Fuente
The Andean and Colombian Páramo de Santurbán, the main source of water for two Colombian departments (Norte de Santander and Santander), the Catatumbo Basin and Lake Maracaibo (in Venezuela), has been in the eye of the hurricane for a few years now, due to its gold mining interest in the middle of the páramo. Hearing this fight and losing it will project in time and space the mining exploitation of the páramos. Exploitation areas will be extended and even the phenomenon of the Catatumbo Lightning will be put on hold.
We live in the state of Zulia, Venezuela. The Catatumbo River originates in Ábrego, Colombia, in the Santurbán Paramo, and flows into Venezuela as part of a binational basin. We have to be attentive, in both countries, so that the Santurbán Paramo is unharmed so that our Father River of Zulia State (Venezuela) continues to feed water to Lake Maracaibo..
Recently, in February 2021, forest fires affected about two thousand hectares. It is true that the presence of the La Niña Phenomenon conditions forest fires in the tributary lands of the Atlantic-Caribbean-Gulf of Mexico Basin, but we know that a large part of forest fires have an implicit anthropogenic percentage. We can only think that the economic interests of gold mining exploitation could be behind these fires.
Santurbán is a mountain complex in the Department of Norte de Santander and in a lesser proportion, twenty-eight percent, in the Department of Santander. There are one hundred and forty-two thousand hectares of mountains between two thousand four hundred meters above sea level and four thousand two hundred and ninety meters above sea level. Almost ninety-nine thousand hectares are protected. Let's remember that the mountain ecosystems located in mountains that rise between three thousand four hundred meters above sea level and five thousand meters above sea level are called Páramos..
Forest fires not only affect the flora and fauna, but also intervene in the water cycle by capturing atmospheric humidity and paramo vegetation. Farmers in the region indicate that forest fires are due to human origin, the irresponsibility of people who introduce "candela". The two Colombian departments, Santander and Norte de Santander, contributed with their official teams to extinguish the forest fires..
Among the causes of forest fires in Colombia, authorities indicate that these destructive phenomena are caused by the development of illicit crops, illegal mining, bad livestock practices and crops in unauthorized areas, unplanned transportation infrastructure, illegal logging, conversion of biomes (forests) in areas of pasture crops, and illegal logging..
In Colombia there is the foreign-owned Sociedad Minera de Santander (MINESA), which aspires to mine on a large scale in the Santurbán Paramo areas. Its plans claim to be limited and without affecting the formation of lagoons and rivers. The defenders of Santurbán, among them the Comité por la Defensa del Agua de Santurbán, indicate that the protection of the Colombian legal body is violated, since MINESA's mining projects do violate the constitution and the laws protecting the páramos. In addition to the use of chemicals such as mercury, it is a source of contamination for the watersheds that originate in the Santurbán Paramo and Lake Maracaibo, which can affect millions of people with heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury, remember the Minamata phenomenon (microcephaly due to mercury poisoning)
The lack of government control of territories that are affected by illegal mining and inadequate agricultural and livestock exploitation is an official argument to justify the process of allocation or exploitation license in the process of the mega mining project. Sixty million tons of material will be moved, which will be taken to open-pit deposits, these dumps (dry tailings), therefore, will be exposed to rainfall and fog. When the project is completed, the costs and maintenance activities of these tailings dumps will be the responsibility of the government and under the national budget. The water cycle will be responsible for diffusing these pollutants, argue Santurban's defenders..
If one ecosystem is affected, all ecosystems are affected, because of the integrality of the bioregion, the forest is the one that produces water and the influence of all activities goes beyond the limits. The delimitation is being established since 2014 and is still being delimited, when officially it was said that the protection area must increase. The deforestation of the lower forests is reflected in vegetation with logs. But in the paramo zone, the forest or biome does not have that trunk that we saw with the vegetation of the high Andean forest and the sub paramo..
The company and the Colombian national government say that the gold mines proposed by MINESA will help Colombia to get out of the economic problem generated by the COVID-19 Pandemic and that they are not in protected territories and rather within traditional artisanal mines. The short term income will be good for the country, but the remnants, the environmental liabilities of these mining megaprojects, will "eat" the long term profits and will rather add more official investment. It should be added that the consultation tables between MINESA and the affected communities, regarding the limitation of the páramo and other issues, were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The environmental impact studies provided by MINESA are biased studies and are not projected as resilience studies. This approach of resilience studies would indicate whether the bioregion is capable, together with all the biotic factors, of "enduring" the water cycle.
This problem of investment in mining megaprojects in paramo areas is a binational, regional and global problem. Ancestral mining activities are not the same as the size and activity of this megaproject, which will damage the resilience of the Páramo de Santurbán bioregion. These companies will mine for an average of twenty years. They will carry out their mining activities, take their money and leave the impacts behind. We must all be aware of this fight for the life of the planet, for the water cycle and the projections of the excessive ambition of groups of people abusing the Ecosystems and Bioregions..
How sad that ecosystems and biodiversity are being destroyed, but what is happening is very serious, Fauna, flora and humans being affected by the destruction of the environment.
Hopefully the governments and regions can quickly agree to work on this, but knowing the political tradition all South American countries find enough difficult that an agreement was reached in the short term and the problem is that we need to repair this immediately and not in the medium or long term because it will be too late.
Unfortunately governments and corporations make a feast of natural resources and share the money they produce, as if they were their own property and not satisfied with this, they do not care if in doing so they destroy the environment, end up with the natural wealth that benefits them and makes their journey much smoother. The case that you expose is one of the many that occur in the world and that are ending it. @tipu curate 2
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