Latin America

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, Latin America is often overlooked or underestimated in its relevance and importance to the UK. The recent White Paper on international development, for example, contains only a tiny handful of specific references to this vast continent, despite prioritising some strategic themes of central concern within Latin America, in which the UK has a critical mutual interest and an established global leadership that could be leveraged more proactively, such as on human rights and business responsibility.

I am going to confine my remarks today to an issue of urgent concern in Peru and Colombia, where the UK is in a unique position to take the right initiatives to prevent further harm and redress existing problems. This is the impact of mining on the rights of indigenous populations and the environment. I declare my interests as a past president of the Peru Support Group and my involvement in another human rights NGO, ABColombia, under whose auspices I visited Colombia to evaluate progress in implementing the peace accord of 2016. I am grateful to both organisations for their excellent briefings and valuable work.

Mentioning the peace accord brings me to the first point of why the UK has such responsibility and influence in this matter: we are of course the penholder in the Security Council for the Colombian peace process. Added to which, we were—and I hope, remain—a leading voice at the UN in support of the principles of business and human rights, known as the Ruggie principles.

The third strand of UK interest is that the main mining company currently responsible for controversial activity, Glencore plc, is listed on the London Stock Exchange and receives funding and investment from UK financial institutions. A group of Peruvian and Colombian environmental and human rights defenders were in the UK only last week. Many of us met them and heard about the existential threats they are up against to preserve their land, way of life, food, water and health in the face of mining developments by Glencore.

The Cerrejón mine in La Guajira, Colombia, is wholly owned by Glencore and is one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world. Its expansion over four decades has led to environmental degradation and serious human rights impacts. Studies show air pollution in excess of WHO recommended limits and in breach of limits imposed by the Colombian courts, raising the risk of cancer, DNA damage and chromosomal instability for those living in the region. The mine also consumes and contaminates significant quantities of water. The Ranchería River has unsafe levels of harmful metals, including mercury and lead, as a result of liquid waste being dumped in it, resulting in water scarcity, food scarcity, illness and disease.

Guajira is the ancestral land of the Wayuu people and many of their communities have been displaced to make way for the mine. Afro-Colombian and campesino communities have also been displaced, with evictions sometimes being carried out with armed guards, tear gas and metal projectiles. In 2016, bulldozers were used to destroy an Afro-Colombian village.

In Peru, where the UK is the largest foreign direct investor, it is a similar story. A recent report examined Glencore’s mining activities in the Espinar region, the ancestral territory of the Quechua and K’ana indigenous peoples, who are being exposed to levels of heavy metals, including mercury and arsenic, beyond what is permissible under international standards.

Water is contaminated and proposed further expansion is set to exacerbate fragmentation of communities and loss of territory, in breach of ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, including by paying inadequate attention to consulting those affected in order to obtain free, prior and informed consent before entire communities are displaced.

Also common to both countries is the acute vulnerability of environmental and human rights defenders. In recent years the number killed in Colombia has been unprecedented and only last week in Peru an indigenous leader was gunned down after a meeting about defending land against illegal loggers and cocaine producers.

Colombia’s constitutional court has ruled that Glencore should not pursue further expansion, saying that large-scale mining puts the environment and health at risk. Glencore’s response has been to sue the Colombian Government, using the investor-to-state dispute settlement mechanism, the ISDS, which forms part of the Colombia-UK bilateral investment treaty, the BIT. The ISDS process is secretive and therefore undemocratic and places enforceable obligations only on states, meaning that investors, such as Glencore, can win cases even if they have violated domestic law or international standards. Awards can run into millions of dollars and have led to several countries, including Australia and Brazil, omitting ISDS mechanisms from their trade agreements. Indeed, between 2017 and 2021, only one-third of trade agreements contained ISDS clauses and other countries such as Canada and the US are qualifying their use.

The ISDS is effectively a barrier to the proper implementation of the Colombian peace accord, delaying action on climate change and human rights, and legislation to protect health. The UK therefore, as UN penholder, has a special responsibility to act to mitigate this damage and I ask the Minister whether the Government will look seriously and urgently at terminating the UK-Colombia bilateral investment treaty, whose initial term expires in October 2024, but with automatic renewal for an indefinite period.

The Minister will know that if it is terminated unilaterally, a sunset clause of 15 years would protect existing investments and cause untold further damage to communities and the environment, not to mention the success of the peace accord, which should be being strengthened by President Petro’s “Total Peace” policy, not undermined by a British-listed mining company operating in defiance of Colombian law. An end to the BIT by mutual consent would neutralise the sunset clause, so I urge the noble Lord to initiate negotiations with this objective. This would be a major practical step, demonstrating the UK’s commitment to its responsibility as penholder. We have already helped the Colombian Government achieve an expansion of the UN mission of verification to include monitoring of the ELN peace process, and the Government deserve credit and congratulations for that. I hope the Minister will now build on that by acting as I have suggested on the BIT.

On Peru, I ask the noble Lord to raise with his opposite numbers in Peru the case for halting Glencore’s proposed mining expansion until it has produced a genuine environmental impact assessment and an opportunity for communities to give informed consent.

Finally, I ask the Minister if he will now support new legislation to mandate due diligence in supply chains and to hold commercial organisations accountable for their impacts on human rights and the environment. This would be in line with our commitment to the Ruggie principles and demonstrate on the international stage that the UK can walk the walk as well as talk the talk. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will agree to seek government support for the Private Member’s Bill introduced last week by my noble friend Lady Young of Hornsey, which would enact these much-needed provisions. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the issues and questions I have raised, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, for the opportunity to raise them.