ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Volume 5, Number 2, 2012
ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
DOI: 10.1089/env.2011.0017
Mining Development and Environmental Injustice
in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile
Hugo Romero, Manuel Méndez, and Pamela Smith
ABSTRACT
Large amounts of national and transnational capital are currently being invested in mining projects
located in the Atacama Desert, one of the driest deserts in the world. These projects require large
quantities of water for their industrial processes. Water sources in the middle of this desert are extremely limited, despite many lakes, lagoons, salt lakes, and wetlands located on the Andean highlands, bordering its eastern side. Most of them are located in natural conservation areas or territories
claimed by indigenous communities. Given the lack of superficial water, location of mining projects in
northernmost Chilean regions are beginning to be increasingly located near ground resources and
overlapping nature conservation areas, biodiversity protection sites, and communal lands claimed by
indigenous peoples. At present, water withdrawal by mining companies has been favored by governments and legislation and supported by neoliberal mechanisms such as privatization and commodification of natural resources. On the opposing side, ecosystems and local communities have lost
the battle, due to the increasing competition for water resources that is threatening the subsistence of
living systems in this part of Chile.
where from capitalism and sustainable development.1
This region corresponds to hyperarid landscapes where
rainfall is only recorded certain years (La Niña years), and
exclusively on mountains and highlands of the eastern
slope of the Central Andes between 18 and 27S (Figure
1). Therefore, lowlands depend exclusively on water
stored in freshwater and salt lakes and wetlands, which
are essential for the conservation of nature and society,
especially as they feed ground aquifers. The Atacama
Desert is also the center of one of the most important
reserves of mineral resources across the globe,2 particularly copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, lithium, and
other metallic and nonmetallic minerals. Currently, Chile
supplies nearly 40% of the world copper production. At
the same time, the price of copper has reached historical
records caused by the process of Chinese industrialization
INTRODUCTION
T
he Atacama Desert, one of the driest in the world,
located in northern Chile, bears witness to one of the
greatest paradoxes that the country’s development is
currently facing. This paradox can be observed every-
Dr. Romero is a professor in the Geography Department, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, and Director of the Postgraduate School of the Universidad de Chile. Mr. Méndez and
Ms. Smith are research assistants at the Environmental and Territory Lab, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidad
de Chile.
1
Anthony Bebbington, ‘‘Contesting Environmental Transformation: Political Ecologies and Environmentalisms in Latin
America and the Caribbean,’’ Latin American Research Review, 44
(2009): 177–186; Hugo Romero Toledo, Hugo Romero Aravena,
and Ximena Toledo Olivares, ‘‘Agua, poder y discursos en el
conflicto socio-territorial por la construcción de represas hidroeléctricas en la Patagonia Chilena,’’ Anuario de Estudios
Americanos 66 ( Jul–Dec 2009): 81–103; Hugo Romero Aravena
and Hugo Romero Toledo, ‘‘Metabolismo y contradicción entre
las inversiones de capital y los usos y propiedad de las aguas
en Chile,’’ (presented at Conferencia Internacional da Rede
WATERLAT, ‘‘A tensão entre justiça social e justiça ambiental:
O caso da gestão da água,’’ Sao Paulo, Brasil, Oct 2010).
2
Hugo Romero, Pamela Smith, and Alexis Vásquez, ‘‘Global
Changes and economic globalization in the Andes: Challenges for
developing nations,’’ in Alpine Space—Man & Environment, Vol. 7:
Global Change and Sustainable Development in Mountain Regions, R.
Psenner, R. Lackner, and A. Borsdorf, eds. (Innsbruck University
Press, 2009) 71–95.
70
71
MINING DEVELOPMENT IN THE ATACAMA DESERT
FIG. 1. Mining investments, wildlife conservation areas, and groundwater withdrawals in the Atacama Desert
in 2010.
that encourages the setting up of new sites which, in turn,
require large amounts of water. For national and transnational mining companies and for the financing of the
Chilean emerging economy, the production of minerals is
a breakthrough opportunity that implies the exploitation
of all available sources of water.
