A heavy storm caused flooding in areas of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, on August 16. These phenomena mostly occur during the rainy season, partly due to the environmental degradation of a water recharge area known as El Espino. Credit: Cruz Roja de El Salvador

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 25 2025 (IPS)

Two construction projects pushed by the government of El Salvador, in a water recharge area adjacent to the country’s capital, on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano, threaten to make the area more vulnerable and increase the risk of flooding in the city’s poor neighborhoods downstream.

That is what environmentalists, and especially residents of communities who have lived for decades in this green area and witnessed the impact of urban expansion, told IPS.  Like a cancer, it is slowly eating away at the 800 hectares of what was, in the 19th century, one of the main coffee farms, El Espino, in what is now the western periphery of San Salvador.“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating” –Héctor López.

“I was born here, I am a native of this farm, and I have seen how everything has been deteriorating,” 63-year-old Héctor López, a member of the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, told IPS. The cooperative has 100 members who are mostly dedicated to coffee cultivation.

“It was all pure coffee plantations, owned by the Dueñas family, and over time El Espino has been affected by the constructions”, said López.

The two new government projects continue the pattern of deforestation that the property has been subjected to since the 1990s, a product of the unstoppable advance of the real estate sector.

These are the El Salvador National Stadium, which will hold 50,000 seats and whose construction began in September 2022 on an area of 55,000 square meters, and is expected to be ready in 2027.

Meanwhile, the new Center for Fairs and Conventions (Cifco) will begin construction in the coming months on an area of similar size. Both would cover about 10 hectares.

The cost of the stadium is around 100 million dollars, but the authorities have not revealed the figure for the Cifco.

Runoff coming down from the San Salvador volcano overflows a river, downstream, and floods areas populated by low-income families in the southern part of the city. The capacity to absorb rainwater will be affected by two large construction projects promoted by the Salvadoran government. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The forest turned to cement

With each new construction, the soil absorbs less rainwater, and each storm turns the runoff into a river that reaches the poor neighborhoods of San Salvador, a city of 2.4 million inhabitants, including its metropolitan area, within a total country population of six million.

“When everything is paved, the water flows downward and causes flooding in neighborhoods like Santa Lucía,” Ricardo Navarro of the Center for Appropriate Technology (Cesta) told IPS, referring to a residential area of low-income families located in eastern San Salvador.

“When rainwater soaks into the forests, there isn’t much runoff, but without the forest, flooding increases,” adds Navarro, who founded Cesta 45 years ago, the local branch of Friends of the Earth.

The coffee plantation that still survives in El Espino is a forest populated with a rich diversity of tree species and wildlife.

Both the stadium and the convention center are funded by non-reimbursable funds from China, which also donated a US$54 million library, inaugurated in November 2023, as a sort of reward because El Salvador ended the relations it had maintained for decades with Taiwan in 2018.

China considers Taiwan part of its territory and rewards nations that break ties with Taiwan, which is currently recognized as an independent nation by only 12 countries.

Additionally, as part of this package of donations, China built a US$24 million tourist pier in the port city of La Libertad, south of San Salvador on the Pacific coast, and is constructing a water purification plant at Lake Ilopango, east of the capital, among other projects.

Elsa Méndez, together with Ever Martínez, from the El Espino Agricultural Production Cooperative, laments that urban development in the area affects them every rainy season, to the west of San Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Navarro lamented the lack of environmental awareness among the authorities, and more specifically, of the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, who has governed with a markedly authoritarian style since taking office in June 2019. In 2024, he won a second consecutive term, something previously prohibited by the Republic’s Constitution.

Lawmakers from his party, New Ideas, who control the unicameral Legislative Assembly, amended the constitution on July 31 to allow Bukele the option to run for the presidency as many times as he wishes.

Because of this authoritarian style, it is known that in El Salvador, nothing is done without the consent of the ruler.

“President Bukele: Not long ago there was a storm, which caused serious flooding in the lower parts of the city. President, the climate is changing, I can guarantee you, with absolute certainty, that the climate situation is going to get much worse due to climate change,” Navarro urged.

The environmentalist suggested that, in any case, if the construction is not stopped, the convention center should be built adjacent to the stadium, so that common spaces, such as the parking area, could be shared.

The El Espino farm belonged to the Dueñas family, one of the wealthiest in the country, in the 19th century, then linked to coffee production. Land reform seized the property in 1980 and handed it over to dozens of families who worked there as colonists, peasants who labored on the farm in semi-slavery conditions and received a portion of land to build their house.

However, a court ruling decided in 1986 that a part of the farm, around 250 hectares, was urbanizable land and should be returned to the Dueñas family.

Since then, that segment of the farm has been turning into an area of permanent construction of shopping malls and luxury residences, developed by Urbánica, the real estate arm of the Dueñas family.

“If we analyze the companies that are building there and if we pull the thread, we end up at Urbanística,” economist José Luis Magaña explained to IPS.

“There should be clarity about what the infrastructure needs are,” said the expert on the two government projects. “Instead of financing a school repair project with a loan from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration, the government could have asked the Asian power to rebuild those educational centers”, he adds.

In 2022, several families from the El Espino cooperative participated in the “San Salvador sponge city” project, to increase rainwater filtration levels through the construction of trenches and absorption wells, to prevent runoff from causing floods downstream. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

The usual floods

On the night of August 15, a heavy storm caused flooding in several sectors of the Salvadoran capital, whose avenues seemed to turn into rivers and lagoons, with hundreds of cars stuck.

In some areas, trash clogged the city’s storm drains and the water rose and flooded into residential areas. Around 25 families were evacuated and sheltered in safe locations.

San Salvador was founded in 1545 at the foot of the San Salvador volcano, a massif rising 1893 meters above sea level, and this location has placed the city at risk of floods and landslides.

In September 1982, a mudflow came down from the volcano’s summit and buried part of a residential area called Montebello, killing about 500 people.

The southern zone of the capital is the most affected by flooding during the rainy season, from May to November. The rain and runoff coming down from the volcano feed small streams along the way, which in turn flow into the El Arenal stream and the populous Málaga neighborhood.

In July 2008, heavy rains caused that stream to overflow, and 32 people drowned when a bus was swept away by the current.

