Caribbean & Central America - January 2024

Environmental organisations in Panama and beyond have claimed a major victory after Panama’s supreme court (CSJ) struck down legislation in late November authorising a new contract between Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals (FQM)’s Panamanian subsidiary, Minera Panamá S.A. (MPSA), and the Panamanian government regarding the Cobre Minera copper mine. The CSJ found the contract violated no less than 25 articles of Panama’s constitution, ranging from the right to live in a pollution-free environment to the obligation of the state to promote the economic and political engagement of indigenous and rural communities. Here we consider some of the concerns raised by the environmental lobby regarding the mine ahead of the CSJ’s ruling.

The original concession for the mine, which is located in Colón province, in the Donoso Protected Area, within the globally important Golfo de los Mosquitos Forests Key Biodiversity Area (KBA), was granted in 1997. In 2013, FQM took over the contract, which had previously been granted to two other companies. In response to lawsuits filed against the initial contract, the CSJ ruled in 2017 that it was unconstitutional partly because it was granted without the proper bidding process. However, the mine was permitted to keep operating under successive governments while a new contract was drawn up, and in 2019 it began commercial operations.

In March 2023 the new contract was agreed by FQM and the government led by President Laurentino Cortizo which, according to environmental organisations, would have added 4,000 hectares (ha) to the size of the mine. It was then approved on 20 October by Panama’s 71-member unicameral congress – at which point massive unrest erupted across the country, forcing the government to defer to the top court which struck down the contract (see our sister Weekly Report for more discussion of the new contract and unrest).

Opposition to the 13,000ha open-pit mine came from a range of sectors – not least the environmental lobby. As well as local environmental NGO Centro de Incidencia Ambiental (Ciam), it drew attention from organisations abroad such as US-based Re:wild, the UK’s Synchronicity Earth, World Wildlife Fund, and American Bird Conservancy, among others.

A joint statement co-signed by these groups dated 18 November highlighted the various threats that the mining project posed to biodiversity in the Donoso Protected Area where over 1,000 wildlife species live, many of which are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

• Species affected

According to the 18 November statement by the various local and international NGOs, wildlife species threatened by the development of the mine include the great green macaw, the Baird’s tapir (also known as the Central American tapir), the Central American spider monkey, the jaguar, the harpy eagle (Panama’s national bird), the horned marsupial frog, and the critically endangered Gemini’s dart frog, a species only described in 2014 and whose entire known habitat is in the Donoso Protected Area, near the mining project.

The statement notes that the mine is located in the heart of the Panama Atlantic Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which connects wildlife habitats in seven countries of Central America to southern Mexico, adding that a road built for the mine crosses the corridor, disrupting the connectivity of forests in the region. The same statement adds that over 3,000 ha of forest have already been destroyed for the mine’s construction and operation.

A 1 December FQM statement, however, said it had “completed reforestation of some 4,200 ha throughout Panama, and provides support programmes for more than 200,000 ha of protected areas, representing almost 20% of Panama’s total protected areas.”