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Category: Pacific Rim/OceanaGold
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Published: Monday, 13 January 2014 06:25
El Salvador is being sued by Pacific Rim Mining, a Canadian based corporation owned by Australia's OceanaGold, before the International Center for the Settlement of Investments Disputes –ICSID-. The case will enter a critical stage in January 2014. We need your support to urge World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim to review the role of the ICSID through an open process that includes the voices of the communities affected by the decisions of this Tribunal
Two years ago, 264 organizations, among them Unions, NGOs, faith and grassroots groups, signed a letter to former World Bank President Robert Zoellick to express concern about the outrageous lawsuit Pacific Rim Mining had filed against El Salvador before ICSID. The letter supported the right of El Salvador and any other country to set their own standards, laws and regulations to protect their environment, their public health and their labor and human rights.
ICSID denied jurisdiction under the DR-CAFTA but accepted the continuation of the case under a provision of El Salvador's Investment Law. This provision allowed foreign investors to bypass local courts and take their disputes directly to international tribunals. Since then El Salvador has amended that law, but unfortunately it is not retroactive.
ICSID is once again receiving arguments from the parties involved. Given the importance of this case, we are –once again- asking for your support to increase the pressure on the Tribunal to resolve in favor of democratic rights in El Salvador. We can do this by raising the international profile of the case and further denouncing the possible negative impacts of Pacific Rim’s operations in the country, including damage to El Salvador’s lands and main water supplies; violations of basic Human Rights , violence and social instability.
We are asking World Bank President Dr. Jim Yong Kim to initiate an evaluation of ICSID’s role and determine whether the Tribunal's support for corporations undermines national laws and regulations, and it hinders economic development in the Global South.
Please consider adding your organization's name to the letter below and share with other organizations you believe may be interested in signing.
For further information please contact Manuel Perez Rocha at manuel@ips-dc.org or Pedro Cabezas stopesmining@gmail.com.
CLICK HERE TO ENDORSE THE LETTER
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Category: Pacific Rim/OceanaGold
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Published: Wednesday, 23 October 2013 14:39
Translated from: http://tinyurl.com/mhvvolz
By: Elder Gomez, CoLatino News
El Salvador faces an "international mafia" seeking control of the country's natural resources, through "frivolous" legal international disputes, in which this nation has spent more than $3 million, while preparing a counterclaim to an Italian company that controls 51 percent of the shares for the national geothermal resource extraction, warned the Attorney General, Luis Martinez.
Meanwhile, representatives of the non-government organization, The National Roundtable Against Metallic Mining in El Salvador, warned that Australian company Oceana Gold, which acquired this month for $ 10.2 million US the shares of Canadian mining company Pacific Rim, seeking to exploit metals in the northern part of the country, could be negotiating with representatives of local political parties the approval of permits for the establishment the company’s mining projects in El Salvador.
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Category: Pacific Rim/OceanaGold
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Published: Sunday, 22 September 2013 10:27
by Robin Broad
First published in: http://triplecrisis.com/buzzwords-responsible-mining/#more-8529
Buzzwords and Fuzzwords - terms that became popular but mean vastly different things to different people. We've had a long list: development, sustainability, good governance, civil society, accountability. "Corporate responsibility" should certainly be on that list. And the avalanche of new buzzwords and fuzzwords continues: emerging markets, inclusive growth, resilience.
But today's buzzword winner is: responsible mining. Meaning what exactly? Well, not surprisingly, as is the case with most buzzwords, it means whatever the user wants it to mean. So, let me try to distinguish among the top four uses of "responsible mining."
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Category: Pacific Rim/OceanaGold
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Published: Sunday, 22 September 2013 10:13
San Isidro, El Salvador. Walking through a sea of businessmen and information booths at a Toronto trade show, mining executive Tom Shrake saw gold.
The poster board that caught the eye of Mr. Shrake, president of Canada-based Pacific Rim, detailed core samples from a deposit in northern El Salvador – fittingly called El Dorado, or the golden one. It's a name that conjures up images of fabled lands brimming with riches that have lured European explorers to Latin America for centuries.
By Shrake's calculations, the geologist's company should have sampled deeper into the earth. "My gut, my geologic gut tells me there are over 5 million ounces [of gold] there," says Shrake, who immediately booked a flight to El Salvador to take a look for himself. He paced the property, gauging surface-level geologic formations that might give an indication of what lay thousands of feet beneath him. "By the second day, I was ready to acquire the district." (READ MORE)
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Category: Pacific Rim/OceanaGold
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Published: Monday, 19 November 2012 15:37
“What is Happening to Canada’s Good Name?”
As Pacific Rim pushes forward with its law suit for $77 million against the Salvadoran government, environmental, policy and trade organizations visited the Canadian Embassy in Washington on November 12th to talk about the threats posed by Canadian companies in El Salvador. According to a letter addressed to the Canadian Ambassador, the goal of the visit was to “urge the Canadian government to alert Pacific Rim that its investor-state claim against the Salvadoran government for enforcing its own environmental laws and striving to protect its water and communities tarnishes the image of the Canadian mining industry.”
The full text of the letter is available here. The Spanish version is available here.
For more information about the letter and the meeting in the Embassy see:
Harper’s folly is El Salvador’s tragedy: Friends of the Earth visits the Canadian Embassy to protest Pac Rim gold mine fiasco
By Bill Warren
On Monday the 12th of November, I joined representatives of several environmental and public interest groups gathered in front of the grandiose and distinctly odd Canadian Embassy, which occupies one of the most prominent sites in D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue, just down the hill from the Capitol and across the street from the National Gallery of Art.
