El Salvador’s fight against gold mine will be decided in D.C.
El Salvador’s fight against gold mine will be decided in D.C.
By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Foreign Staff
October 21, 2014
SAN ISIDRO, El Salvador — Somewhere trapped in the earth below Francisco Pineda’s feet are an estimated 1.4 million ounces of gold, and he wants the ore to remain there. He doesn’t want an Australian mining company to extract the metal.
“What will happen with the water? To separate the gold and silver, they’ll use cyanide. This will either filter into the water table or go into the river,” said Pineda, a stocky agronomist and environmental activist.
Those who share Pineda’s views don’t care if El Salvador remains the proverbial beggar seated on a bench of gold. They say their densely populated nation cannot absorb environmental distress from mining. Yet the choice is not theirs.
The fate of the El Dorado gold mine won’t be resolved anywhere near this tiny Central American country. Rather, it’s being weighed by a three-judge tribunal on the fourth floor of the World Bank headquarters in Washington.
Last month, the obscure court heard eight days of arguments over whether an Australian firm, OceanaGold Corp., will get a green light for the El Dorado project, or in its lieu receive $301 million in compensation. Sometime early in 2015, the tribunal, known formally as the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes, will issue its ruling.
The unusual jurisdiction is a sign of how international investment laws are empowering corporations to act against foreign governments that curtail their future profits, sometimes through policy flip-flops. Critics say it’s giving trade tribunals leverage over sovereign nations and elected leaders who presumably reflect the will of their people.
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