AVATAR in Colombia Deepening dependency on mining http://alainet.org/active/45186&lang=es

Díaz pointed to a 2001 reform to the Mining Code that loosened environmental regulations by scrapping approval for exploration, and changed land ownership requirements, in favor of large companies, with requirements such as large-scale infrastructure and heavy machinery “that only multinational companies could fulfill,” cutting out many small-scale miners.Heavy metals, heavy impact  Mining may generate billions in profits, but that “does not make up for the environmental and social and many other costs that are difficult to calculate,” said Juan Mayr, Colombia’s former environment minister and a current advisor for the United Nations Development Program. “They are extracting non renewable natural resources, causing a great impact on Colombians’ collective patrimony. They grant mining titles without any kind of oversight, any kind of qualification. It’s a system plagued with a lack of vision and [with] irregularities.”

Transnational mining companies have 43,000 square kilometers of concessions. South African miner Anglo Gold Ashanti has a concession of 6,900 square kilometers in its gold projects Gramalote in Antioquia and La Colosa in Tolima with important political and economic impact that explains the numerous social conflicts, says Sen. Jorge Robledo, of the opposition Alternative Democratic Pole. “The population is paying and will continue to pay a high price,” said indigenous Sen. Marco Avirama. “In the process of mining exploration and exploitation, because of the machinery, vehicles and technology used, the soil stability and the fauna, flora and water is strongly affected, wiping out the local ecosystem with no possibility of its recovery.”

Avirama pointed to the large amounts of water needed to extract gold and the use of cyanide and mercury that eventually contaminates local rivers.According to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, Colombia’s gold mining industry has made the country home to the largest mercury contamination on earth. Measurements taken by the agency last year in Segovia, in the northwestern Antioquia department a mineral rich zone, found 10 to 20 times greater the 10,000 nanograms per cubic meter considered safe by the World Health Organization. Water resources are also at severe risk.Eviction and displacement This influx of wealth attracts illegal armed groups, which position themselves near the projects to extort or sometimes putting themselves at the service of the transnational companies.“A dispossession of land is being consolidated, as well as foreign investment, especially in mining and palm oil, that is tied to forced displacement,” said Jorge Rojas, director of the non governmental Human Rights and Displacement Consultancy. He said that nearly one-third of the 280,000 people displaced in Colombia in 2010 came from areas where these two industries were present.