As a way to reduce the vulnerability of this southern zone, in 2020 the city was part of the “Sponge City” project, promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Some 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations were restored in the upper part of the San Salvador volcano, seeking to reactivate the capacity to absorb rainwater through the construction of catchment tanks and trenches amidst the coffee fields.

Urbánica is the real estate arm of the Dueñas family, which builds luxury residences in the capital of El Salvador, in the area of the former El Espino farm, like the one in the image, called Alcalá. Credit: Urbánica

Environmental hope remains

Members of the El Espino cooperative actively participated in that project, as the communities of former colonists of the Dueñas family continue to live on the segment of the farm the land reform granted them, which currently totals 314 hectares and are also hit by the constructions in the upper part, called El Boquerón, near the volcano’s crater.

Deforestation continues there to make way for more restaurants and luxury residences.

“We are worried that more and more construction keeps happening, and there are fewer trees, and more water runoff flowing downstream,” said cooperative member López, who took part in a meeting of the organization’s board members on August 19 when IPS visited the area.

Elsa Méndez, also a cooperative member, stated: “We try to infiltrate water with the trenches, but when the ground is already too saturated with water, we can’t do everything as a cooperative either. Everyone must raise awareness among all people, because the runoff from the volcano carries trash, bottles, plastic, etc.”

On Saturday, 16 families from the community went to reforest the upper area, and the task also served “to teach our children how to reforest,” said Méndez.

Social movement Todos Somos El Espino (We Are All El Espino) has called for a second rally to protest against the construction of the convention center on Saturday, August 23, as part of their plan to defend the increasingly threatened forest.

“At this march, we will be doing the first preliminary count of the signatures collected in physical form… so that Salvadorans can say, ‘I defend El Espino,'” Gabriela Capacho, who is part of that movement, told IPS.

Stands in the Arena Dunas in the city of Natal in Northeast Brazil, one of the eight FIFA World Cup stadiums granted a sustainable construction certificate. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
NATAL, Brazil, May 15 2014 (IPS)

Brazil’s efforts to promote the image of an environmentally sustainable World Cup have focused on the stadiums built for the tournament. But the 12 cities where the matches will be played are in a race against time to complete the urban transport projects.

Natal, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Norte in the Brazilian Northeast, is one of the cities that will host the World Cup 2014, and four games will be played here. This city of 800,000 people is known in this country as the “city of the sun” because there are more than 300 days of sunshine a year, enjoyed by visitors to the state’s 400 km of beaches.

This is the city with the cleanest air in South America, according to a study carried out in 1994 by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in partnership with the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Water quality here is also excellent, because the water is “filtered” by the vast dunes surrounding the city.

Natal, which receives 1.5 million tourists a year, is now seeking an image of a sustainable city during the World Cup, which will take place in Brazil Jun. 12-Jul. 13.

The Arena Dunas stadium in Natal was officially inaugurated on Jan. 22, with a capacity for 42,000 spectators. The cost went 30 percent over the 190 million dollar budget, but at least the project is considered environmentally sustainable.

The OAS construction company, which built and is managing the stadium, will harvest rainwater, which will cut water consumption by 40 percent. And nearly 100 percent of the waste generated will be recycled.

In contrast with how early the stadium was finished, the urban transport works in the city run the risk of not being completed by the World Cup kickoff match on Jun. 13 – which could hurt the image of Natal as a sustainable World Cup city.

Unfinished transportation works around the stadium in Natal where the first of the four FIFA World Cup matches to be hosted by this city will take place on Jun. 13. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

Of the seven transport projects planned, only one was completed, a year ago. At that time the remaining six were still only on paper, and three ended up being cancelled, after the city government admitted that it was unable to implement them.

The mayor of Natal, Carlos Eduardo Alves of the opposition Democratic Labour Party (PDT), told IPS that the city would be ready to host the World Cup thanks to 250 million dollars in federal funds.

“When Natal was chosen to be one of the host cities, it had 53 months to build the infrastructure and complete the projects. When I took office in January 2013, there were only 18 months to go, and nothing had started yet,” he said.

A total of 1,450 people are employed in shifts, 24/7, on the infrastructure projects.

Alves guaranteed that six tunnels and a viaduct would be finished by May 31. A second viaduct won’t be done on time, but it will nevertheless be open to traffic during the World Cup.

“Natal won’t end after the World Cup,” the mayor said. “It will leave us with the biggest drainage system in the city, which cost 60 million dollars, and which will be 70 percent complete by the start of the World Cup.”

He added that 4,000 trees would be planted around the city.

He also said the big problem facing Brazilian cities today is traffic congestion, which is why tunnels and viaducts are being built, to ease traffic jams.

But the coordinator of transport research in the Civil Energy Department of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Enilson Medeiros dos Santos, doubts that the six transport construction projects around the stadium will be finished in time for the tournament.

“I don’t think they’ll be completed,” Santos said. “The viaduct of the BR-101 freeway [next to the stadium] was not in the original project and doesn’t stand a chance of being finished – work got started on it really late.”

Santos, a prominent voice in urban planning in Natal, complained that his team was not consulted when the transport plans were drawn up.

“The city that it took the longest for the federal government’s funds to reach was Natal,” he said. “The moment for planning is past; now concrete spending plans are needed.”

Santos also complained about a lack of information. Of the cities that will host the World Cup games, Natal was ranked the lowest on transparency in investment in 2013 by the Ethos Institute.

“No one has access to the executive projects, it’s all a total mystery,” he said.

According to Santos, Natal was the fruit of an accelerated development process and is one of the cities in the Northeast with the highest number of motor vehicles per capita.

The city has one motor vehicle for every four inhabitants, while demand for public transport is falling. There are more than 260,000 vehicles in the city, and since 2000 the number of cars has risen at a rate of 20,000 a year.

“The city does not have chronic congestion, but traffic has gotten worse quickly in the last 10 years. We had already pointed out the problem in 1998, if the city failed to put in place high-quality public transport systems,” Santos said.

In June 2012, during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), FIFA, the international governing body of association football, announced that it would invest 20 million dollars to make the 2014 World Cup the first with a comprehensive sustainability strategy.

The strategy included “green” stadiums, waste management, community support, reducing and offsetting carbon emissions, renewable energy, climate change and capacity development, according to FIFA and the Local Organising Committee.

