Resistance of the Civil Society Against Mining Projects
A very high proportion of concessions for open-pit mining projects overlap with Protected Natural Areas. Unfortunately, the lax environmental legislation favors this type of companies above the interest of local and regional communities to preserve their
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Resistance of the Civil Society Against Mining Projects Heidi L. Romero-Schmidt and Alfredo Ortega-Rubio
Abstract A very high proportion of concessions for open-pit mining projects overlap with Protected Natural Areas. Unfortunately, the lax environmental legislation favors this type of companies above the interest of local and regional communities to preserve their environment and health. Thus the reason why local communities, faced with the onslaught of the capital of these predatory companies, have organized themselves to challenge these social and ecological tragedies. This chapter analyzes the main methods of resistance used by local communities. Resistance to mining has evolved throughout history, mining conflicts have been originally dominated by strikes, protests, and demands, but in the last two decades, communities living in the areas surrounding mining projects oppose environmental issues and object to their lack of representation and participation in the decisions concerning its development. Its result a combination of local narratives, rights (clean water, human, indigenous) and environmental justice. This evolution have made it possible to make alliances among local groups and organizations, which has succeeded in increasing knowledge about these projects and giving them visibility by contributing to new strategies of social resistance, such as legal judgments, scientific collaborations, and public consultations to reject mining projects. Keywords Mining · Social resistance · Socio-environmental struggles · Extractivism
H. L. Romero-Schmidt (*) Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste, La Paz, México e-mail: [email protected] A. Ortega-Rubio Red Nacional Áreas Naturales Protegidas RENANP-CONACYT, Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste CIBNOR-CONACYT, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico e-mail: [email protected]
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Ortega-Rubio (ed.), Socio-ecological Studies in Natural Protected Areas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47264-1_21
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H. L. Romero-Schmidt and A. Ortega-Rubio
21.1 Introduction More than 190 countries (ONU 2019) worldwide shelter from 60 to 70% of the total biodiversity of the planet, of which only 12 are considered megadiverse and Mexico is one of them (CECADESU 2006; Mittermeier and Goettsch 1992). Mexico occupies the fifth place among the countries with greater biological diversity after Brazil, Colombia, China, and Indonesia and hosts about 12% of global biodiversity (Fig. 21.1) (Llorente-Bousquets and Ocegueda 2008; Lopez-Rojas and Coutinho 2003; Yáñez 2007). Though Mexico is a megadiverse country, a significant number of species are at risk of extinction due to the intensive destruction of their habitats because of agriculture, ranching, and extractive activities, such as mining besides pollution, among others (Fig. 21.2) (Lopez-Rojas and Coutiño 2003). The current ecological crisis, which exists not only in Mexico but also worldwide (Solano 2013), has brought, in consequence, the development of diverse ways
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