In a world where success means earning a lot of money we are sometimes (or oftentimes) faced with ethical dilemmas. One such example is the proposed Cerro Colorado Mine in the Comarca province of Panama. The proposed mine holds an estimated $200 billion of gold and copper and is considered the worlds second largest copper deposit. The Comarca, Panama's equivalent of an American 'Reservation', is apparently being told they do not own the land beneath the soil and therefore cannot stop the mining project. Therefore the indigenous Ngobe people, with few options, have been protesting the recent road construction to the proposed mine. Yesterday a three-year-old girl was killed in a tear-gassing incident.
What might the effect of the mine be?
The Ngobe people earn an average of $500/yr per family, making them some of the poorest people in the world. They are stuck in a poverty trap which consists of few opportunities to leave the Comarca, low formal education, and rampant sickness. Faced with these challenges, Ngobe's have become dependent on their land and streams for food, drinking water, and bathing. For these reasons, an open-pit mine which would pollute the water, destroy the land, and create huge amounts of waste could be disastrous to a way of life the most of the world left behind hundreds of years ago.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded." These values are intrinsic to the Ngobe people -it's the only way they can survive. Maybe it's time for us rethink the values that run our world.
