Controversial gold mining project in Costa Rica: Out of Crucitas!
Since 22.07.10 1157 people have participated in this protest action.
Gold mining project Crucitas
Crucitas is located North of the country, in a fragile area of high rainfall, within the biological corridor San Juan-La Selva, which puts together the Costa Rican forests to the great Mesoamerican corridor. This is one of the country‘s largest biodiversity hot spots, with about 130 tree species per hectare. Thousands of trees are under threat. Also, the most threatened bird species in the country, the green macaw, lives in this area and is equally endangered.
The pollution will remain in Costa Rica, while the gold will go abroad. Besides the forests, the Crucitas mining project jeopardises the water resources on which hundreds of communities depend. The cyanide pollution of underground and superficial surface waters of a large part of the San Juan river basin, bordering Nicaragua, is of great concern to over more than 90% of the population. In order to extract 700,000 ounces of gold, 16 million tons of soil will be crushed and dipped in cyanide.
In contrast, the European Parliament recently issued a striking resolution about the general prohibition of cyanide-based mining technologies within the European Union. Such resolution takes root in three important reasons: first the high toxicity of the cyanide used in gold mining, second the need to preserve human health, the environment and biodiversity and lastly the concern over dangerous technologies used in mining activities that carry possible trans-border consequences. It points also that the benefits do not compensate the risks and that the only guarantee to protect rivers and ecosystems is to forbid the use of cyanide. The situation in Costa Rica is similar to that in Europe with the aggravating facts that the country is more vulnerable to tropical storms, has one of the highest biodiversity rates in the world and is subject to high rainfall.
Write a letter to the new Costa Rican president, asking her to use her powers and veto the presidential decree 34801-MINAET, with which the Crucitas Mining Project would come to a halt and also the destruction of the primeval forest.
“We can live without gold, but not without water.”
