Central America

Environmentalists advance in closing copper mine in Panama

December 15 |

The formation of a technical committee to supervise the closure of the largest copper mine in Panama is moving forward in that Central American nation, according to the Panamanian Committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) last Tuesday.

This technical roundtable, which so far incorporates 101 people from different professional fields, has the purpose of “informing, accompanying, monitoring and being vigilant to the processes of closure of metal mining activity in the country in compliance with the legal provisions”, detailed the IUCN in a statement.

The formation of this oversight group was convened by IUCN last November 22. As it has been adding specialists, working groups were formed on specific topics.

The president of the IUCN, Ricardo Wong, explained during an interview that the technical committee is overseeing “that we have a closure that is as environmentally friendly as possible and that avoids harm to the population”.

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He pointed out that the copper mine is currently paralyzed and awaiting a technical plan to deactivate it little by little without causing an environmental disaster.

He stated that closing the mine “is going to be complicated and will take years, effort by many and a lot of money to recover that area”, since now “the metal is exposed and reacts with the water turning it into acid, which if it reaches other areas has great impacts”.

The mine in question is the largest open-pit copper producer in Central America, and one of the largest in the world. It was operated by Minera Panama, a subsidiary of the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals.

It occupies some 13,600 hectares in the middle of the Panamanian forest, within the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, an area of high biodiversity through which species travel from South America to North America. After months of massive protests, the Panamanian people forced its closure.

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Related Topics:Central America Mina Cobre Panamá

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