In 1981 the government’s military dictatorship led by
General Pinochet (1973–1990), enacted a new Water Code
to deal with water resources in Chile. Although metaphorically they remained public goods, in practice they
were commoditized and privatized, generating a free
market for water rights by allowing the sale thereof,
without any involvement of the State in its allocation. In the
continuation of a historical process of deprivation, many
indigenous peoples and rural communities lost their water
rights because they were legally or illegally claimed or
bought by mining and drinking water companies.3 Water
use rights were acquired in perpetuity and became the
exclusive property of national and transnational private
companies, while their former owners, communities of
local and indigenous people, had to leave their lands, unable to survive without water on the marginal lands of the
3
Jessica Budds, ‘‘Power, Nature and Neoliberalism: The political ecology of water in Chile,’’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 25 (Nov 2004): 332–342; Jessica Budds, ‘‘The 1981 water
code: The impacts of private tradable water rights on peasant and
indigenous communities in Northern Chile,’’ in Lost in the Long
Transition: Struggles for social justice in neoliberal Chile, William L.
Alexander, ed. (Lexington Books, 2009).
72
ROMERO, MÉNDEZ, AND SMITH
Table 1. Urban and Rural Population in Tarapacá Region between 1940 and 2002
Urban
Rural
Total
Years
Population
%
Population
%
Population
%
1940
1952
1960
1970
1982
1992
2002
55909
63967
98260
157274
257846
318925
403138
53,7
62,2
79,7
90,0
93,72
93,92
94,07
48188
38822
25004
17416
17298
20654
25456
46,3
37,8
20,3
10,0
6,28
6,08
5,93
104079
102789
123264
174710
275144
339579
428594
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
Source: Censos de Población y Vivienda. Instituto Nacional de Estadı́sitica. Santiago, Chile.
desert. Table 1 illustrates the diminution of rural population in the communes of Northern Chile between 1940 and
2002, according to data provided by national census. The
next census will be applied in year 2012.
Land was separated from water to facilitate commercialization, and the government only passed an Indigenous
People Law to protect the integrity of their territories and to
reduce social and ecological impacts after 1990. In 2004, some
small reforms were introduced in legislation, requiring
owners to pay taxes if they did not use water in any economic
activity during five years, in an effort to control speculation.
While market mechanisms to allocate water were managed efficiently from the economic point of view, they accumulated large negative impacts on local societies and natural
landscapes.4 Socially, communities without water were divided and lost control of critical resources in their territories,
all of which has increased the processes of depopulation and
land abandonment.5 Environmentally, Andean wetlands are
also essential components of the regional hydrological cycle,
and concentrate biodiversity and environmental services in
the border or in the middle of the desert. They have offered
permanent native grasses and allowed the development of
agricultural crops. These crops have sustained ancestral village settlements made up of indigenous communities, for
whom land and water are indivisible goods, with high economic, social, cultural, and spiritual values.
Historically, mining has exploited surface water bodies,
whose depletion and overexploitation have reduced
availability and dramatically affected ecosystems and local communities. The new situation is the overexploitation of ground resources6 whose extraction wells are
located, especially in the areas around or in endorheic
basins, on highlands, along the outlets of exorheic lakes,
or in upwelling lowlands (Figure 1). To do this, national
and international mining companies have traditionally
appropriated water sources and more recently, they have
acquired and bought in the market, the right of use
of these waters from the indigenous and peasant communities. Sometimes, they have obtained these rights
through the payment of compensation to local communities, for damages caused to wetlands and salt lakes that
are used for irrigation and grassland purposes. Other
times they have tried to get additional water rights by
installing new wells, or through the regularization of
illegal loggings.7 In many cases, water extraction has taken place over areas claimed by indigenous communities,
or which are part of the national system of wildlife protected areas.
The amount of water which is required for cooper extraction, processing, production and final disposal vary
according to the kind of ore (oxide or sulphur) and geographical aspects, and could be estimated between 38.5 and
193.3 m3/ton of fine cooper, depending on available technologies and volume of production.8 According to Gossjean
et al.9 water should be considered a fossil or non-renewable
resource since most of it was stored in the ground around
18,000 years BP (before present) when rainfall was 300 or
400% over present figures and an optimum climate favored
vegetation covers and ground recharge.