FIFA also stated that it would give priority to environmentally-friendly suppliers, and that it would carry out studies to assess the environmental impacts on the areas around the stadiums.

In addition, the construction projects had to obtain environmental permits, as a condition for receiving financing from the country’s state-owned development bank, the BNDES.

Another BNDES requisite was for the stadiums and other installations to receive LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification granted by the U.S. Green Building Council, which is recognised by more than 130 countries.

Eight of the 12 World Cup stadiums followed sustainable construction guidelines, using water and energy saving technologies and recycled materials such as demolition waste.

But what apparently will not be sustainable is the use of the stadium after the World Cup. There is a danger that the Arena Dunas will become a white elephant because football matches in that area do not generally draw more than 6,000 people, OAS business manager Artur Couto acknowledged to IPS.

That means it would take over 3,000 matches just to pay off the construction costs.

But Couto defended the stadium as a multi-use structure. “It was built with the concept of multi-functionality, to be a living cell in the city. There are 40 dates for football games a year, but there are other uses as well, such as concerts and shows.”

The Andrade Gutierrez construction company is responsible for the works at the Arena da Amazônia stadium in the northern Brazilian city of Manaus, where four workers have died. Credit: Glauber Queiroz – Portal da Copa, Gobierno de Brasil

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 11 2014 (IPS)

The pressure to complete 12 football stadiums in Brazil in time for the FIFA World Cup in June has meant long, exhausting workdays of up to 18 hours, which has increased the risk of accidents and deaths.

Nine workers have already died on the work sites – seven in accidents and two from heart attacks.

The last fatal accident happened on Mar. 29 at the Arena Corinthians in the southern city of São Paulo, when 23-year-old Fábio Hamilton da Cruz fell to his death from scaffolding, eight metres up.

His death led to a partial suspension of the works by the justice authorities, who required proof from the company that it had corrected the safety violations.

But on Monday Apr. 7, the Labour Ministry authorised a resumption of the work, because the stadium has to be ready for the World Cup opening match on Jun. 12.

On Feb. 7, Portuguese worker Antônio José Pita Martins, 55, died after being struck on the head while dismantling a crane in the Arena da Amazônia stadium in the northern city of Manaus.

Marcleudo de Melo Ferreira, 22, was killed at the same construction site at 4 AM on Dec. 14 after falling from a height of 35 metres when a rope broke.

That same day, 49-year-old José Antônio da Silva Nascimento died of a heart attack while working on the site’s convention centre. The family complained about the harsh working conditions and the long workdays “from Sunday to Sunday”.

Another worker, Raimundo Nonato Lima da Costa, 49, had died from severe head injuries after falling from a height of five metres at the Arena da Amazônia construction site on Mar. 28, 2013.

In São Paulo, two workers – 42-year-old Fábio Luiz Pereira and 44-year-old Ronaldo Oliveira dos Santos – were killed when a crane collapsed Nov. 27, 2013 at the Corinthians club stadium, better known as “Itaquerão”.

And Abel de Oliveira, 55, died of heart failure on Jul. 19, 2012 while working at the Minas Arena, popularly known as “Mineirão”, in the south-central Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.

The first fatal accident in the preparations for the FIFA World Cup happened on Jun. 11, 2012, when 21-year-old José Afonso de Oliveira Rodrigues fell from a height of 30 metres at the Brasilia National Stadium.

Click on the image to enlarge.

“The government puts pressure on the companies, and they take it out on the workers, who are paying with their lives,” Antônio de Souza Ramalho, president of the Sintracon-SP civil construction workers union of São Paulo and a state legislator for the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, told IPS.

“It was irresponsible to delay the works and then, with the deadline looming, kill workers with exhausting workdays of up to 18 hours,” he said.

“The sins of the World Cup are going to have repercussions for years. We can’t accept accidents, they are criminal,” he said.More than 60 workers died in the construction works for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, according to the Building and Wood Workers International (BWI). By contrast, no one was killed in the preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

According to the trade unionist, workers had already warned of the danger of a collapse of the crane that killed two labourers in São Paulo.

At the Corinthians stadium construction site, a quarry was hastily filled to hold a crane, instead of building a solid cement base, Ramalho said.

“The workers themselves and the safety engineers warned that it was unsafe. We know it was done hastily, because making a cement base takes 60 days, and would have cost more money. They preferred to improvise,” he said.

The results of the investigation into the deaths have not yet been made public.

In December, the Labour Ministry and Odebrecht, the contractor, signed an agreement stipulating that crane workers cannot do overtime or work at night.

And under the agreement, the workday for the rest of the workers must be seven and a half hours, with a one hour lunch break, and they can only work two hours overtime per day.

But according to Ramalho, the agreement is not being respected. “I filed a complaint for the police to investigate. But we have very little legal protection,” he said.

One of the biggest irregularities at the São Paulo work sites are contracts where the worker is paid for a specific job within a designated timeframe. “By paying for a completed task, labour laws that include the cost of social benefits are evaded. Everyone knows this, but there’s no way to prove it,” Ramalho complained.

The president of the Sinduscon-AM civil construction workers union in the northern state of Amazonas, Eduardo Lopes, told IPS that “risk is inherent in construction, but the race to complete projects quickly generates greater danger, without a doubt.”

However, “in the two fatal accidents [on the Arena da Amazônia] work site, the men were using safety equipment,” he said. “The problem was carelessness by the workers who failed to respect safety norms and went into restricted areas.”

What is clear is that when deadlines approach and time starts running out, prevention is pushed to the backburner, admitted mechanical engineer and workplace safety expert Jaques Sherique with the Rio de Janeiro engineering council.

In the remodelling of the Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro, completed in April 2013, no one was killed, but several were injured, mainly due to inadequate disposal of materials, cuts from mishandling materials, and lengthy working days, including working nights.

“The work ends and the worker gets sick afterwards. When the stadium is shining and ready, the workers end up overwhelmed, exhausted and stressed out,” Sherique said.

Civil construction is the industry that generates the most jobs in Brazil: 3.12 million new jobs in 2013. But it is also the area where the number of work-related accidents is growing the most: from 55,000 in 2010 to 62,000 in 2012 – a 12 percent increase, according to the Labour Ministry.

In São Paulo, the number of workplace accidents in the construction industry rose fivefold in the last two years: from 1,386 in 2012 to 7,133 in 2013, according to statistics compiled by Sintracon-SP.

