The mining boom that Latin America is living in due to increased demand and prices on the international market is resisted through regional strikes, demonstrations and marches by the affected populations that have come out in defense of the environment and water.
“There is an increase in the number and in the intensity of the mining conflicts because of the water, the extension of mining concessions, the contamination of the rivers, the displacement of activities and the population,” explained the economist José de Echave, Peru’s former Vice Minister of Environment. “But they are, above all, because of the water,” he added.
Environmental organizations criticize that the companies use millions of liters of water to extract minerals and also resort to the use of highly contaminating cyanide, as in the case of the open sky mines, for separating gold from the rock.
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