In 2008, the Department of Scientific and Technological
Research of the Chilean Catholic University (DICTUC)10
calculated an Andean highlands water balance based on
4
Hugo Romero Aravena and Hugo Romero Toledo, ‘‘Metabolismo y contradicción entre las inversiones de capital y los usos
y propiedad de las aguas en Chile,’’ (presented at Conferencia
Internacional da Rede WATERLAT, ‘‘A tensão entre justiça social
e justiça ambiental: O caso da gestão da água,’’ Sao Paulo, Brasil,
Oct 2010).
5
Jessica Budds, ‘‘Power, Nature and Neoliberalism: The political ecology of water in Chile,’’ Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 25 (Nov 2004): 332–342; Jessica Budds, ‘‘The 1981 water
code: The impacts of private tradable water rights on peasant and
indigenous communities in Northern Chile,’’ in Lost in the Long
Transition: Struggles for social justice in neoliberal Chile, William L.
Alexander, ed. (Lexington Books, 2009).
6
Instituto de Asuntos Públicos, Centro de Análisis de Polı́ticas
Públicas, Informe Paı́s: Estado del Medio Ambiente en Chile 2008
(Universidad de Chile, 2010).
7
Jessica Budds, ‘‘Contested H2O: Science, policy and politics in
water resources management in Chile,’’ Geoforum 40 (2009): 418–
430; Instituto de Asuntos Públicos, Centro de Análisis de Polı́ticas
Públicas, Informe Paı́s: Estado del Medio Ambiente en Chile 2008
(Universidad de Chile, 2010).
8
Gustavo Lagos, Eficiencia del uso del agua en la minerı́a del cobre
(Centro de Estudios Públicos 1997).
9
Martin Grosjean, Mebus Geyh, Bruno Messerli, and Ueli
Schotterer, ‘‘Late-glacial and early Holocene lake sediments,
groundwater formation and climate in the Atacama Altiplano
22–21S,’’ Journal of paleolimnology 14 (1995): 241–252.
10
Department of Scientific and Technological Research of the
Chilean Catholic University (DICTUC), Levantamiento hidrogeológico para el desarrollo de nuevas fuentes de agua en áreas
prioritarias de la Zona Norte de Chile, Regiones XV, I, II y III. Informe
Final Parte I: Hidrografı́a Regional del Altiplano de Chile. (Dec. 2008).
73
MINING DEVELOPMENT IN THE ATACAMA DESERT
Table 2. Water Balance (in liters per second) in Northern Chile Selected Watersheds
Salar
del Huasco
INPUTS
Precipitation
From other basins
Total
OUTPUTS
Evaporation
water withdrawals
To other basins
Total
Water balance
(IN-OUT)
Northern
Group (*)
this
study
Southern
Group (**)
DICTUC
this
study
DICTUC
1158,7
1158,7
704,7
704,7
308,7
308,7
1158,7
1158,7
704,7
704,7
308,7
757
118,1
757
632,1
632,1
387
187,1
875,1
283,6
757
401,7
632,1
72,6
1019,1
- 314,4
DICTOC
130
317,1
- 8,4
this
study
Salar de
Pedernales
Salar de
Maricunga
DICTUC
this
study
DICTUC
this
study
308,7
1831,4
70
1901,4
1831,4
70
1901,4
1369,6
80
1449,6
1369,6
80
1449,6
187,1
233
130
550,1
- 241,4
881,7
1235
65,5
2182,2
- 280,8
881,7
215,3
65,5
1162,5
738,9
1097,6
548,1
1097,6
1361,5
1645,7
- 196,1
2459,1
- 1009,5
(*) Salar Punta Negra and Salar de Aguas Calientes 2.
(**) Laguna Tuyajto, Pampa Colorada, and Pampa Las Tecas.