More than 60 workers died in the construction works for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, according to the Building and Wood Workers International (BWI).

By contrast, no one was killed in the preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

“Workers are often glad when they have accidents because they are sent home to rest. And those who refuse to rest will develop injuries and ailments later on,” said Sherique.

He said it is strange but the labour-related ailments that are gaining ground in the construction industry are mental and psychological problems.

“It is a perverse and under-registered problem,” the invisible base of the “iceberg” of workplace safety, he said.

But this does not worry industry, especially in the construction of sports infrastructure, which involves an intense pace of work, heavy pressure and tight deadlines.

Under Brazilian law, workers exposed to unsafe, hazardous or unsanitary conditions must receive extra compensation amounting to six percent of their wages.

“This isn’t reasonable or right, but most of the time these health problems aren’t even reported,” said Sherique.

In 2011, the Superior Labour Court launched a national programme for the prevention of workplace accidents. But “it hasn’t provided concrete results,” the expert said.

It has been four years since the guns fell silent in Sri Lanka’s northern Vanni region, after almost three decades of ethnic violence. Unfortunately peace does not mean the end of hardship for the most vulnerable people here: the women.

Kugamathi Kulasekeran, from the village of Allankulam in northern Sri Lanka, is taking care of three boys, while looking for one missing child. Her husband went missing during the war. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

In general, life has improved for the Northern Province’s 1.2 million inhabitants. Of these, 467,000 are newly returned war displaced, most of whom fled the last bouts of fighting between the government’s armed forces and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from 2008 to 2009.

Central Bank Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal frequently mentions that the previously underdeveloped Northern and Eastern Provinces have been recording double-digit growth rates since the war’s end: in 2010 and 2011, the economy of the Northern Province grew at 21 percent and 27 percent respectively, outstripping national growth rates by leagues.

But on closer inspection, it is clear that not everyone is benefiting from this growth, least of all the 40,000 families that now have single mothers at the helm. Their husbands or partners left dead or missing during the conflict, these women have now become the sole breadwinners of their households.

Researchers and experts say that two main obstacles hamper women’s attempts to reap post-war economic benefits – a development effort that is skewed towards males, and a deeply entrenched patriarchal social structure.

“In spite of their number, female heads of households are marginalised both by the government and their own communities in the north,” said Raksha Vasudevan, author of a recent study on female-headed households published by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Development Studies.

“They are clearly discriminated against in hiring for most jobs, even though they are willing to work in non-traditional roles and also face more difficulties than men in accessing credit,” Vasudevan told IPS.

IPS interviewed several women in the north who said they were willing to work in garment factories, in hotels, or even on construction sites but employers do not seem keen to let women into the workforce.

According to the 2012 Labour Force Survey conducted by the department of census and statistics, the female unemployment rate of 13 percent was six times higher than the male unemployment rate, which stood at two percent in the same time period.

"It is high time the financial sector and other sectors of the economy tap into the…womanpower in the labour force." -- Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, head of the Point Pedro Institute of Development
Cabraal says the years following the war’s end have seen the investment of three to four billion dollars in the north, which formed part of the LTTE’s de facto separate state for the country’s minority Tamil population and thus was left out of national development assistance for over two decades.

The bulk of that money, Cabraal told IPS, has gone into the development of infrastructure like roads, highways, electricity, housing and water projects.

According to Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, head of the Point Pedro Institute of Development based in northern Jaffna, a close glance at the sectors that are booming in the north illustrates why women still complain about the lack of jobs.

The fastest growing sectors in the north in the last two years have been banking and real estate, each expanding by 114 percent; transport has been growing at a rate of 69 percent, construction at 56 percent, fisheries at 78 percent, and hotels and restaurants at 65 percent.

All of those sectors, with no exceptions, are dominated by men.

“It is high time the financial sector and other sectors of the economy tap into the…womanpower in the labour force,” Sarvananthan told IPS.

Many women here said they are eyeing cottage industries like poultry, home gardening and sewing, which they feel have a ready-made market – but they lack the necessary start-up capital to make these small ventures pay.

Even the few women who are able to find work remain trapped by a culture steeped in patriarchal attitudes and behaviours. It is particularly tough for widows, or women whose husbands are missing, to seek non-traditional forms of employment outside “acceptable” positions as schoolteachers, or government clerks.

“The women I interviewed reported feeling ashamed, and fear of being ‘gossiped’ about when they moved around on their own,” said Vasudevan. “Any hint of interacting with non-related males could lead to being ostracised by their communities.”

Women in charge of their families’ welfare, who are forced to interact with male employers or buyers of their produce, thus find themselves hit by the double whammy of poverty and social exclusion.

Savithri, a widow with two young kids aged three and six, has begun to plant vegetables in her small garden in the northern town of Kilinochchi, but says that selling her produce is proving difficult.

“The buyers are all men, they try to bully me and get a cheaper price,” she told IPS.

Savithri said most buyers were keenly aware of her economic distress and would wait until the last possible moment, “just before my harvest was worthless”, to confirm purchases and therefore secure the lowest possible price.

No matter how trying her work gets she knows she must keep it at if she wants to keep sending her children to school.

Soldier or housewife?

During the war, the LTTE developed a strong female cadre contingent, including fighting formations. Women were expected to take up arms for the cause, shattering the old stereotypes of women as fragile creatures, in need of protection and best suited to sitting at home.

But that status accorded to female LTTE cadre did not extend to civilian women, who remained fixed in their role as mother-wife-housekeeper.

Loyalty to one’s husband was of the utmost importance in upholding social relations, a mindset that has travelled down through the war years into peacetime.

Now, “even though remarriage could be an emotionally and financially sensible option for many women, the heavy stigma attached to the idea in Tamil society prevents them from even considering it,” Vasudevan said.

Saroja Sivachandaran, who heads the Jaffna-based Centre for Women and Development, told IPS that post-war assistance programmes targeting single women have not taken off in the north.

“With donor funding now drying out, these women find themselves in even more precarious situations,” she said, referring to the fact that the U.N.-Government of Sri Lanka Joint Plan of Assistance for 2012 was underfunded by 77 percent, having received only 33 million of a desired 147 million dollars.

The lack of proper housing coupled with economic insecurity has created a highly precarious situation for women.

