Post by account_disabled on Mar 14, 2024 4:28:47 GMT 1
In the book “ The Water Defenders: How ordinary people saved a country from corporated greed ” Robin Broad and John Cavanagh recount the struggle of Salvadorans directly related to the famous investment arbitration won by El Salvador against the Pacific Rim mining company (owned by the Australian Oceana Gold) which in 2017 had to face the payment of 8 million dollars in favor of the Central American country. The authors bring the Salvadoran conflict closer to the conflicts of communities in Flint (Michigan), the Standing Rock reservation or the Gualcarque River (Honduras), who fight to defend the environment and the health of their local communities. The beginning of the Pacific Rim-El Salvador conflict In 2002, a small group of Salvadorans joined the global community of water defenders when representatives of the multinational mining company Pac Rim showed up in their home province of Cabañas.
It was the beginning of a popular struggle against the mining company that would last more than a decade. The arbitration was filed at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) by Pacific Rim in 2009 against El Salvador for denying it a gold and silver mining concession in San Isidro, Cabañas, alleging its right to mining exploration years before. . In 2013, Oceana Gold inherits arbitrage after its DM Databases purchase of Pacific Rim. During the procedure, which ended in 2016, the Salvadoran government's defense relied substantially on the rights of Salvadorans to access water, due to the impact of mining activity on an important hydrographic basin. In “ The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved a Country from Corporate Greed” (published by the Institute for Policy Studies), Robin Broad and John Cavanagh chronicle the Salvadorans' struggle—and their historic victory.
Drawing on more than a decade of research and their own role as international allies of community groups in El Salvador, Broad and Cavanagh explain the facts from the other side: that of local communities, the lives of Salvadoran villagers, activists locals... who rose up to avoid the effects of gold mining on the environment and denounce the maneuvers of the executives of the mining companies. The Water Defenders also demand to examine the analysis made by those who experience the conflict from the other side, at a time when, worldwide, the consequences of climate change will have repercussions on the entire social, financial, business, legal, and health panorama. …and in which the influence of large corporations on the climate is, more than ever, in question.