Threat to local livelihoods Local communities rely on agriculture and livestock farming for their livelihoods. In terms of employment, agriculture is the main economic activity in Cajamarca. 67 percent of the active population is devoted to farming. The figure goes up to 80 percent in the districts where the Conga project is located. It is small-scale agriculture largely for self-consumption, along with livestock farming for marketing of dairy products. Mining, on the other hand, employs only 1,5 percent of the regional population. Due to the Conga project, hundreds of residents of the project area are about to lose their livelihood.

Underestimation of area of impact MYSRL recognises only 32 communities in the area of influence of the project, amounting to a population of approximately 7.350 inhabitants. However, the threat is not limited to the project area. Minas Conga is located in the headwater area of five tributaries to the principal rivers of the provinces of Cajamarca, Celendín and Bambamarca. Pollution from the Conga mine into the region's waterways puts at risk the livelihoods and right to water of many thousands more. If only the 210 settlements of the districts of Huasmín, Sorochuco and La Encañada were included, the number of potentially affected persons would raise to more than 41.000.

Hampering agricultural development More than half of the territory of Cajamarca is under concession of mining companies. Local communities want to increase farming in the region. However, if the Conga mine goes forward, it could open up additional areas of Cajamarca to mining, and significantly change the entire region from one primarily oriented to farming, to an industrialized mining region.

Failure to obtain community authorization The Conga project will directly affect campesino (peasant) communities and rondas campesinas, which are entitled to the rights of native peoples by the Peruvian Constitution and ILO-convention 169 on native and tribal people. The people affected by the Conga project have not been duly consulted. During the elaboration of the EIA, one workshop was organized in the hamlet of Quengorio Alto and one in the Instituto Superior Pedagógico Arístides Merino in the province of Celendín. Only one public hearing has taken place, on the 31st of March 2010, in the hamlet of San Nicolás in the district of La Encañada. Due to the restrictive definition of the impact zone, many potentially affected communities have not been consulted at all.

Moreover, the project's own EIA mentions high opposition. It states that 62 % of the population of the Direct Impact Area (10 hamlets) disagrees with the project. Local leaders and authorities, as well as the majority of the population, assume the mining activity will cause significant negative impacts. 

The government's approval of the Conga project has generated massive and on-going protest. In an attempt to impose the project, the Peruvian government is continuously weakening the right to protest and has repeatedly violated human rights.

Criminalisation Social protest against the Conga project is answered by the government with criminalisation and repression. More than 100 persons have been charged with criminal offences for their alleged participation in the protest movement. Charges include: obstruction of public transport, property damage, use of force, limitation of personal freedom, violence against authorities,... Sentences range from less than 1 year to 20 years of prison. On the 4th of July, Marco Arana, an ex-priest and environmental leader, was arrested and brutally beaten by a bunch of policemen while he was sitting peacefully on a bench on the Central Square of Cajamarca. He suffered a broken jaw, internal bleeding and head injuries.

Repression Recent legislative changes approved under former president Alan García and the current president Ollanta Humala, allow police and army to use brutal force without having to fear legal consequences. There are many examples of excessive police brutality. During a convergence of 29 November 2011 in the area of the mountain lakes, DINOES, a special unit of the Peruvian police trained for counter-terrorist actions, opened fire on protesters. Marino Rodriguez lost an eye. Elmer Campos got paralysed in his legs, possibly forever. A more recent example of provocation and violence by state forces took place on 31 May 2012. During the first day of a regional strike, police officers knocked over cooking pots with food for protesters, mistreated a young woman and fired tear gas canisters at the crowd. Four persons were injured, eight arrested and transferred to the main police station. In June, two human rights lawyers were mistreated by police officers when they were inside the Cajamarca police office in order to get in touch with arrested protesters. On the 3th of July, during confrontations in the town of Celendín, police officers or soldiers shot 3 protesters dead, one of them a minor. The same day a 30 day state of emergency was declared. On the 4th of July another protester was killed in the town of Bambamarca. One day later another person died in the hospital as a consequence of his wounds.

Militarisation In attempts to further weaken communities' rights to protest and convene in public, on 5 December 2011 the Humala administration declared a state of emergency in 4 provinces. The state of emergency moved to suspend civil liberties, impose martial law, and further militarize the region. Soldiers from all over Peru were sent to Cajamarca. End May 2012 the government approved two decrees allowing the army to assist the police without a state of emergency declaration. Moreover, private companies, like MYSRL, often contract soldiers and police officers. They are legally allowed to use their police-uniform and -weapon during their private missions. As a consequence, the population has the impression the police is taking the side of the company.

Water Much of the area of the Conga project is considered by Peruvian Law to be "fragile ecosystems". According to the General Environmental Law (law No. 2861, "Ley General del Ambiente"), water sources, high-altitude lakes and wetlands are fragile ecosystems. The Water Law (art. 75 of law No. 29338, "Ley de Recursos Hídricos") orders that lakes and water sources have to be protected.

