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Breaking Ground From Extraction Booms To Mining Bans in Latin America Rose J Spalding 2 Full Chapter
Breaking Ground From Extraction Booms To Mining Bans in Latin America Rose J Spalding 2 Full Chapter
Series editors
Todd A. Eisenstadt,
American University, and Joanna I. Lewis, Georgetown University
R O SE J. SPA L D I N G
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
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Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197643150.001.0001
Acknowledgments ix
Acronym List xiii
References 245
Index 285
Acknowledgments
Costa Rica
El Salvador
Guatemala
Nicaragua
Other
During the 2010 inauguration ceremony for the newly reopened La Libertad
mine, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega recalled his father’s migration to
the town as a young man. Like many others before him, his father had come
seeking work in a nearby gold mine. Mine conditions of that era, Ortega
observed, were “tragic” (Ortega 2010). Death and disease were rampant;
poor living conditions took the lives of Ortega’s two older siblings. When his
revolutionary government came to power in 1979, it quickly nationalized the
mines, claiming that improvements would follow.
State control over mining did not last—mines were soon reprivatized fol-
lowing Ortega’s electoral defeat in 1990—but mining itself proved tenacious.
When the former revolutionary returned to power for a second time in 2007,
he became an avid booster of foreign mining investors. Seeking a new under-
standing with private capital, he pivoted to discursive support for mining,
now depicted as the solution to regional poverty. “What is our grand objec-
tive?” he asked rhetorically at the 2010 mine reopening. “Our grand objective
is to defeat poverty.” As soaring gold prices and favorable tax terms ensured
booming investments, mining reemerged as a major source of economic ac-
tivity in Nicaragua.
As Ortega was returning to his birthplace to inaugurate the reactivated
mine, newly elected president Laura Chinchilla was being sworn into office
across the border in Costa Rica. Her first act after taking the oath was to de-
cree a ban on new open pit mines (AFP 2010). With 2010 public opinion
polls indicating that 75% of the Costa Rican population opposed mining,
Chinchilla’s decree enjoyed sweeping national approval. Her executive de-
cision was reaffirmed a few months later in a unanimous vote of support by
the National Assembly. With that vote, Costa Rica became the first Latin
American country to legislate a national mining ban. As Nicaragua moved
to ramp up activity in the gold mining sector, Costa Rica was hard at work
closing it down.
These two scenarios, found in neighboring Central American countries,
underline the sharp divide in mining policies in the region. The present study
Breaking Ground. Rose J. Spalding, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197643150.003.0001
2 Breaking Ground
offers the first full analysis of this bifurcation. It shows how the prospect of
mining investment, and the resulting jobs and revenues that it brings, tends
to generate a significant base of support in resource-rich countries, par-
ticularly at the elite level. The extent to which public support consolidates
and to which pro-mining policies and practices persist, however, varies no-
tably from country to country. Outcomes depend on the kind of resistance
movements that emerge, and the obstacles and opportunities they encounter
along the way. My task is to map these interconnections and identify those
that lead toward divergent paths. Ultimately, this work raises questions about
the future of natural resource extraction in the region, and the prospects for
a mining U-turn.
Given the visible leadership of anti-mining activists in the push for policy
change, I start my story with a discussion of social movements. A large
body of research has emerged to interpret social movements, giving par-
ticular attention to their origins, alliance structures, and tactics (McAdam,
Tarrow, and Tilly 2001; Tarrow 2011; Almeida 2014; Arce and Rice 2019).
The connections between movements and their policy consequences (or lack
thereof), however, are less well documented and theorized (Bosi, Giugni,
and Uba 2016; Silva 2017). Social movement research generally finds that
mobilizations have identifiable political goals (Soule and King 2006; King,
Bentele, and Soule 2007; Amenta et al. 2010; McAdam and Boudet 2012;
Biggs and Andrews 2015; Silva, Akchurin, and Bebbington 2018; Arce and
Rice 2019) and that they are often at least partially successful in achieving
their objectives. How and why they have an impact remains a matter of dis-
pute. Given the significant role of social movements as an expression of col-
lective demands, and the frequency with which people employ mobilization
in search of substantive change, the circumstances under which popular
organizing becomes politically consequential should be better understood.
To advance this line of inquiry, movement theorists and policy specialists are
working to provide a better account of the sequences and interactive effects
that animate the movement-policy nexus, and to more accurately map causal
processes.