Our mission could not be more serious. We came to the embassy to protest the activities of the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Corporation in El Salvador. Pac Rim’s proposed gold mine threatens the water supply and health of the Salvadoran people and has, inadvertently or not, unleashed violence and murder against opponents of the mining project. This is beyond question a tragedy-- one which has been compounded by Pac Rim’s suit before a World Bank tribunal, where it is demanding tens of millions of dollars in compensation for El Salvador’s alleged violation of its “property rights” under international investment law, after the government denied the company a permit to proceed with its gold mining project.
Read more here…
An Appeal to Canada to Stand with El Salvador, the First Nation to Halt Gold Mining
By Manuel Perez Rocha
Representatives from IPS and other environmental and public policy organizations hold meeting at Canadian Embassy to say, "Tell Pacific Rim to stop bullying El Salvador."
I paid a visit this week to the Canadian Embassy with colleagues from the Institute for Policy Studies and other environmental and public policy organizations to deliver a letter to the Canadian Ambassador to the United States. We are demanding that his government tell Pacific Rim — the Vancouver-based mining company — to stop bullying the people of El Salvador.
Our letter was co-signed by Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, Earthworks, the Center for International Environmental Law, and others. We wrote:
“Given the severe environment and human rights implications associated with Pacific Rim’s investment in El Salvador and the gold mine and cyanide leach-water processing plant it is proposing, we urge the Canadian government to alert Pacific Rim that its investor-state claim against the Salvadoran government for enforcing its own environmental laws and striving to protect its water and communities tarnishes the image of the Canadian mining industry.”
Read more here…
We Stand with the People of El Salvador
By Hillary Lewis
Yesterday I helped deliver a letter to the Canadian Embassy here in Washington, DC, about the lawsuit against the Central American country of El Salvador, by Pacific Rim Mining Corporation. The letter was coordinated by the Institute for Policy Studies and signed by Friends of the Earth, Center for International Environmental Law, Public Citizen, Sierra Club Greenpeace, Earth Island Institute and Foundation Earth (along with Earthworks).
Pacific Rim is a Canadian mining company exploring for gold in the mineral rich mountains of El Salvador. It is no surprise to geologists that Pacific Rim believes they can strike it rich there. Billions of dollars rich.
Read more here…
Radio interview with Manuel Perez Rocha (in Spanish)
Según organizaciones medioambientales, la canadiense Pacific Rim Mining Corp. es una amenaza para El Salvador
Este lunes en Washington nueve organizaciones de defensa del medioambiente presentaron al embajador canadiense en Estados Unidos, Gary Doer, una carta en la que expresan su preocupación por las acciones de la minera canadiense Pacific Rim Mining Corp. en El Salvador. Manuel Pérez Rocha, investigador asociado en el Instituto para el Estudio de Políticas en la capital estadounidense, explica que esta empresa está afectando negativamente la ya erosionada imagen de las mineras canadiense en América Latina.
Listen to the interview here…
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Category: Pacific Rim/OceanaGold
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Published: Wednesday, 31 October 2012 11:22
Communities from Across the Hemisphere Speak out Against Pacific Rim
On October 20th, thousands of people marched in Cabañas, El Salvador to voice their opposition to the proposed gold mining project of Pacific Rim, a Canadian mining company. The anti-mining movement in El Salvador has been growing over the past decade and in 2007, under pressure from this movement, the Salvadoran government began to put restrictions on the burgeoning, foreign-dominated mining industry.
In response, Pacific Rim and Commerce Group, a Milwaukee based mining company, filed multi-million dollar lawsuits against the financially struggling Salvadoran government. The two lawsuits, which total almost $200 million and are being tried at a World Bank trade tribunal, allege that the companies’ free trade agreement protected investment rights have been violated. After months of silence, the tribunal hearing the cases ruled in June of 2012 that Pacific Rim could continue to pursue their claims at the tribunal by taking advantage of domestic Salvadoran investment law.
To amplify the demands of the anti-mining movement and its October 20th march in Cabañas, the department where Pacific Rim wants to mine, more than a hundred supporters from around the world called and emailed Pacific Rim. The community members and organizations that participated in the march and their international supporters demand that Pacific Rim respect the decision of the Salvadoran government and it’s citizenry to reject mining. They ask Pacific Rim to drop the lawsuit against the Salvadoran Government and leave El Salvador.
In addition to the calls and emails made to the Pacific Rim headquarters, organizations from across the hemisphere sent statements of solidarity and greetings to El Salvador. Organizations and individuals in Panama, Washington D.C., and Vancouver wrote to show their commitment to supporting the struggle to stop mining. The Mining Justice Alliance from Vancouver wrote, “We are working to change this, and in the upcoming year we will be bringing the harms that Pacific Rim causes to the attention of people in Vancouver in public ways.” The Environmental Advocacy Center in Panama stated their solidarity in a letter to the Mesa: “We congratulate the work of the NATIONAL ROUNTABLE AGAINST METALLIC MINING IN EL SALVADOR in continuing the efforts to stop the development of the El Dorado gold mine, in the Department of Cabañas, because as the slogan in our campaigns say “Panamá is worth more without Mining,” so “El Salvador is worth more without Mining.”
What became clear after October 20th, is that resistance to Pacific Rim’s projects is growing and as people marching in Cabañas said on the 20th “The People United will never be Defeated.”
For pictures from the march…
For the Mesa’s report of the march in Spanish…
For the Solidarity Statementsfrom Panama and Vancouver…
