Peeling Copper: A Case of Illegal Mining to Save the Planet

Mining is a contributing factor to socio-ecological conflicts in Colombia and Mocoa, Putumayo, is no exception. In April 2018, the Supreme Court of Justice issued Ruling 4360 of 2018, declaring the Amazon as a subject of rights. A few months later, in December 2018, the Mayor's Office of Mocoa issued municipal agreement 020 prohibiting large and medium-scale mining. This has not prevented Libero Cobre, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Libero Copper & Gold, whose main shareholder is the Azerbaijani giant Anglo Asian Mining, from carrying out exploration activities for the possible large-scale extraction of copper at the expense of the ecological integrity of the Amazonian foothills. In order to circumvent or modify legal regulations, the mining company has adopted a strategy of influencing favourable decisions at both local and national levels. Through environmental activism in defence of the territory of Mocoa, several of these strategies have been experienced first-hand, and on several occasions the aim of activism has been to unmask them. In this chapter, based on the first author's experience of environmental activism and the second author's research on socio-ecological conflicts, we present the strategies used by this multinational actor to promote a mining project in the Amazon region, whose discourse is based on energy transition as a response to climate change. In the text, we problematise how the concept of illegal mining is used in the public sphere, as the current mining law (Law 685 of 2001) focuses on the possession or absence of a title, which means that illegal mining is often used to refer to some types of mining, but not others. We conclude the chapter with a reflection on how this selective use affects legal, institutional and social efforts to prevent environmental degradation in the Amazon.