“With many still lacking homes with locking doors, they feel very exposed to attack at any moment,” Vasudevan said.

However, officials in the region told IPS that there were no reports of such incidents, adding that the government is doing all it can to ease the burden on female-headed households.

Rupavathi Keetheswaran, the top public official in the northern Kilinochchi District, told IPS that single women with families have been targeted for livelihood programmes, including credit for home gardening, self-employment and the distribution of cattle.

Migrants employed as construction workers in Thailand receive little training or safety equipment. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, May 21 2013 (IPS)

On the outskirts of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, a group of twelve migrant families lives in a makeshift camp comprised of houses constructed from scrap metal.

They share three toilets between them, and each home consists of nothing more than a single room, whose flimsy walls and roof provide little privacy, and are no match for the heavy monsoon rains that lash northern Thailand between the months of May and November.

Sounds of splashing water fill the air as both male and female migrants, returning from a long day’s work, unwind with a shower in the rudimentary, open-air structures that contain nothing more than a rap connected to a water tank.

Most of these workers are employed on a residential construction site just north of here, where they pour cement, plaster walls, build roofs or install electrical wiring from seven in the morning until six in the evening, seven days a week. They do not have much to show for these gruelling hours on the job, returning home with as little as six dollars a day.

One of this shantytown’s residents, Nang Soi Sat, tells IPS the long working hours and paltry income are not even her biggest concerns: she is more worried about maintaining her legal status in the face of multiple challenges.

Thailand is home to an estimated 2.5 million migrant workers. The country’s economic boom – which has seen an 18.9 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) since 2011 – relies heavily on a constant influx of labour from neighbouring countries. Over 82 percent of the workers hail from Myanmar (Burma), 8.4 percent from Laos and 9.5 percent from Cambodia.

Those from Myanmar say ethnic strife and civil conflict sent them fleeing in search of better opportunities in the region. A network of garment and furniture factories housed in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that dot the Thai-Myanmar border quickly absorb incoming migrants to work for a pittance.

Other key areas of employment for migrants include the seafood and agricultural sectors.

For migrants like Sai Sun Lu, the search for better opportunities did not end with his arrival here. Originally from Myanmar’s volatile Shan State, Lu works over nine hours a day at a site in Chiang Mai, constructing high rise buildings that will likely be converted into commercial centres, residential condos or offices, without a single day off.

He tells IPS he did not want to come to Thailand, but was forced to as a result of intense fighting in his home. His hopes for greener pastures on the other side of the border have been dashed and he now finds himself living in a kind of daily nightmare, toiling in what rights groups have called “appalling” conditions.

According to the U.S. State Department’s report on migration and refugees, Thailand ranks alongside some of the worst offenders of migrants’ rights, including Afghanistan, Chad, Iran and Niger.

Because migrant labourers are typically unskilled, with little awareness of occupational safety, they are easy prey for employers looking to cut corners by dismissing safety concerns.

In the construction sector, inadequate training in the proper use of machinery and a lack of protective equipment such as body harnesses or guardrail systems pose a grave threat to those who work on buildings as high as 27 to 69 stories.

On Sai Sun Lu’s construction site, “there have been many accidents and deaths. Some workers have slipped and fallen from the high rises but we receive very little or no compensation,” he said.

“As Burmese we have to be extra careful because if we make any mistakes then our employers can terminate our work without any explanation.”

Fear of this last consequence is, for many workers, second only to the fear of death, and a very common one among migrants from Myanmar who account for 75 percent of Thailand’s one million undocumented workers, according to the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University.

The 2008 National Verification Programme (NVP) was intended to legalise the status of incoming migrants and provide them with basic protections under Thai labour laws, such as access to social security schemes, official work accident compensation and the ability to apply for driving licences.

However, rights activists contend that the NVP’s registration fees are “extortionate”, often requiring three times the average worker’s monthly salary of between 100 and 167 dollars.

According to this year’s World Report, published annually by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Thai employers frequently seize migrant workers’ documents, thus rendering them bonded labourers, while government policies – like the Thai cabinet’s 2010 resolution to fine employees if their papers carry outdated information – impose severe restrictions on migrant workers’ ability to change jobs.

Even migrants with all their legal papers in hand often go to pains to avoid encounters with the police for fear of being harassed, physically abused, or arrested.

In desperation, many have turned to personal networks of friends and family members to gain access into the country.

In rural Myanmar, where most migrants come from, informal transporters linked to smugglers with networks along the border facilitate entry into Thailand. This system has led to the proliferation of so-called recruiters, or agents, who charge exorbitant fees in exchange for providing such services as remitting money, establishing communication channels between families, or securing employment.

Following allegations of rampant corruption among recruitment agencies, the Labour Ministry of Myanmar recently banned 12 agencies from sending migrant workers to Thailand, according to an internal memo obtained by ‘The Myanmar Times’.

Earlier this month, Myanmar’s Deputy Labour Minister Myint Thein assured labour activists and migrants that the state was doing everything possible to rein in illegal actors and ensure safe, affordable passage between the two countries. It has a vested interest in doing so: a 2010 ILO report found that the average migrant worker in Thailand sent home about 1,000 dollars every month, with total remittances from Thailand accounting for about five percent of Myanmar’s annual GDP.

Gated residential communities on the Paraná Delta have sprawled out of control in recent years, and are plugging up the local ecosystem and preventing the natural runoff of water that cushions the impact of floods in a vast area near the Argentine capital.

The problem was particularly highlighted after the tragic flooding in early April in the city of Buenos Aires, and especially in La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, where torrential rains caused the death of almost 60 people.

Traditional homes in the Delta del Tigre are built on stilts, coexisting in harmony with the changing water levels. Credit: Javier Vidal/CC BY 2.0

The real estate construction boom, the lack of infrastructure such as storm drains to cope with increasingly frequent and heavy rains, and the lack of contingency plans in response to disasters are now at the centre of debate in Argentina.

The Paraná river delta is an immense wetland covering 17,500 square kilometres in the lower course of the nearly 5,000-kilometre long Paraná river, which divides into a labyrinth of smaller branches before flowing into the Río de la Plata estuary.

Traditional houses on the islands of the delta are built on stilts, have wooden jetties and are surrounded by reed beds. They coexist harmoniously with an ecosystem that is prepared periodically to receive large amounts of floodwater.

