CLA intern reflects on coal mining in Colombia and the cutting-edge community legal work of 'Tierra Digna'

Leah Gardner is a law student at McGill University. She interned at Tierra Digna in Bogota, Colombia in the summer of 2013 through Canadian Lawyers Abroad and Avocats sans frontières.

August 16, 2013 — Bogota, Colombia

It's 35 degrees out and muggy and Andrea Torres, a lawyer with Tierra Digna, is hard at work in the back yard with community leaders in the town of Don Jaca, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.

The region is a vacation spot for many but, for this rural community, it's getting harder and harder to carve out a life here. In the past the town was largely sustained by subsistence fishing. This changed in the 1980s and 90s when two coal-exporting ports were constructed on either side of it. Since then, the increased traffic and disruption of the aquatic ecosystem has made fishing impossible.
 

Leah holding a piece of coal (Photo courtesy of Leah Gardner)
 

Some fishermen were employed by the nearby Prodeco port when it went up. However, it was recently relocated, and the men are once again out of work. Community leaders are now considering other economic activities like eco-tourism and the restoration of fish populations.

However, without compensation from the port owners; stricter environmental controls — the most recent coal spill occurred in January 2013 at the Drummond port —; and basic services like access to water, this will likely be impossible.

The train tracks that cut through Don Jaca lead to a region of open pit coal mines several hours by car inland. The mines, like the ports, are owned by multinational companies like Glencore Xstrata (Switzerland), Drummond (American) and Colombian Natural Resources (American, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs).

Here, the over 100 year-old Afro-Colombian community of Boquerón is being forcibly relocated by order of the Colombian government, which has cited levels of coal dust contamination that exceed what livable standards allow.

Tierra Digna is also accompanying this town through the complex and difficult relocation process.
 

The community of Boquerón, Colombia (Photo courtesy of Leah Gardner)
 

After a week of field work, Torres heads back to the Colombian organization's modest, one-room office in chilly Bogota. Here she and her colleagues work long hours on their cases, all while trying to fund creative and effective legal work for low-income communities.

Tierra Digna's work is multifaceted. It consists of community organizing, research, advocacy and legal strategies for communities affected by large-scale investment projects like dams, water privatization, mining and forestry. "The law is a tool that should be used along with other strategies to serve society," says Torres, who is one of the three women who started the organization in 2010.

The founding lawyers of Tierra Digna cut their teeth at Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CCAJAR), Colombia's most established human rights lawyers collective. Here they helped bring cases for massacres and targeted killings related to the armed conflict.
 

Leah in the Tierra Digna office, Bogota, Colombia (Photo courtesy of Leah Gardner)
 

"All approaches to peace are important [...] For example, one of the problems in Colombia is the conflict generated by multinational companies exploiting the country's natural resources. Our work focuses on that," said Torres.

Many of the foreign companies present in Colombia are registered in Canada. For example, rePlan, the firm hired to manage the resettlement of Boquerón, is based in Toronto.

The presence of Canadian companies in the country, like Gran Colombia Gold, Pacific Rubiales and Prima Hardwoods, has been mired in controversy. The amount of Canadian investment in Colombia is likely to grow following the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which came into effect in August 2011.

The name Tierra Digna roughly translates to 'Dignified Land'. "The idea behind the name is that the land isn't an object. It's part of us and we both deserve respect. We want our work to express that," said Torres.

To learn more about the organization and to donate, visit their new website (fully up in September) at www.tierradigna.org.