Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Mining expansion for gold (by Anglo Gold Ashanti and the Canadian company
Cosigo Resort) in the districts La Toma and Suárez, and possibly also in Buenos
Aires and Santander, is another serious problem that is mainly suffered by the Afro-
Colombian communities, whose rights are not respected by the mining corporations.
The affected populations are predominantly Afro-Colombians that have historically
been excluded from secure access to land and land tenure, and continue to be the ethnic
group most affected by (forced) displacement in Colombia (Rodríguez Garavito et al.
2009).
In 2009, Colombia's Constitutional Court mentioned three factors for these con-
flicts: structural exclusion of Afro-Colombians, expansion of agriculture and mining,
and lack of legal and institutional protection. The Constitutional Court drew special
attention to the situation of the Afro communities in the municipalities of Buenos Aires
and Suárez as emblematic cases. They are a clear example of conflict over territorial
rights, communities' loss of social and cultural control, the violation of their right
to Consultation with Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), and the absence of
registration of ancestral territories that even today remain unrecognized as collective
property.
It is important to emphasize that these processes of land-use change involving dif-
ferent natural resources are interrelated through their environmental and social effects
and harms. As explained earlier, these complex phenomena might not constitute crim-
inal offences per se, but they are fertile soil for green criminologists for various reasons
due to the clear and identifiable human induced social and environmental harms.
First, most of the processes that take place in the area studied are accompanied by
acts that involve clear criminal offences, some very serious. They include, for example,
assassinations or disappearances of, and physical violence and threats against com-
munity leaders, activists and anyone who opposes top-down plans by companies or
public authorities in the regions. Second, as typical forms of corporate crime, many
of these processes involve the violation of administrative and civil law - for example,
the systematic breach of labour, safety, environmental or business regulations. Finally,
although not considered crimes, most of these mechanisms imply gross human rights
violations, including ESC rights such as the rights to food, water and territory.
Examples of LAR activities in Colombia guided by a green criminological per-
spective include ethnographic fieldwork on access to justice for affected communities,
participatory action research reconstructing the social cartography of land-use change
in the Cauca Department, a study of the criminalization of environmental protest and
conflict, and a comparative study of corporate crime and harms by a transnational
gold mining company. Other LAR activities, such as the development of prior consul-
tation tools or the monitoring of state compliance with ESC and indigenous rights, are
guided by a human rights based approach.
6.6 THE BRAZILIANTAPAJÓS BASIN
In Brazil, the LAR project focuses on the Tapajós basin in the lower Amazon, an area
in the western part of the State of Pará, north Brazil. Land exploitation through mining
and agriculture is driving this state's economy. Pará is also the Brazilian state in the
Amazon that exports the most timber.
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