Barrick Gold Abandons Mining Project in Argentina

Barrick Gold Abandons Mining Project in Argentina



March 2007 - Canadian mining 
company Barrick Gold announced earlier this month that it will 
abandon a controversial gold mining project it planned in 
Famatina, a town situated in a quiet Andean enclave of La 
Rioja Province. The announcement came hours after the House of 
Representatives of the Provincial Legislature, led by 
anti-mining Vice Governor Luis Beder Herrera, voted to ban 
open air mining using cyanide in all of the province. 
Local stakeholders, united in a Citizen's Assembly against the 
Barrick Gold venture celebrated the news. Immediately 
following the voting of the law Friday morning, the assembly 
marched to the site and closed off the entry to Barrick 
demanding they immediately remove their equipment and go home. 

Gold can be found in the mountains of Famatina, La Rioja 
province. 
Tense negotiations ensued between stakeholders and Barrick 
representatives, who could not exit or enter the mining camp 
due to stakeholder roadblocks at the site. 
They reached a tentative agreement in which Barrick would 
remove its equipment in seven days, as opposed to the 60 days 
requested by the company. Twenty Barrick employees are now 
working on dismantling machinery. 
Herrera, who controls the majority in the House of 
Representatives of the provincial legislature, is from 
Chilecito, La Rioja's second largest city, and home to the 
Mexicana Gold Mine at the Famatina site. 
Herrera is in a tight race for the governor's chair to be 
decided in upcoming October elections. 
Mirroring other governors who have chosen environmental 
protection platforms to underpin political campaigns, he chose 
his stance on environmental protection to distance himself 
from former Governor Angel Maza, who is said to be a 
stakeholder in the Barrick Gold investment. Maza was suspended 
March 14 by the provincial legislature, and Herrera is now 
interim governor. 
Herrera led the legislative ban on open air mining in the 
province, a law which calls for a local referendum in June or 
July to support or reject the legislative decision. 

La Rioja Interim Governor Luis Beder Herrera 
Barrick seems not to want to wait for a public vote and has 
packed its bags. Government sources say that the province 
expects legal action from Barrick for losses. 
Then Governor Maza announced that he intended to veto the law. 
However, a veto would only be a last cry before defeat as he 
does not have the two-thirds legislative majority to avoid a 
congressional override of his veto, which is likely 
particularly considering that the law received unanimous 
support, even from his own party. 
All of his party representatives in the Legislature are from 
Chilecito, where Barrick's proposed gold mining project is 
sited. 
Other Argentine provinces and mining ventures, including in 
San Juan, Tucuman, and Catamarca provinces, are following 
events in La Rioja closely, as they too have seen local 
communities rise to oppose equally worrisome mining ventures 
using outdated and contaminating techniques to extract 
precious minerals. 
The Barrick pullout from Famatina comes on the heels of 
growing concern in Argentina over serious environmental 
problems around the country, including controversial pulp 
mills going up on the Uruguayan border, contamination from 
existing pulp and paper mills, polluting industrial tannery 
operations, open air garbage sites, petrochemical spills, and 
contaminated rivers and lakes. 
"Environmental democracy," grounded on popular opinion and 
expression of what local communities want and don't want 
relative to their environment is emerging in Argentina with a 
strong zeal and with clear implications for Argentina's 
environmental future. 
The creation of Citizens' Assemblies is appearing as a 
recurring method to promote democratic environmental social 
movements, such as the Gualeguaychu Assembly against the 
Botnia pulp mill on the Argentine-Uruguayan border. 
Environmental social movements in Santa Fe on water 
privatization, in Esquel on gold mining, and now in Famatina 
again on mining, have made important recent contributions to 
forming new environmental public policy. 
A new environmental era is opening up for Argentina, heralded 
by Environment Minister Romina Picolotti, last year's winner 
of the worldly recognized environmental Sophie Prize - a sort 
of nobel prize for environmental advocates given in Norway by 
private philanthropist and author Jostein Gaarder. 
Environment Minister Romina Picolotti was an environmental 
attorney and human rights activist before she took over the 
ministry. 
Picolotti was the lead advocate on the Uruguayan pulp mill 
case and has made unprecedented global progress in linking the 
human rights and environmental agendas. 
At an EU-Latin American convening of presidents, held in 
Vienna last year, President Nestor Kirchner surprised 
Argentine environmentalists and the world with an inspiring 
environmental speech calling for an end to the export of 
contaminating industries from industrialized to developing 
countries. 
The president then held a political rally in Gualeguaychu - 
the city opposing the Finnish and Spanish pulp mills to be 
built across the river - bringing the country's governors 
together to focus on environmental protection. 
President Kirchner upgraded Argentina's Environmental 
Secretariat, quadrupled its budget and canned the Environment 
Secretary. 

President Nestor Kirchner 
Soon afterwards, and against all political expectations, he 
named Picolotti to head the newly created Environmental 
Ministry. He entrusted her with cleaning up the Riachuelo, a 
river that runs through the capital Buenos Aires that is 
probably one of Latin America's worst environmental disasters. 

In an effort to rein in mining projects which do not meet 
basic social and environmental safety standards, in her first 
week as minister, Picolotti expressed concern publicly about 
irresponsible mining in Argentina. Mining companies like 
Barrick went on alert. 
She then opened negotiations with Argentina's most advanced 
mining provinces, paving the road for greater federal presence 
and greater federal oversight of mining projects, which under 
Argentine law, are in provincial control. Before that, there 
was little the federal environment authority could do to steer 
mining policy and projects towards more sustainable solutions. 

In exchange for environmental technical and financial 
assistance and investments, and through such agreements, 
Picolotti is bringing environment policy to the mining sector. 

Picolotti recently signed a cooperative mining agreement with 
Governor Maza of La Rioja Province. Such agreements are 
helping get the federal environmental authority a foot in the 
door into mining, where before it was systematically left out 
of mining operations. 

Jorge Daniel Taillant is executive director and president of 
Centro de Derechos Humanos y Ambiente, the Center for Human 
Rights and Environment 
Companies and mining interests alike are concerned about 
greater environmental controls over mining. Articles in local 
and national media, as well as privately financed ads, are 
appearing criticizing the gradual greening of mining policy 
and operations. 
Nevertheless, other provinces are in line to sign their own 
agreements with Picolotti, including San Juan Province, where 
Barrick is hoping to exploit the controversial Pascua Lama 
project. Yet another key political agreement will be signed 
between the Environment Ministry and the Mining Ministry to 
set the future for more sustainable mining in Argentina. 
{Jorge Daniel Taillant is executive director and president of 
Centro de Derechos Humanos y Ambiente, CEDHA, the Center for 
Human Rights and Environment, based in Cordoba, Argentina. 
http://www.cedha.org.ar/en. Contact him at: 
jdtaillant@cedha.org.ar} 





 

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