Documenting the connections between movements and policy is intrinsi-
cally challenging. The difficulties are in part due to the wide array of processes
and timelines involved in both mobilization and policymaking (McAdam
and Boudet 2012; Bosi, Giugni, and Uba 2016). As Silva (2017, 6) notes, “the
very characteristics that draw us to social movements—their passion, flu-
idity, malleability, precariousness, creativity, and contingent nature—make
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 3
1 The extent and direction of policy change varied by thematic area, with policies relating to do-
mestic and low-intensity issues being more responsive, and policies relating to high-intensity and
international issues being less so (Giugni 2004, 215–222). Amenta et al. (2010, 295) also found so-
cial movements to have weaker impacts on issues related to “the national cleavage structure,” in
cases when political and material stakes were high, in military affairs, and when public opinion was
unfavorable.
4 Breaking Ground
2 According to 2010 World Gold Council estimates, 50% of total aboveground stocks are found in
jewelry, 36% in private investments and official holdings, and 12% in “other fabrication,” with 2% un-
accounted for (see Bloomfield 2017, 7–8).
6 Breaking Ground
3 “Juniors” are small mining companies that focus on exploration activities and are typically
financed with risk capital. When they are successful, their assets are usually acquired by larger and
better-resourced “senior” mining corporations, which bring the mine into production.
4 New methods for dissolving and extracting thinly dispersed, microscopic gold deposits were
developed in the United States in the late 1970s and introduced in Latin America in 1994 by the
Newmont Mining Corporation at its Yanacocha cyanide heap leach gold mine in Northern Peru
(Bury and Bebbington 2013, 45–46). The process involves large-scale open pit mining in which
extracted materials are crushed, placed onto plastic liners, and exposed to a solution of cyanide,
which flows through the ore, dissolving the gold particles and carrying them to a processing facility
in which the gold is concentrated.
5 This definition of extractivism focuses on production processes involved in the commerciali-
zation of natural resources. The term “neo-extractivism,” which has come into wide academic use,
is understood here to highlight state roles in the extraction process and the use of the resulting re-
source rents to finance social programs (Gudynas 2018; Svampa 2019). These terms are sometimes
conflated.
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 7
A geological economics rule called Lasky’s law observes that as the mineral
grade declines arithmetically, the tonnage of ore extracted increases geomet-
rically (Studnicki-Gizbert 2017, 34). Trillions of tons of earth are processed
as concentrated deposits are depleted and ore grade declines, leaving be-
hind vast quantities of waste rock and tailings.6 The collapse of tailings dams,
as with the Brumadinho disaster in Brazil in January 2019, which released
9.7 million cubic meters of tailings and killed over 250 people, illustrates the
vulnerabilities of nearby communities.7 Even without catastrophic failures,
ecological systems are permanently disrupted as mining spreads across a
region.
As mining exploration and extraction grew in Latin America, an array
of social groups mobilized to challenge this advance. Supportive interna-
tional observers and allies developed databases to document the most visible
conflicts. Although constrained by data limitations due to their unofficial na-
ture and to the herding and clustering tendencies in NGO organizing and
media reporting, these collections provide an initial take on the patterns of
conflict.8 As of December 2021, the Observatorio de Conflictos Mineros
de América Latina (OCMAL) registered 284 mining conflicts involving
301 mines in twenty Latin American and Caribbean countries.9 While the
highest number of conflicts in that database occurred in Mexico (58), Chile
(49), and Peru (46), repeated and enduring mining protests were also reg-
istered in Argentina (28), Brazil (26), and Colombia (19).10 Thirty-five
conflicts occurred in Central America, including Panama, with the largest
concentration in Guatemala (10). Environmental threats served as a major
catalyst for protest activism across the region. In Central America, as Paul
Almeida (2015) concluded, “environmental harms appear to be creating
conditions for dozens of mass struggles throughout the region” (p. 106).
6 Tailings are what remains after the target mineral is extracted from rock compound, and include
trend rising since 1990, and at least 2,375 people killed as a result between 1961 and 2019.
8 The EJATLAS database (https://ejatlas.org/) included 2,836 environmental justice conflicts
around the world as of July 2019, 454 of them in the mineral ore extraction sector. This database
follows the “most significant” cases as determined by investment size, media attention, and activist
opinion (Temper et al. 2018, 580).
9 See https://mapa.conflictosmineros.net/ocmal_db-v2/, accessed December 7, 2021.
10 International databases tend to undercount conflicts. Peru’s Defensoría del Pueblo registered
117 socio-environmental conflicts in June 2019, 62% of them in the mining sector. See https://
www.defensoria.gob.pe/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Conflictos-Sociales-N%C2%B0-184-Junio-
2019.pdf.
