On June 1, the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) issued a much-anticipated ruling in the case brought by Canadian transnational Pacific Rim against the government of El Salvador for failing to approve its mining permit. While dismissing Pacific Rim’s claims under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), the tribunal ruled that the case could proceed under El Salvador’s own 1999 Investment Law, which allows foreign companies to sue the Salvadoran government though the same international tribunal.
The ruling paves the way for Pacific Rim to proceed with its efforts to undermine El Salvador’s de facto ban on metallic mining, in effect since 2008, as well as weaken the growing campaign to make El Salvador the first nation on the planet to legally ban gold mining. The anti-mining movement in El Salvador has broad support from civil society along with the Catholic Church and left and right political parties, due to widespread concerns about the environmental risks of mining in a country that is already one of the most environmentally-degraded in the hemisphere.
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