It is an area of high biodiversity which also provides many environmental services. The most outstanding are provision of water and the capacity to regulate the river’s floods, which are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change caused by global warming.

In recent years, however, 229 housing developments of different sizes have been built on the floodplains of the delta, most of them with luxury homes, golf courses, tennis courts, shopping centres, schools and horse-riding centres.

Town planners said that about 90 percent of these developments were built on floodplains subject to overflow from rivers and streams, and 10 percent on silt islands that were artificially levelled or filled in to support the residential complexes.

Daniel Blanco, the head of Fundación Humedales (Wetlands Foundation), told IPS in an interview that the building expansion was “very aggressive.” Now the area is at risk of losing its natural capacity to absorb water, just as storms are becoming more intense.

Experts with the NGO, which works for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands, say that under the false pretext that the land is unproductive, real estate projects went ahead with levelling, draining and diverting water courses, affecting the natural functions of the wetland.

“They are trying to convert the place into a dryland system,” complain the authors of “Bienes y servicios ecosistémicos de los humedales del Delta del Paraná” (Ecosystem Goods and Services in the Paraná Delta Wetlands), a study that warns of the risk of flooding in adjacent areas.

The study, by Patricia Kandus, Natalia Morandeira and Facundo Schivo of Fundación Humedales, indicates that the delta ecosystem does not prevent flooding, but cushions the rise of the river level, retains part of the volume, filters the water and releases it slowly thanks to its plant cover which acts like a sponge.

Warnings from environmentalists and local residents, added to the severe impact of heavy rains in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, managed to block some investment projects, and have led to progress in regulating new building on the islands.

One of the projects brought to a halt is Colony Park, which promised “a private island of peace and tranquillity” on 300 hectares of the Delta del Tigre, the lowest-lying section of the wetlands, in the northeast of the province of Buenos Aires. According to its promotional advertising, the building of 1,000 “luxury” dwellings was planned.

Due to the controversy generated by the project, as well as a lawsuit brought by residents, in 2012 the municipality of Tigre with the help and expertise of environmental organisations drew up stricter planning regulations for building on the islands in that district.

Acknowledging the fragility of the delta ecosystem, the new regulations require buildings to be constructed on stilts, forbid the alteration of the natural elevation of the islands – which usually grow by accumulating sediment – and ban artificial filling in of the centre of the islands.

The islands of the delta are normally bowl-shaped, with a hollow in the centre that contributes to retaining excess floodwater. But these hollows were being filled in to raise the elevation and avoid flooding the building site.

In Campana, another municipality of Buenos Aires, a local association, Vecinos del Humedal, got a temporary stay against a residential development planned for 40,000 people on the Luján river, one of the delta tributaries.

Alejandro Fernández, a member of the association, told IPS that local people got together to resist the project in their area, where several gated communities are already causing flooding in the surrounding areas.

In late October a heavy storm caused the level of the Paraná river to rise by nearly five metres, creating severe flooding not only along the riverside but also in the centre of the city of Luján, where the floodwater reached the basilica, an international tourist attraction.

“All along the Luján river, the building of private complexes has been allowed on the floodplains that alter the natural ebb and flow of the river. If they cap a virtually flat area with cement, they create a serious problem,” Fernández said.
“Then when the floods come, political leaders clutch their heads, but they were the ones who signed off on the permits for those real estate projects without proper urban planning,” he said.

Signs in Chinese reflect China’s heavy participation in the construction of the new Angola. Credit: Mario Osava/IPS

By Mario Osava
LUANDA, Nov 27 2012 (IPS)

“In Luanda there are no matches.” This was the first line of a report written by Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel García Márquez in the Angolan capital in 1977.

Soap, milk, salt and aspirin were other products that were hard to come by in a city that, he wrote, “surprised” visitors with “its modern, shining beauty,” although it was actually “a dazzling empty shell.”

The emphasis that the Colombian writer put on the shortages suffered by the war-torn country injured the pride of the Angolans who read his report. But he effectively described the chaos inherited from Portuguese colonialism and the war of independence, a year and a half after Angola became independent.

Today, 35 years later, it is the excesses and glaring contrasts that shock the visitor to this city in southwestern Africa. Shiny new cars on brand-new roads and highways lined by thousands of still-empty or half-built office buildings, apartment blocks and residential towers stand in sharp contrast to the sprawling slums around the city.

Signs on construction sites written in Chinese clearly reflect the Asian giant’s high level of participation in the construction of today’s new Angola.

The most ambitious project carried out by companies from China is the Nova Cidade de Kilamba (Kilamba New City), a huge development designed to house half a million people, 20 km south of downtown Luanda.

When it is completed, the new neighbourhood will have more than 80,000 apartments built for large families – the norm in Angola – in buildings five to 13 storeys high. The development is also to be fitted out with dozens of schools, child care centres, health clinics and shops.

Nearly one-quarter of the buildings have been completed. But almost all of them are empty, even though more than 3,000 apartments were already available when the development was inaugurated in July 2011.

Also involved in building the new city are Brazilian firms, especially construction giant Odebrecht, which is in charge of key projects like electricity and water grids and the construction of roads.

The foreign presence in the massive new developments “is not something to be admired, because it shows that there are no national companies with the capacity to build them,” said one of Angola’s most prominent writers, Artur Pestana, better known as Pepetela, who is also a professor of sociology.

“The Chinese build faster, they work round-the-clock shifts, and they offer almost interest-free long-term loans,” he said. But they employ few Angolan workers and “there are many complaints about the quality of their construction work,” he added.

Meanwhile, Brazilian companies “apparently learned their lesson from a few initial fiascos which made them the butt of national jokes, and they now stand out for the quality of their work,” which enables them to compete with the Chinese, said the author, who has published many historical novels that are critical of the government of José Eduardo dos Santos, president since 1979.

Odebrecht, a Brazilian consortium that operates in 35 countries, became a leader in infrastructure works in Angola after 1984, when it signed a contract for the construction of the Capanda hydroelectric dam on the Kwanza river, 360 km from the capital, built to supply Luanda.

The civil war, which broke out after independence, led to lengthy delays in construction of the dam, which did not begin to generate electricity until 2004.

The end of the armed conflict in 2002 unleashed a wave of investment in the reconstruction and modernisation of Angola, fuelled by the country’s oil revenue and Chinese credit.

