This article is part of a series that intend to bring awareness to the environmental and human injustices that are happening in Venezuela. We invite you to follow our blog to read the upcoming articles. We believe solidarity and support are key to addressing the current societal and environmental challenges.
According to Conservation International, Venezuela is one of the mega-diverse countries in the world, but the government has been exploiting the country’s resources, causing troublesome degradation. While this great biodiversity found in Venezuelan Amazonia has an important role to play globally for ecological and climate crises, the global community is only paying attention when it comes to Venezuela’s oil reserves and ideology.
As stated by the Centre for Strategies and International Studies (CSIS), the ecocide in Venezuela need more attention. Since many global environmental NGOs no longer have presence or projects in the country, most of the time the issues are not reported internationally. This creates a dangerous and vicious circle.
Arco Minero (Mining Arc) is a huge area in Venezuela, almost 112,000 sq km (bigger than Portugal), rich in gold, copper, diamond, and coltan. The area has been recently mined heavily with human and environmental abuses. Venezuela is also the Amazonian country with the second largest area of illegal mines. The area intersects with the Venezuelan Amazon rainforest and with 36 protected areas, including national parks and monuments, and is now being illegally logged to make way for mines, roads, and mining camps. This illegal industry and infrastructure is also impacting the Orinoco River (3rd largest in the world in volume). Its waters are not only important for the biodiversity of the region, but for the many indigenous communities that build their lives around the river and its hundreds of tributaries.
Image per SOS Orinoco
Reported by the Adam Smith Institute in 2016, Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela, began to threaten this biodiverse area by designating around 112,000 square kilometers of pristine tropical rain forest as a mining belt. The ‘Orinoco Mining Arc’ is home to 198 indigenous communities, jaguars, giant anteaters, 850 bird species, and many more species. All are now threatened by mining activity. This plan was originally conceived by Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, and like many of these stories of ecocide in the country, gains little international attention.
The environmental damage of these mining operations has been completely disregarded and no environmental impact assessment was ever done. The same report from the Adam Smith Institute goes on to say that Venezuela’s National Assembly explicitly voted against the plan, making the activity unconstitutional and illegal. Although Maduro proposed that the mining would be done by state enterprises in partnership with foreign investors, the latter have understandably declined to participate. In reality, criminal gangs and Colombian guerrilla groups carry out the mining under the protection of the Venezuelan military.
Noted by the Pulizter Center, indigenous communities within the Arco Minero have been given no say in the development of mining in their region. They have not been consulted or given the right to free, prior, and informed consent for mining projects that impact their territories as required by the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) 169 Convention, an agreement to which Venezuela is a party. In 2019 the UN High Commission of Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed the lack of consultation of indigenous people and NGO’s and in 2020 they reported again the violation of economic and social rights, confirming that the Venezuelan government hasn’t taken action to address the human rights violation.
The report by the Pulitzer Center quotes Alexander Luzardo, a doctorate in environmental rights, and who wrote the environmental protection legislation included in Venezuela’s current constitution. He says that “The biggest danger is that the [government will] appropriate the indigenous leadership,” Luzardo says. “This is like [what was] done in the [20th Century] African conquest with the local elites; […] in Zimbabwe, according to Luzardo, the state “domesticated indigenous leaders” in order to clear the way for legal and illegal mining projects. Likewise, in Venezuela, when indigenous leaders do not work with the state, there is always the threat of coercion, as provided by a range of military forces which are omnipresent in the Mining Arc today.
Image per SOS Orinoco
As reported by SOS Orinoco, Las Claritas - Kilometer 88, an specific area of Arco Minero, is the largest continuous and delimitable gold mining focus in Venezuela (4,781 hectares), with an area equivalent to 6,300 professional soccer fields or 3.7 times the size of the Chacao municipality in the city of Caracas. The mining situation in Cuyuni has been and is incompatible with the philosophy and objectives of the Imataca Forest Reserve, which has been the prevailing territorial order from 1963 to 2018, and up to the present. An important part of the basin is within the Imataca Forest Reserve (RFI) which is an Area Under Special Administration Regime created in 1961 by the existence of a vast area of forests (3.8 million ha approximately) that was assumed with great forestry potential.
Picture by SOS Orinoco. Cuyuni Heart of Imataca | Epicenter of the Maduro Mining Arc
The dangers of these mining projects go beyond the environment and touch on humans’ rights as well. Recently, the United Nations Humans Rights Office of the High Commissioner, reported criminal control of mining areas, including extortion, amputation and miners being buried alive. The mining sector has been converted into an organized crime scheme that involves all levels of Venezuela’s political and military power structure. Humans rights atrocities are reported by Freedom House in a recent report.
Despite these humanitarian and environmental atrocities, very few global organizations or activists have mobilized or campaigned to make these issues known within their circles. In the meantime, this huge area is being mined, and the great biodiversity and indigenous people in this area are being impacted and the damage will be irreversible.
By writing this blog, we hope to shed light on the realities of the ecocide in Venezuela. If you are reading this, we ask for solidarity. Amplify our message in your networks, learn more by following:
@SOSorinoco (http://www.SOSorinoco.org),
@acKapeKape (impact to indigenous communities),
@SurDelOrinoco,
@Venezuelaxclima, and
@SVEcologia (http://www.SVEcologia.Org)
This blog was submitted my Marco A. Bello, youth activist and environmentalist from Venezuela.