The new law would also mark a major beefing-up of the powers of the Environment Ministry, which was only reluctantly created in 2009 by the administration of then President Alan Garcia, to comply with Washington’s conditions for signing a US-Peru trade treaty.
Since then the ministry has been starved of funds and overshadowed by the Mining and Energy Ministry, among others.
The result, green groups say, is that mining and oil companies’ frequently abuse local communities.
According to Peru’s official human rights watchdog, the country had 168 “social conflicts” in July, in which communities refuse to accept, sometimes violently, mining and other extractive activities on local land.
No comments:
Post a Comment