The largest open-pit coal mine in Latin America, located in La Guajira, Colombia, will reduce its annual production by more than 50%. This was announced by the company Cerrejón, owned by the Swiss multinational Glencore.
In 2024, the mine produced 19.1 million tons of coal, but will now adjust its production to between 5 and 10 million tons. This is due to the unsustainable prices of thermal coal transported by sea.
Context and Challenges
- Environmental and social impact: For over four decades, mining exploitation in La Guajira has created huge craters in this desert territory, affecting the supply of drinking water and impacting indigenous communities.
- Colombia’s energy policy: President Gustavo Petro is seeking an energy transition and to curb extractivism. In 2024, he halted coal exports to Israel in protest against the war in Gaza.
Economic Implications
Cerrejón employs more than 12,000 people and contributes to 45% of La Guajira’s GDP. Experts warn that its eventual departure from the country, as Petro intends, could have a significant impact on state finances and the local economy.
This production adjustment reflects the economic and environmental challenges facing the mining industry in Colombia, as the country seeks to balance economic development with sustainability.
Coal Mines and their Impact on the Environment
The open-pit mining method generates enormous environmental impacts on the territory where it takes place, some of these are:
- Damage to land surfaces: Mining destroys and changes the shape of the earth’s crust, creating large amounts of waste material, altering the local morphology.
- Air pollution: This activity generates large amounts of toxic fine dust. These are made up of heavy chemicals that are absorbed by animals and humans.
- Surface water contamination: If chemical waste is not properly treated and stored, it can seep into fresh water sources, contaminating them and reducing the life present in them.
- Damage to underground aquifers: Contaminated waste is often washed by rainwater, which seeps into the subsoil, contaminating underground water deposits.
- Impacts on flora and fauna: The excavation process eliminates all existing flora on the earth’s crust, and animals are driven away by the noise, habitat changes, and contamination of water sources.