Source: Dirección General de Aguas de Chile.
pilot watersheds, including inputs provided by precipitation and upstream sources and outputs, such as evaporation, water withdrawals, and flows that go to other
basins. Such data could be found as public information at
the General Water Direction (DGA) and has been argued
by several organizations, researchers,11 and our own
studies. Salar de Huasco, located in the Tarapacá region
today shows a positive balance, mainly due to the inexistence of water extraction and it recently being declared a
national park in 2008. There are some relevant differences
in the amount of water withdrawals between public information and our own estimations. For example, we
obtained negative balances in the Northern Group and
higher values of negative figures at the Southern Group of
watersheds, and especially at Maricunga and Pedernales
salty lakes (Table 2).
Thus, the boom in mining development that Chile experiences, has generated huge economic gains to the State
and national and foreign companies,12 but at the same
time, degradation of ecosystems and the forced migration
of populations of villages and settlements which cannot
subsist with such scarce and erratic water supply. However, the current stage of water crisis triggered by mining
is not the only reason to explain the abandonment of rural
11
Jessica Budds, ‘‘Power, Nature and Neoliberalism: The political ecology of water in Chile,’’ Singapore Journal of Tropical
Geography 25 (Nov 2004): 332–342; Jessica Budds, ‘‘The 1981
water code: The impacts of private tradable water rights on
peasant and indigenous communities in Northern Chile,’’ in Lost
in the Long Transition: Struggles for social justice in neoliberal Chile,
William L. Alexander, ed. (Lexington Books, 2009); Jessica Budds,
‘‘Contested H2O: Science, policy and politics in water resources
management in Chile,’’ Geoforum 40 (2009): 418–430.
12
Hugo Romero Aravena and Hugo Romero Toledo, ‘‘Metabolismo y contradicción entre las inversiones de capital y los usos
y propiedad de las aguas en Chile,’’ (presented at Conferencia
Internacional da Rede WATERLAT, ‘‘A tensão entre justiça social
e justiça ambiental: O caso da gestão da água,’’ Sao Paulo, Brasil,
Oct 2010).
areas, which has been recorded since the early twentieth
century (Table 1). Other reasons for this migration have
been the lack of jobs and facilities, and the increasing interest
of communities in educating their children in nearby cities.
Ethnic exclusion and the absence of public policies that
promote the liability of rural towns and settlements have
affected territorial equity, and clearly involved the State in
the occurrence of socio-environmental injustices.
MINING DEVELOPMENT IN THE ATACAMA DESERT
Paradoxically, the extremely arid Atacama Desert is a
region that concentrates large reserves of metallic and
non-metallic minerals. During the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, the exploitation of nitrate meant the
emergence of many towns around the reservoirs, destruction of vegetation (fuel used) and drying of multiple
sources of water. The replacement of natural salts by chemical ones, involved the abandonment of all of these
landscapes and the consequence was the formation of
ghost towns which have remained abandoned until today.
Currently, these places concentrate some of the world’s
most important reserves of copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, and lithium, which have attracted large amounts of
national and foreign economic investments. According to
the U.S. Geological Survey,13 Chile owns 30% of world
cooper reserves.
Quantity and quality of Chilean mines and large investments have meant that national production has increased from 2 to 5.4 million metric tons between 1992
and 2009,14 and that its exports represented 38.5% of total
13
U.S. Geological Survey, Quantitative Mineral Resource Assessment of Copper, Molybdenum, Gold, and Silver in Undiscovered
Porphyry Copper Deposits in the Andes Mountains of South America,
Open-File report 2008-1253, version 1.0 (2010).
14
Jose Arellano, ‘‘Codelco in the copper industry’’ (presented at
CRU/CESCO Ninth World Copper Conference, Corporación
Nacional del Cobre, Apr 2010).
74
ROMERO, MÉNDEZ, AND SMITH
FIG. 2. Main mining investments, wildlife protected areas, and indigenous claimed lands in the Antofagasta region.
Source: DGA, SEIA, Mining Ministry and SITHA.
in 2003 and 53.5% in 2009.15 A representation of such
investments made in 2010 is presented in Figure 2. Practically almost all large mining companies in the world
(with capital from Canada, Chile, Australia, UK, Japan,
USA, Switzerland, etc.) are developing their projects in
Northern Chile in order to meet growing market demands worldwide, clearly impacted by the industrialization of China, which has raised the price of a pound of
copper to about five dollars (five years ago, a pound was
less than a dollar).