8 Breaking Ground
The effort to trace and explain the growth of these conflicts has given rise
to a large and expanding body of literature.11 Although much of this work
focuses on experiences in countries where mining and hydrocarbon extrac-
tion have been traditional economic mainstays, analysis is expanding to
cover the conflicts erupting in newer mining territories, including in Central
America.
11 See, for example, Delgado-Ramos 2010; Bebbington and Bury 2013; Saade Hazin 2013; Arce
2014; Ponce and McClintock 2014; Dupuy 2014; Broad 2014; Dawson 2014; Veltmeyer and Petras
2014; Li 2015; de Castro, Hogenboom, and Baud 2016; Haslam and Heidrich 2016; Deonandan and
Dougherty 2016; McNeill and Vrtis 2017; Bebbington et al. 2018; Gustafsson 2018; Svampa 2019;
Eisenstadt and West 2019; Kröger 2020; Broad and Cavanagh 2021; Shapiro and McNeish 2021;
Jaskoski 2022; and Arce, Hendricks, and Polizzi 2022.
12 Reprimarization is the return to economic dependence on primary sector activities, including
mining, oil and gas, and resource-intensive forms of forest use and agricultural production.
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 9
16
14
12
Percent of GDP
10
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Figure 1.1 Natural resource rents as % of GDP (2014). Data from World
Development Indicators.
feature, however, captures only part of the mining story. Exploration activ-
ities and the identification of deposit locations respond to a wide range of
additional factors, some of them related to variation in public policies. Using
a ranking of the top twenty criteria for investment decisions reported by rep-
resentatives of forty junior and senior mining companies, Otto et al. (2006,
215–216) identified the key policy conditions favored by the industry. Their
ranking demonstrates investors’ strong commitment to profitability, asset
control, and policy stability, including security of tenure and stability of tax
liabilities and environmental rules.
The Fraser Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, Canada,
conducts an annual survey of mining company officials to assess their
views about desirable locations for mining investment. The Fraser metric
combines a Best Practices Mineral Potential Index, based on a country’s ge-
ologic attractiveness, with a Policy Perception Index, which registers the re-
action of mining managers to government policies. These scores feed into
an overall Investment Attractiveness Index, with totals calculated for each
country or province assessed. According to an in-house report on the 2018
survey results, policy factors like the taxation regime, regulatory burdens
10 Breaking Ground
During the heyday of the developmental state in the 1930s–1970s, state own-
ership of subsoil rights, mining nationalizations, and restrictions on foreign
ownership in the sector restrained private mining development. Privatization
and deregulation in the wake of the 1980s debt crisis sparked the return of
business interest. Many countries rewrote their mining laws in keeping with
recommendations from the World Bank (Sánchez Albavera, Ortiz, and Moussa
2001; Otto et al. 2006). Tax inducements and infrastructural supports helped to
increase the return on investment, and labor “flexibilization” permitted easier
layoffs and reassignments. Royalties in the mining sector were reduced and
remained low in spite of the spike in commodity profits during the boom years
(Haslam and Heidrich 2016, 6–11; Altomonte and Sánchez 2016, 186–194).
Even countries with a long history of mining restriction began opening
up the sector. In the 1990s, for example, Mexico approved a new mining
law (1992) that privatized state-owned mining companies, adopted a new
Foreign Investment Law (1993), and entered into the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) (1994), as neoliberal reforms interlaced and
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 11
13 Studnicki-Gizbert (2017, 33) described this reform as “essentially a repeat of the Porfiriato’s 1892
code,” albeit with modifications tailored to accommodate open pit chemical mining.
12 Breaking Ground
14 The IFC (2014b, 15) notes that there is no one approach to the concept but identifies two
definitions: “ongoing acceptance by the people who live and work in the area of impact and influence
of any given project,” and “improved risk management, as failure to gain and maintain SLO can lead
to conflict, delays, and additional costs associated with a project.”
15 Ernst and Young ranked problems with securing a social license as the fourth-largest business
risk faced by the mining industry (as cited in IFC 2014b, 15).
