Broadening the Picture from a Socio-Legal Perspective
Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2025 4:59 am
What Changes to Expect?
Despite the relevance of the doctrinal development of the right to a healthy environment and the ambitious collective reparations, the local conditions and the national context will represent great obstacles to the full realization of the decision.
In 2006, La Oroya was classified as one of the ten most contaminated cities on the planet, which is representative of a very long history of mining contamination, economic dependence and land dispossession. Limited by legal constraints arising from the Inter-American Convention, the scope of the Court’s decision falls short in the bigger picture of an environmental sacrifice zone. It focuses on the immediate causes of human rights violations regarding the State’s non-compliance with environmental and health standards, while it ignores the root causes of structural inequality, ethnic discrimination and extractive economy. This context will make it barely impossible for the Peruvian State to completely accomplish the reparations.
As pointed out by Arelí Valencia, the La Oroya case should not be characterized simply as the failure of the company and the State to fulfil legal obligations, but as a confluence of international and domestic politico-economic forces that reproduce an extractive status quo where people are forced to exchange their health for work; in other words, a human rights trade-off. In concrete, the emergence of environmental consciousness in the last decades contrasted with the urgency of the population of La Oroya to preserve their work and means of life, this is why the workers were the social support for the company’s lack of compliance and often consider environmentalists as enemies.
In the Court’s hearings, we can hear the testimony of one of the victims when asked what her goal in the case was: “I want to return to my birthplace and my name to be cleansed of all stains. The workers accused zalo database me as an enemy of La Oroya, but I am not that person”. Not even this international judgment may allow her aspiration to come true because the desire of a large part of the population, especially of the 1305 workers who became the owners of the company, is that the metallurgical industry resume activities.
Furthermore, there is an unfavourable institutional context to implementing the reparations ordered by the Inter-American Court. The Peruvian economy is highly dependent on extractive activities, thus, the institutional arrangements tend to prioritize laws and policies that are convenient for large extractive investments to the detriment of those that protect the environment. As indicated by the Court, air quality standards in Peruvian legislation were reduced to below what the WHO considers appropriate, which is a regressive measure in the protection of the environment (par. 186).
Crucially, in what configures a conflict of interest, the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines is in charge both of ensuring auspicious conditions for investors and of inspecting environmental compliance. Thus, it is not likely that Peru will comply with the Court’s order (par. 346) to modify its legislation according to international law, as the State is constantly the object of external pressure to weaken environmental standards. In the last years, the Peruvian Mining, Oil and Energy Society has repeatedly denounced the excessive procedures and bureaucracy that impede long-scale mining investments from succeeding. Accordingly, regressive measures in the protection of the environment have become more frequent.
Despite the relevance of the doctrinal development of the right to a healthy environment and the ambitious collective reparations, the local conditions and the national context will represent great obstacles to the full realization of the decision.
In 2006, La Oroya was classified as one of the ten most contaminated cities on the planet, which is representative of a very long history of mining contamination, economic dependence and land dispossession. Limited by legal constraints arising from the Inter-American Convention, the scope of the Court’s decision falls short in the bigger picture of an environmental sacrifice zone. It focuses on the immediate causes of human rights violations regarding the State’s non-compliance with environmental and health standards, while it ignores the root causes of structural inequality, ethnic discrimination and extractive economy. This context will make it barely impossible for the Peruvian State to completely accomplish the reparations.
As pointed out by Arelí Valencia, the La Oroya case should not be characterized simply as the failure of the company and the State to fulfil legal obligations, but as a confluence of international and domestic politico-economic forces that reproduce an extractive status quo where people are forced to exchange their health for work; in other words, a human rights trade-off. In concrete, the emergence of environmental consciousness in the last decades contrasted with the urgency of the population of La Oroya to preserve their work and means of life, this is why the workers were the social support for the company’s lack of compliance and often consider environmentalists as enemies.
In the Court’s hearings, we can hear the testimony of one of the victims when asked what her goal in the case was: “I want to return to my birthplace and my name to be cleansed of all stains. The workers accused zalo database me as an enemy of La Oroya, but I am not that person”. Not even this international judgment may allow her aspiration to come true because the desire of a large part of the population, especially of the 1305 workers who became the owners of the company, is that the metallurgical industry resume activities.
Furthermore, there is an unfavourable institutional context to implementing the reparations ordered by the Inter-American Court. The Peruvian economy is highly dependent on extractive activities, thus, the institutional arrangements tend to prioritize laws and policies that are convenient for large extractive investments to the detriment of those that protect the environment. As indicated by the Court, air quality standards in Peruvian legislation were reduced to below what the WHO considers appropriate, which is a regressive measure in the protection of the environment (par. 186).
Crucially, in what configures a conflict of interest, the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines is in charge both of ensuring auspicious conditions for investors and of inspecting environmental compliance. Thus, it is not likely that Peru will comply with the Court’s order (par. 346) to modify its legislation according to international law, as the State is constantly the object of external pressure to weaken environmental standards. In the last years, the Peruvian Mining, Oil and Energy Society has repeatedly denounced the excessive procedures and bureaucracy that impede long-scale mining investments from succeeding. Accordingly, regressive measures in the protection of the environment have become more frequent.