Figures 1 and 3 show that one of the most significant
interventions to confront the exhaustion, scarcity and irregularity of surface waters sources is the increasing
opening of groundwater wells. Some of them are directly
related to the presence of wetlands, and in, or around
nature conservation areas, such as national parks, nature
reserves, and priority sites for biodiversity protection.
Other ground sources are situated along lowland areas of
water upwelling, and many of them are part of communal
territories claimed by indigenous peoples, leading in many
cases to growing conflicts that challenge the environmental
institutions and scientific knowledge of the area.
Nowadays, among the most critical areas we can
mention Pampa del Tamarugal aquifer, located in the
lowlands vicinity of Pozo Almonte, the uppermost section
of Loa River watershed, and the higher basin of the
15
ProChile, Análisis de las exportaciones chilenas del año 2009
(Dirección General de Relaciones Económica Internacionales Boletin, 2010).
Copiapó River (Figure 1). To the right of the map the use
of groundwater properly extracted from highlands and
from the rest of the regional territories is shown. As indicated, the Antofagasta region spends more than 8,000 l/
s of groundwater extracted from the highland plateau on
mining activities. Tarapacá and Atacama regions, highland plateaus, are also the main regions for mining, while
water taken from the rest of their territories can, especially
in the case of the latter region, be used in agriculture,
services, and tourism.
Figure 2 presents economic investment projects which
were implemented in 2010 in the four regions in which
the Chilean Atacama Desert is located: Arica and Tarapacá (left), Antofagasta (center) and Atacama (right). In
the Arica region, mining investments are, at present, very
few, and, according to governmental and private company representatives, this is due to lack of water and
because the main sources are considered to be public
lands for the protection of nature and are territories
claimed by Aymara communities. Currently, mining
companies and the regional government are intending to
disaffect 40,000 ha. of such areas in order to facilitate the
establishment and expansion of mining operations in the
Lauca National Park and Surire national reserve.16
16
Hugo Romero Aravena and Hugo Romero Toledo, ‘‘Metabolismo y contradicción entre las inversiones de capital y los usos
y propiedad de las aguas en Chile,’’ (presented at Conferencia
Internacional da Rede WATERLAT, ‘‘A tensão entre justiça social
e justiça ambiental: O caso da gestão da água,’’ Sao Paulo, Brasil,
Oct 2010).
75
MINING DEVELOPMENT IN THE ATACAMA DESERT
FIG. 3. Economic investments in the three regions of the Atacama Desert in 2010.
The Tarapacá region (capital city Iquique) concentrated
major mining investments in the 1990s and, as a result, it
faced severe conflicts between international entrepreneurs
and local communities in relation to the possession of
water rights and because of the negative ecological impacts caused by the drainage of wetlands, such as Lagunillas and Salar de Coposa. These still unsolved conflicts
clearly showed the social and political insufficiency of
legal and institutional mechanisms and procedures
and could be understood as the preface of future, more
complex, and generalized conflicts in the area. Mining
activities have significantly reduced water availability to
communities of farmers and pastoralists, forcing people
to leave almost their entire crop areas, grasslands, and
livestock circuits, and emigrate mainly to nearby sprawl
cities (Arica, Iquique, Pica, Alto Hospicio, and Pozo
Almonte).
Antofagasta region, on the other hand, has experienced
the largest amount of mining investment during the past
three decades. It has involved the extraction of surface
and ground water from salt lakes, wetlands, and rivers
located at the Andean highlands (Figures 2 and 3). While
the upper basin of the Loa River (the only river that flows
into the Pacific Ocean and does not disappear while
crossing the desert) has been, and currently is, the subject
of many surface and groundwater withdrawals. Some
parts of the upper section still remain as an area of nature
conservation, where numerous wetlands survive as national parks and reserves or as priority sites for biodiversity conservation. However, decertification could
again be considered a matter of time, given increasing
pressures that confront Licancabur and Tatio National
Park (where the major geysers in the country are found)
or communal territories claimed by Atacameños indigenous people.