Besides the construction of other large hydropower dams, Odebrecht is involved in the production of sugar, ethanol and electricity from sugarcane, and is expanding the waterworks and sanitation in Luanda, while building condominiums, roads and highways.

It is also dedicated to diamond mining, and controls the chain of 29 Nosso Super supermarkets.

It was the first non-oil company from Brazil to begin to operate in Angola with a “long-term outlook,” said Victor Fontes, director general of the Angolan company Elektra, which specialises in power and water grids. He said this had the positive effect of attracting other firms also interested in the long haul, instead of just short-term opportunities.

The director of institutional relations at Odebrecht Angola, Alexandre Assaf, told IPS that the consortium is committed to “continuity” in Angola, above and beyond the effects of wars or the global economic crisis.

Five years ago, only nine percent of the “strategic posts” in the company were held by Angolans – a proportion that has risen to 41 percent, he noted, to illustrate the company’s commitment to local development.

In that group, Assaf included not only directors and managers, but also young university graduates who have been hired by the company to be trained as future leaders.

But Elektra’s Fontes argued that Odebrecht’s “near-monopoly position in some sectors hinders local initiative” by standing in the way of the development of small and medium-sized local firms that could work on smaller-scale projects, such as the upgrading of streets and neighbourhoods, that do not require the involvement of transnational corporations.

In addition, the country pays “more than what is reasonable for certain infrastructure works and services” carried out by the Brazilian company, which are of high quality but are also costly, said Fontes.

He acknowledged, however, that Odebrecht “has brought good management and performance strategies, and the best in the construction industry in the area of workplace safety,” for example.

The challenge faced by foreign and Angolan companies is addressing the serious problems that have accumulated in Luanda, where the population has grown exponentially.

In 1970, Luanda was home to just over 475,000 people, according to the last census carried out by the Portuguese colonial government. Today, the population of the city is over seven million.

But the condominiums and residential towers mushrooming around the city have not curbed the housing shortage, because those in need of homes cannot afford to purchase or rent the new units, which were built for a middle class that is still small. And despite the large number of empty housing units, the prices have not gone down.

A lack of piped water and electricity services are also common complaints in the midst of the construction fever.

The solution is on its way, according to government plans, whose strategic projects are being carried out by Odebrecht. But it will take years to silence the back-up generators heard all around the city during the frequent blackouts, and to ensure a steady supply of piped water.

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 16 2012 (IPS)

A year after workers’ riots that brought work on the Jirau hydroelectric dam to a halt for months and forced the government and companies to engage in national negotiations to improve labour conditions in the construction industry, another strike has caused tension again in the dam construction project in northwest Brazil.

The strike, which 1,500 workers of Enesa Engenharia, the company installing the generating units on the project, began on Mar. 8, grew this week to include all of the workers on the Jirau hydropower plant – around 20,000.

The workers went on strike because Enesa did not sign a new national labour agreement.

The “national commitment to improve working conditions in the construction industry” has been in effect since Mar. 1. It includes measures designed to ward off strikes and labour conflicts on construction sites, and was signed by the government, nine large construction companies and six central trade unions.

The tripartite agreement established permanent representation for workers in on-site negotiations with the administrators of construction projects, and the creation of health and safety commissions. It also stipulated that workers must be hired through official channels, thus eliminating the abusive “gatos” or cats, the name given to those who recruit labour for unscrupulous employers.

But Enesa did not sign the agreement and has not responded to the grievances of its employees in Jirau, such as demands for better workers’ dormitories and common areas, said Cláudio Gomes, president of the construction workers’ union, CONTICOM.

“There are eight people in each lodging unit, and no privacy,” said Gomes, while the Enesa workers’ neighbours, who work for the Camargo Corrêa construction company, have better conditions.

Gomes travelled from the southern city of São Paulo to support the local union in the negotiations.

Describing demands that will be negotiated in May, the trade union leader said the striking workers are also seeking better wages and other benefits.

On Friday morning, a workers’ assembly decided to continue the strike, although the labour courts declared it illegal on Thursday, in a ruling that orders the local union to pay a fine of 111,000 dollars for each additional day the workers are on strike.

Tension is running high again at the Jirau construction site, Gomes said. But the peaceful nature of the strike stands in contrast to the violence that broke out at the same site on Mar. 15, 2011, when furious workers set fire to 60 buses and other vehicles and most of the lodgings, built to house 16,000 workers.

The chaos spread, aggravated by the equally violent police crackdown, and thousands of workers fled to Porto Velho, the nearest city, 130 km away, where they were given shelter, mainly in a stadium.

The uprising also led to the interruption of work at the Santo Antônio hydroelectric dam being built on the Madeira river, just seven kilometres from Porto Velho, the capital of the northwest Amazon jungle state of Rondônia.

Overnight, more than 40,000 workers were left without employment and many returned to their homes in distant states. Construction on the Jirau dam gradually resumed only three months later, and completion of the hydropower plant was postponed to nine months after the initial target date, originally set for this month.

The 2011 crisis prompted the federal government to push for negotiations between the construction companies and trade unions, to avoid further conflicts and ensure that priority infrastructure works and the construction projects for the FIFA World Cup, to be held in 12 Brazilian cities in 2014, would be completed on time.

For the last five years, trade unions have been trying to negotiate a collective national agreement for the construction industry, to overcome the precarious nature of employment in this strategic sector, but without getting a response from the companies, said Luiz Carlos Queiroz, secretary general of CONTICOM.

The unrest in Jirau a year ago triggered a wave of strikes at other major construction sites, and finally brought about the dialogue that led to the achievement of the tripartite national agreement, he said.

“We accepted the agreement that was within our reach; we did not get everything we wanted,” but it was a step forward, and can be improved through mobilisation and monitoring, he said.

At first only nine large companies signed the agreement, including two involved in construction of the Jirau and Santo Antônio plants. Other companies have the option to join voluntarily. There are 170 construction companies in the country, according to the Brazilian Chamber for the Construction Industry (CBIC).

Trade unions view the agreement as “timid,” but it sets in motion a process that allows longstanding problems to be solved for a sector of workers who have historically been “marginalised” and have now gained “spectacular power” because Brazil’s construction frenzy has created a shortage of labour, Gomes said.