The Conga project is located at the headwaters of five major river basins, Jadibamba, Chailhuagón, Chugurmayo, Alto Chirimayo and Toromacho, tributaries of the principal rivers of the provinces Celendín, Cajamarca and Bambamarca. Unlike many metal mine sites the area is not arid and isolated: it is a wet area covered with wetlands and lakes. Ground water levels are generally shallow (often less than 2.0 m below the land surface) and the project area contains more than six hundred springs, which are used by the locals. Four high-Andean lakes will be destroyed. Lake Mala and Perol will be replaced by open pits, while Lake Azul and Chica will be used as dumps for waste rock. 260 hectares of wetlands and 17.200 hectares of grassland will be affected. Toxic mine waste will be piled up in the headwaters of the Río Jadibamba and Toromacho rivers.

MYSRL has offered to triple the storage capacity for water by building artificial reservoirs as a compensation for the destruction of the mountain lakes. However, this measure doesn't cancel the severe impacts of the project on the surface drainage system and water bodies in the area, nor does it prevent the contamination risks and the ecosystem loss associated with large scale open pit mining.

Biodiversity Minas Conga will affect a unique and fragile high-Andean ecosystem. The project area contains 460 plant species, of which 34 are threatened and 46 are endemic for Peru, 6 of them to Cajamarca. There are 225 vertebrates, including 4 types of amphibians and 3 types of reptiles. Of the 13 mammal species, one is endemic. Finally 9 endemic and 13 endangered bird species have been registered.

Flawed environmental impact assessment The environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the Conga Project was approved by the MEM in October 2010, despite the absence of a complete hydrogeology study. The Peruvian government has allowed MYSRL to delay release of the official hydrogeology studies until 30 March 2013. The fact that the ministry in charge of promoting mining investments also has the final word about the EIA of mining projects is a serious problem. However, in response to raising popular concern and protest, in November 2011 experts of the Ministry of Environment reviewed the EIA. The Ministry of Environment concluded:

• the project will significantly and irreversibly transform the headwater area and lead to the disappearance of various ecosystems and to the fragmentation of the remaining  ones, so that the processes, functions, interactions and environmental services will be irreversibly affected;
• the evaluation of the lakes, wetlands, and bogs does not take into account the fragility of the ecosystem and lacks an integral, ecosystemic Hydrological Balance, as well as an estimation of the environmental services offered by the high-Andean natural ecosystems;
• the determination of the affected hamlets and settlements should take into account each of the micro-basins integrally;
• for being located in the catchment area of five rivers and ravines, the EIA should include a detailed hydrological and hydro-geological analysis, which is lacking;
• the environmental services offered by the affected ecosystems have not been correctly estimated;
• the replacement of lakes by reservoirs only compensated for the water supply service, but not for other environmental services that will be lost.

Independent comments by international experts confirmed the position of the Ministry of the Environment. According to the Spanish geologist Dr. Luis Javier Lambán Jiménez, the hydrogeological analysis of the EIA is seriously flawed because it lacks the following crucial information: (1) a single and complete inventory of all water points; (2) details about the wells detected in the area (e.g. discharge); (3) a clear description of the main aquifers in the area (number, lithology, character, functioning, recharge zones, discharge zone, main underground water flows); (4) an evaluation of the contribution of underground water flows to the affected lakes and wetlands; (5) an evaluation of the recharge of the aquifers; and (6) the water balance of the system.

Dr. Robert Moran, a US expert with more than 40 years of applied hydrogeological and geochemical experience at hundreds of mining and other industrial sites around the world, reviewed all water-related aspects of the EIA. He concludes the EIA would not be acceptable for permit approval in more developed countries. According to Dr. Moran, the EIA contains no integrated hydrogeologic discussions regarding the extent and characteristics of the water-bearing zones and the overall surface water-ground water interactions, including those with local and regional springs. He adds that surface waters, ground waters, and springs in the Conga project area are all ultimately interconnected. Much of the project is underlain by fractured and faulted, karstic and volcanic rocks, together with glacial sediments - all of which transmit water. Satellite images and structural geologic studies indicate that many of the local lakes are located on faults and fracture zones, some possibly related to collapsed volcano structures (calderas). All such information indicates that ground and surface waters are interconnected when stressed hydraulically over the long-term.

In response to the critics, the government contracted three other international experts to review the hydrological aspects of the EIA, Dr. Ing. Rafael Fernández Rubio, Dr. Ing. Luis López Garcia and Dr. José Martins Carvalho. On 17 April 2012, their report was made public. They concluded that in order to compensate the loss of natural water, the capacity of the water reservoirs to be built by the company should be increased, requiring additional investments. However, they minimized the importance of aquifers and interconnections between different water bodies, a key element in the critics' appraisals. These remarkable and importance differences have not been cleared out.