterson on

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The José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CCAJAR) has issued this statement in opposition to a proposed new open-pit coal mine in an Afro-Guajira community that would compromise the Cañaverales spring.

CCAJAR explains:

The Ministry of the Interior and the Best Coal Company, a subsidiary of the Turkish multinational group Yilmaden, reached an agreement to skip the right to prior consultation of the Ancestral Community Council los Negros de Cañaverales, to advance in the endorsement of a coal mega-mining project.

The project would irretrievably compromise the Cañaverales spring, a unique body of water found in the south of La Guajira, aggravating the humanitarian situation of a department in which they continue to die of hunger and thirst.

On July 19, 2022, a day before the inauguration of the new Congress of the Republic, the Best Coal Company and the Ministry of the Interior signed a document, in which they grant the endorsement to a new coal mine that intends to be installed between Fonseca and San Juan del Cesar (La Guajira).

The agreements reached by the Ministry of the Interior without a consultative process and absence of scientific certainty about the damages that this mining project will generate, will allow the Best Coal Company to implement a coal exploitation and export complex projected until 2056 that would condemn La Guajira to remain a sacrifice zone.

The full statement can be read at ¿Una nueva mina de carbón en La Guajira en tiempos de descarbonización?

The Peace Brigades International-Colombia Project has accompanied CCAJAR since 1995.


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