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 13
Resource Nationalism
previously underserved part of society. The political shift to the left in several
extraction-dependent countries in Latin America during the first decades
of the twenty-first century encouraged this revenue transfer and produced
a new line of defense for extractivism (Veltmeyer and Petras 2014; Haslam
and Heidrich 2016; Lewis 2016; Riofrancos 2020). With the ascendance of
“resource nationalism,” progressive governments in Argentina, Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Venezuela adopted new legislation that laid greater state
claim to subsoil resources. Common practices involved full or partial na-
tionalization of extractive resources, creation or expansion of state-owned
enterprises, the enactment of new taxes and fiscal obligations, and the es-
tablishment of institutions and regulatory agencies to manage the increased
resource inflows.
Bolivia’s Hydrocarbons Law #3058 (2005), Supreme Decree #28701
(2006), and Mining Law #3787 (2007) reestablished state ownership of
hydrocarbons resources and substantially increased revenues from the
natural gas and mining industries. The resulting increase in rents allowed
the government to fund new social programs and develop an array of con-
ditional cash transfers. Under Evo Morales, Bolivia established universal
cash transfer programs to support schoolchildren and their families (Bono
Juancito Pinto), new mothers and pregnant women (Bono Juana Azurduy),
and the elderly (Renta Dignidad), reaching around 30% of the population in
2014 (Vargas and Garriga 2015, 25). This alignment of extractive revenues
and social programs brought this wave of Latin America’s progressive
governments firmly into the pro-mining camp. Tax incentives designed to
promote mining investment continued or even increased under some “pink
tide” governments, as did openings to and partnerships with transnational
mining corporations (IGF 2019, 5–6).
Looking at this double thrust of neoliberal support for extractive sector
development and the enthusiasm for extraction found in post-neoliberal
regimes, Svampa (2019) describes a “commodities consensus,” which aligned
the traditional neoliberal governments in the region with those claiming
to embrace redistributive social change. In spite of political differences be-
tween the two, both endorsed an economic model based on the appropria-
tion of natural resources (mining, oil and gas, timber, fishing, and plantation
agriculture) using a top-down development approach. And both pursued
alliances with transnational capital and global markets in order to accelerate
economic growth.
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 15
For the large and growing number of communities that develop mining
resistance movements, reform proposals tend to cluster around two broad
policy nodes. The first favors restrictive regulation, while the second calls
for outright prohibition. These approaches are not absolutely divergent or
necessarily radically opposed, although they may become so in particular
conflicts. For many mining critics, these positions may be best understood
as mutually conditioning and sequenced, with one approach perceived
as a stopgap measure on the way to the other. Mining critics may call for
16 Their results may reflect the undercount of conflicts in the OCMAL database, on which they draw.
16 Breaking Ground
Restrictive Regulation
For many mining protesters, the goal is not to halt mining but to nego-
tiate for better terms. Such conflicts strive for the tightening of regulations,
better implementation of laws and guidelines, larger royalties and tax
revenues, increased wages and payments to the localities, improved
cleanup or closedown processes, fuller and more consequential consulta-
tion with the community, and more regulatory transparency. These “ad-
verse governmental actions” may also increase national participation
requirements or in-country “beneficiation” rules regarding exports or do-
mestic processing (Burnett and Bret 2017, 47–58). Restrictive regulatory
changes are designed to reduce the risks associated with mining operations
and increase the local benefits, including evidence of company respect
for residents and recognition of their basic rights (Bebbington et al. 2013,
263–264).
Discussing the 2011 mobilizations in Puno, Peru, for example, Bebbington
et al. (2013) conclude: “This was not necessarily a generalized call for a
Puno without mining. It was, though, a call to start over and to find different
modes and criteria for planning and making decisions about how extrac-
tive industry should unfold in a region” (pp. 262–263). This call for revision
in the mode of interaction may, of course, become a call for termination if
the possibility of reform is eliminated or if confidence in the good faith of
bargaining partners is missing. Many protesters, however, may be willing to
accept development of a mining industry if the terms and conditions of op-
eration are altered.
Table 1.1 Restrictive Policy Demands: Mining Sector Reforms Sought by Opposition Networks
Compensation Contests
To begin with a common demand, mining protests frequently raise distri-
butional claims related to the allocation of mining revenues. The resulting
“distributive conflicts,” discussed in more detail in Chapter 3, involve
mobilizations designed to shift the way mining rents are divvied up and in-
crease the portion received by local actors. As Raymond Vernon (1971) noted
in his seminal study of state-corporation bargaining, petroleum and mining
investment is typified by the “obsolescing bargain,” in which state-investor
agreements in phase one front-load favorable treatment in order to attract
high-risk investment into exploration and start-up, only to be replaced in
phase two, once investment risks dissipate and sunk costs allow recalibration
by states seeking to gain better terms.