Groundwater withdrawals located in the upper basin
of the Loa River, are, on the other hand, challenging the
conservation of salt lakes like Aloncha, Carcote, and
Ascotán; another critical condition could also be observed
in the high concentration of wells in the regional southern part, affecting Huachalajte, Miñiques, and Miscanti
lagoons, and Tara, Aguas Calientes, El Laco, Punta Negra,
Agua Negra, and Pajonales salt lakes. These examples
confirm that the problem is becoming very difficult
to solve under present legislation, and institutional, environmental, and sustainability development issues of
overlapping areas of wetlands, biodiversity protection
sites, indigenous and rural communities’ claimed lands,
and extraction of surface and ground water. Collisions are
apparent everywhere, especially in the Loa River upper
basin, in Salar de Atacama, and around Los Flamencos
and Llullaillaco National Parks.
A third cluster of large economic mining associated
investments are increasingly located in the Atacama region, moving towards the south, right on the search site
for sources of water. One of the areas of greatest interest
at present is located in the Copiapó River upper basin,
which drains into the Paipote creek and commits the salt
lakes of Pedernales and Maricunga, and Laguna Verde,
near the mining town of El Salvador (Figure 1). While it is
the least populated region which forms the Atacama
Desert, the population is concentrated in the river valleys
76
ROMERO, MÉNDEZ, AND SMITH
that originate in the Andes; this means that agricultural,
urban, and industrial activities would be severely affected
by the extraction or pollution of the rivers. In this case, the
main conflicts have been generated with indigenous
communities, such as the Coya people, who inhabit the
upper basin of Copiapo, and the people called AltoHuasquinos, who are located in the upper valley of
Huasco, and with farmers in the irrigated lands of the
middle sections of fertile valleys that specialize in export
products.
CONCLUSIONS
Chilean society should reflect on what it has done and
will do in the short and long terms in relation to the
survival of unique ecosystems such as wetlands of the
Andean highlands bordering the Atacama Desert. They
should also make a decision about settlements and territories historically occupied by indigenous and rural
communities in these landscapes. These decisions have to
involve discussions about whether or not remaining natural areas, such as wetlands, lakes, and lagoons in the
region of Arica, at the East of Calama, to the South of
Antofagasta and at the highest section of the Copiapó
Valley, should be conserved or not. The discussion must
necessarily be around the environmental sustainability of
highlands and must consider not only the economic
benefits associated with mining activities, but also a socioenvironmental evaluation of who the winners and losers
of these interventions have been up to the present date.
Similarly, they should be clear about the social and cultural needs to preserve the settlements and territories of
indigenous peoples, preventing its complete disappearance in the short term.
Chile urgently needs to implement laws and regulations related to land resources management to solve increasingly territorial collisions. Real preventive ecological
and social assessments are required in regional and
communal development planning, and strategical environmental assessments should be applied to such com-
plex situations similar to those observed in the Atacama
Desert.
Conservation of unique ecosystems and cultural landscapes located in the Andean highlands seem to be a
major obligation priority that should be shared by the
various social actors in the country. Public policies have to
overcome exclusion and environmental injustices that
have historically predominated in the occupation of these
territories. The Water Code has commoditized and privatized hydric resources, producing negative effects from
social and ecological points of view. This Code must be
replaced by mechanisms and procedures that explicitly
consider equity and social justice in the distribution of
resources to properly assess environmental and social
costs and benefits resulting from their assignment and to
return the State’s rights and institutional resources to
administer the territories of the country under the umbrella of sustainability. Forty years of extreme liberalism
applied to the development of these regions have left too
many losses. If the pertaining political changes are not
implemented as soon as possible, without any doubt we
are going to repeat the desolation and abandonment
characterizing the ghost towns that remained after the
nitrate mining boom.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Guest Editors gratefully acknowledge language
revision support provided by Professor Marta Baduy,
Faculty of Languages, National University of Cordoba.
Address correspondence to:
Dr. Hugo Romero
Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo
de la Universidad de Chile
Portugal 84
Casilla 3387
Santiago de Chile
E-mail: [email protected]