The First Ethics Tribunal on Border Mining in Latin America will hear cases involving Argentina and Chile, Bolivia and Brazil, and Ecuador and Peru in its Sep. 30 sessions in the Chilean capital. The communities and institutions interested in participating can present their complaints by e-mail to conflictosmineros@conflictosmineros.net until Aug. 15.

The organizers are Ecological Action of Ecuador, CooperAction of Peru, Bolivian Forum on Environment and Development, the Latin American Mining Conflicts Observatory, and the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts in Chile (OLCA).

“We want to conduct this ethics trial against a transnational mining sector that respects nothing — not protected areas, not indigenous peoples, not fragile ecosystems — in order to understand how they operate and make visible this new reality of mining expansion along the borders of the region's countries,” OLCA director Lucio Cuenca told Tierramérica.