Mining companies are often enticed to invest with offers of tax
exonerations, leaving little fiscal reward for the countries in which they op-
erate (IGF 2019). This dynamic puts pressure on the stability of the fiscal
regime and opens another arena of contestation over time. Charges of cor-
ruption and bribery associated with concession access and generous fiscal
incentives, all too common in the extractive sector, exacerbate these polit-
ical tensions (Moran 2011: 12, 18–20; Vieyra and Masson 2014). Forceful
voices now question preferential treatment for mining investors and call for
a crackdown on any corruption that eased the way for megaproject develop-
ment.17 These shifts in investor-state bargaining point to a regular rhythm of
escalating tension as the investment moves from stage one to stage two.
Conflict also emerges over the division of resources between national
and subnational levels of government (Dupuy 2014). Traditionally, royalties
tended to accumulate at the central government level, leaving few gains
for the localities in which the mines are located. In addition, jobs created
by the capital-intensive modern mine are few in number beyond the con-
struction phase, and the quick depletion of extractable ores may make mine
work quite short-term. The enclave characteristics of the industry result in
low spillover benefits and may widen the local class divide, setting persistent
17 An OECD (2014, 21–22) study of 427 foreign bribery cases concluded between 1999 and 2013
found that 19% involved companies in the extractive sector, which led all other economic activities.
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 19
social tensions into motion. In addition, funds set aside to cover mine closing
and land reclamation post-mining are often inadequate, leaving localities
to struggle with the long-term costs.18 These issues fuel collateral demands,
ones that are designed to ensure a better distribution of the financial costs
and rewards associated with industry operations.
Environmental Controls
Second, mining critics have been in the forefront of calls for improved en-
vironmental regulation. Mining is widely recognized as an environmentally
challenging industry because of its potential to release harmful substances
into the air, soil, and water (Bell and Donnelly 2006). Chemicals and heavy
metals that are deposited into waterways as a result of mining have been
implicated in human health problems in communities surrounding the
mines (Rosario and Ault 1997; Picado et al. 2010; Sequeira-León, Luna-
Avilés, and Huete-Pérez 2011; McNeill and Vrtis 2017). Even inactive mines
may continue to produce acid mine drainage and leave behind toxic pools
that threaten local water sources long after mine closure (Studnicki-Gizbert
2017; Pacheco Cueva 2017). These concerns lead environmental activists to
play a forceful role in mobilizing mining protests and to call for rigorous reg-
ulation and abatement, if not outright mine closure.
Reducing the risks associated with mining requires the deployment of
strong incentives, rigorous regulation, attentive monitoring, and vigorous
enforcement to ensure compliance. Even with careful controls, unplanned
events such as chemical spills and leaks, landslides, and mismanagement
lead to major damages, in both the formal and informal mining sectors (IGF
2017; ICMM, UNEP, and PRI 2020). Mining protesters have played a leading
role in advancing the agenda for rigorous and independent environmental
impact assessments at every stage in the permitting process. The most sig-
nificant demand concerns controlling the impact of mining on water access
and quality, given the large quantities of water required in open pit chemical
leach mining.
The local response to environmental concerns has been found to vary
depending on the extent to which mining competes with or complements
local needs. In barren regions, with relatively limited productive prospects,
18 Dawson (2014, 4) reports that the amount of the original bond to cover closure costs for the
Marlin mine in Guatemala was only US$1 million, an amount that even shareholders recognized as
inadequate. They called for a US$49 million increase to cover expected real costs.
20 Breaking Ground
19 See Altomonte and Sánchez (2016) on the widespread failure in institutional capacity for water
Activists have called for the introduction of “free, prior, and informed con-
sent” (FPIC) processes that would recognize and give voice to those local
populations most immediately affected (Voss and Greenspan 2012; Fontana
and Grugel 2016; Leifsen et al. 2017; Falleti and Riofrancos 2018; Torres
Wong 2019; Riofrancos 2020; Le Billon and Middeldorp 2021; Jaskoski 2022).
The right to consultation has been promoted using a variety of legal
protocols. In Latin America the obligation has been most actively defended
as a requirement under ILO 169, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples
Convention, an international convention introduced in 1989 that is designed
to protect indigenous rights. Article 6 of this agreement requires signatory
states to ensure consultation with indigenous communities regarding de-
velopment projects that affect their territory.20 Consultation rights for non-
indigenous communities have also been promoted with laws permitting
national referenda and municipal codes that institutionalize community
participation in development policy implementation.
