In this province, mine openings and materials have been found that account for the activities that are carried out without any type of permission or control.
Drafting CARCHI
It is a problem that seems like it will never go away. The illegal minery has found in rural areas of Carchi sectors where you can continue to exploit the land, no controls, permits or technical procedures that do not put people or nature at risk.
Only in the first week of 2022, the Ecuadorian Army, through operations in the cantons Look, Mirror and others sectors that border the province of Imbabura, It has located indications of illegal mining activities, which shows that this type of activity has not completely ceased.
The evidence
Tunnels of great extensions that cross the earthPulleys to transport heavy packages with the extracted material, among other evidences, are part of what the military personnel have located at these sites.
However, in recent operations they have not been able to find people in flagrante delictoTherefore, there have been no detainees.
According Jaime Guerra, commander of the Galo Molina Major Infantry Battalion, stationed in Carchi, on certain occasions people are not located in the illegal mine entrances “because they have their own security, with which they are attentive to the activities carried out by the Armed Forces in that sector ”.
Social and environmental problems
The military authorities have recognized that “illegal mining activities represent a serious problem to state security, due to the serious and irreversible impacts to nature, especially to the contamination of water sources, the felling of forests and the decomposition of the soil ”.
In addition, they highlight that around this illegal activity related crimes are generated such as money laundering, corruption of control entities, arms and hydrocarbon trafficking, the timber traffic and fundamentally huge economic losses for the State and the population in general.
Precisely, it is estimated that in the last two years, the losses for the Ecuadorian State due to illegal mining reach more than $ 900 million per yearor, passing the focuses of this activity, throughout the national territory, from 500 to 600.
Only in the environmental partEvery year, illegal mining causes damages that for the Ecuadorian economy are of $ 350 million, while in the Amazon areas of countries such as Colombia, Peru and Brazil they are equivalent to more than $ 2.5 billion.
Beyond illegality
But the Environmental and Social Mining Observatory of the North of Ecuador (Omasne) goes beyond illegal mining, mentioning that all mining exploration, even under a concession legitimately granted by the State, “Causes irreversible damage to nature and the concessioned territories, even when not even a gram of mineral has been extracted ”.
As an example, at the time they mentioned that in the Chical parish, belonging to the Tulcán canton, in Carchi, A mining project is developed in the intangible zone of the Cerro Golondrinas Protective Forest, seriously affecting ecosystems, water sources, flora and fauna species for which complete scientific records are not yet available, as it was intended to happen in the Los Cedros Protective Forest, in the Intag area, in Imbabura.
“This forest is responsible for ensure safe and quality water for four parishes, as well as to guarantee the ecological balance and ecosystem services to Carchi and to the entire world. Not only is illegal mining a danger to ecosystems and the surrounding populated areas ”, they stated.
In El Cielito it is not a new problem
From 2017 The alarms were set off in Carchi by the first outbreaks of illegal mining.
At that time, community leaders reported that they were going through a serious social problem as a result of the discovery of a gold mine, located in the sector El Cielito and Río Verde, pointing out that this unleashed an environment of insecurity, violence and environmental damage.
One year later, in 2018, the problems increased with the arrival of more people, from different parts of the country and foreigners, to Carchense territory to exploit lands, as in El Cielito.
In 2019, several police operations managed to evict the largest number of illegal minersbut three years later points where they continue to carry out their activities are still reported, according to the constant tours that the Armed Forces run through the sectors identified as nerve centers for the illegal extraction of minerals, mainly gold.
The neighboring areas between the provinces of Imbabura and Carchi They are the most desired by illegal miners.