At present there are more than four million workers employed in construction, a number that “has tripled in 10 years.”

A decade ago, over 60 percent of the workforce of construction firms were informal labourers, and now the proportion is “no more than 30 percent,” Gomes said. Counting “all those economically active,” including independent workers, the reduction in the number of informal workers is equally great, but the proportion in the informal sector is still around “40 to 45 percent,” he said.

The struggle for decent work in the construction industry, overcoming the traditional precariousness and low wages, is hampered by the high turnover, low-skilled jobs and frequent migration, which do not favour the organisation of workers, said Queiroz, the son of a migrant from Brazil’s poor northeast region.

Many people accept piecework, and then work extremely long hours in order to increase their earnings, risking illness or accident and the curtailment of their future employment prospects, he complained.

But conditions for construction workers are changing. In São Paulo, basic wage scales for workers in the industry are higher than for metalworkers, a conquest achieved through “strikes and struggles” that also won them the right to breakfast and an afternoon snack, Queiroz said.

In his view, the Jirau riots were “a starting point” for more promising times. The concentration of large number of workers at the sites of big infrastructure building projects favours the organisation and growth of trade unions, he said.

The Rondônia construction workers’ union, STICCERO, for example, became stronger as a result of the huge increase in its membership after work commenced on the Santo Antônio and Jirau hydropower projects in 2008.

Excerpt:

Indigenous communities in Peru have a long list of comments and objections to the proposed regulations for the law governing prior consultation on initiatives affecting their territories.

AIDESEP president Alberto Pizango (in the long-sleeved shirt) at a Lima workshop, discussing the regulations for the prior consultation law. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

This criticism was voiced in a series of workshops conducted across the country ahead of the national meeting on the issue scheduled for Feb. 13-15.

“Before the regulations can be adopted, the law needs to be amended to resolve several gaps, such as the absence of the minimum requirements for prior consultation rights established by international instruments,” Alberto Pizango, head of the Inter- Ethnical Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP), said.

Pizango – who became widely known during his presidential bid in 2011 – met in Lima on Feb. 2 and 3 with some 20 indigenous leaders from the Amazon region to agree on a joint position on the draft regulations, which will be delivered to the Ollanta Humala administration at the national event later this month.

Along with another four organisations that participate in the multi- sector committee created to prepare a draft regulations for the law, AIDESEP objects to public consultations being held at the environmental impact study stage of a development project, after the state has granted the relevant concession.

“For years the government failed to implement the provisions of Convention 169 and now it wants to continue ignoring them with inadequate regulations,” Pizango told IPS, in reference to the Convention concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries adopted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in 1989 and ratified by Peru in 1994.

Pursuant to ILO Convention 169, which came into effect in 1991, ratifying governments must implement special systems to protect the rights of their native peoples and introduce a mechanism to consult them on laws, production projects, and policies that may affect their development and their habitat.

Despite ratifying the convention more than 15 years ago, Peru had done nothing to apply its provisions and, in particular, article 6, which expressly establishes the right of indigenous peoples to be consulted on matters affecting their territories and way of life. It was only in 2011 that Congress finally passed the Indigenous and Native Peoples’ Right to Prior Consultation Act.

According to observers, this step was prompted by a bloody clash two years earlier between the police and indigenous groups protesting for their right to be consulted in the northern rainforest town of Bagua, which culminated on Jun. 5, 2009 with more than 30 people dead between policemen and protesters.

Indigenous leaders also demand that the state include the obligation to obtain express consent or acceptance from indigenous peoples before launching any development projects in their territories that may affect their fundamental rights.

Moreover, they ask that the state refrain from waiving consultation even when the affected communities have begun negotiations with the concessionary company. For native leaders, a consultation guarantees a more transparent process.

In addition, some leaders claim “there are some indigenous grassroots organisations” that were not invited to the workshops to discuss the regulations, and, thus, such forums should be held in more areas.

So far workshops have been held in Bagua, the northern cities of Chiclayo and Iquitos, and the central cities of Cuzco and Pucallpa. The sixth workshop, held in Huancayo, in the central Andean region of Junín, ended on Feb. 6, with the series of workshops closing in Lima.

In response to this complaint, Vice Minister of Intercultural Matters Iván Lanegra told IPS that it was the indigenous organisations involved in the multi-sector committee that chose the cities in which the workshops would be held, and they are also responsible for convening participants and defining the methodology for the meetings.

“Everything was decided with their agreement. It’s an unprecedented system because until now the state decided unilaterally how things would be done,” he said.

He went on to say that after the meeting in Lima the multi-sector committee will sit down with indigenous leaders to discuss possible improvements to the regulations.

The regulations are expected to be adopted by the end of the month, at which time a database of indigenous peoples will also be operational to help identify the groups that need to be consulted for each project or initiative.

Lanegra told IPS that “the information on the communities and their geographical location (for the database) is ready.”

“The database will have an open-ended design and will be improved through the interaction with indigenous groups,” the government official said, after noting that the software will enable any citizen to freely access the database.

More than six million of the country’s 30 million people belong to one of 51 ethnic communities, according to 2007 data from the National Statistics Institute. Also 1,786 native communities and over 6,000 peasant communities are recognised.

The National Confederation of Communities Affected by Mining (CONACAMI) and other organisations demand that organised rural groups known as “rondas campesinas” and local communities living near water basins be consulted as well, as their livelihoods depend on the water that is usually used for extraction activities.

“Consulting them has to be a government obligation,” CONACAMI president Magdiel Carrión told IPS. But Lanegra argues that under Convention 169 that right only applies to indigenous peoples, although the government does observe other rights for these groups, such as the right to participate.

However, expectations among these rural groups continue to grow. Rural leaders in the southern region of Puno, who oppose the construction of the Inambari hydroelectric dam, demand to be taken into account.

Congressman Sergio Tejada, of the governing party, asked for clarity in demands, as he considered that significant progress had been made in the regulations. “Prior consultation should not be confused with other mechanisms of participation that are already in place for the non-indigenous population.”

Legislator Eduardo Nayap, a representative of the Awajun people, told IPS in turn that the important thing is that the dialogue not be hindered and that criticism be focused on improving the regulations and not on amending the law.

“We’ve struggled hard for this, and we need to move forward. We’ve already taken a major step,” he said.