The enforcement of consultation rights remains infrequent, however, even
in countries under a legal obligation to carry them out. Mining critics express
frustration over the “information sessions” and public relations campaigns
that mining companies attempt to pass off as consultations, as well as the use
of state-led processes in strategically selected communities that invariably
register project support (Flemmer and Schilling-Vacaflor 2016; Zaremberg
and Torres 2018; Eisenstadt and West 2019; Le Billon and Middeldorp 2021).
In response to this manipulation, critics sometimes organize consultations
of their own (Walter and Urkidi 2016; Leifsen et al. 2017; Copeland 2019a),
orchestrating performances that likewise respond to political calculations
with largely predetermined results, but in the opposite direction. Divergence
in these outcomes reinvigorates debate about whether community consulta-
tion can contribute to indigenous rights and the enhancement of democratic
quality, and the conditions under which those outcomes occur (Falleti and
Riofrancos 2018).
The push for prior consultation puts to the side the question of whether this
ritual offers meaningful space for addressing the enormous structural power
imbalances that characterize community-company relations in the extractive
sector. Debate continues about how best to lift the barriers to implementation
of consultation rights and improve the quality of the results. In the absence
of inclusive, informative, and iterative consultations that are well institution-
alized, enjoy a strong sense of legitimacy, and whose results are accepted as
binding, this issue will continue to spark conflict and calls for further reform.
Mining Prohibition
Given the impediments to effective regulation and the desire of many com-
munity residents to prevent cultural and economic losses, resisters may
shift to the other end of the spectrum and call for outright prohibition.
Mining bans have been declared in a number of countries, most commonly
at the state or provincial level, as in Argentina, the United States, and the
Philippines, but sometimes at the national level, as in Costa Rica, El Salvador,
the Czech Republic, and Germany (Laitos 2012; Dawson 2014; Janíková
et al. 2015; Walter and Urkidi 2016; Ali 2021). Bans may focus on partic-
ular commodities, such as uranium, or specific production practices, such
as deep sea mining. The remaining three categories presented in Table 1.1
involve actions that would halt mining activities, whether informally or for-
mally, partially or fully, or on a temporary or permanent basis.
Seven provinces in Argentina introduced mining bans between 2003 and
2011, generally by prohibiting the use of chemicals that were central to the
extraction process. The state of Virginia approved a moratorium on uranium
mining in 1982, a decision that was challenged by the mining industry but
upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019. Montana banned cyanide use
in mining in 1998 through referendum, a decision that was upheld by the
Montana Supreme Court. New Mexico (1993), Michigan (2004), and Maine
(2017) prohibited mines when cleanup plans would require perpetual water
treatment post-closedown due to acid mine drainage (Laitos 2012; Wright
2018). In the Philippines, several provinces declared a moratorium on
mining following a major tailings spill at the Marcopper mine in March 1996,
and Executive Order 79 introduced a national moratorium on new mining
permits in 2012 (Chaloping-March 2014; Dawson 2014).
A national mining ban, such as the one adopted in El Salvador in 2017,
may be defended as sound policy, especially in a country characterized by
small geographic size, high population density, heavy dependence on a
single waterway, and underdeveloped regulatory capacity (Tau Consultora
Ambiental 2011; Bebbington, Fash, and Rogan 2019). In settings where mine
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 23
21 Latin American mining resistance movements claimed $30 billion in “paralyzed” mining
22 In a policy paper prepared for the Colombian government, former World Bank extractive sector
adviser Robert Goodland (2011) recommended that the following five areas be classified as “no-go”
Mining Conflict and Policy Alternatives 25
zones for mining projects: indigenous peoples’ territories; conflict zones (including those where the
conflict was not about mining); fragile watersheds, including paramos and areas of active seismicity;
conservation units (national parks, protected forests, and their buffer zones) and areas of high biodi-
versity and endemism; and areas of “cultural property,” such as religious and archaeological sites and
places of historical significance.
26 Breaking Ground
This end of the policy reform spectrum is less frequently employed than
threatened. But outright prohibition becomes a meaningful option under
certain sets of circumstances, as we will see in the coming chapters. Even
when national prohibition is not implemented, the call for “[X country]
without mining” prompts mining advocates to take notice of the resistance,
and becomes a powerful tool in the conflict arsenal.