Canada’s failure to regulate gold mining companies is having a devastating impact in Colombia

Lital Khaikin, The Breach

In the last weeks of October, the Colombian city of Cali looked like a temporary war zone. Heavily militarized with tanks and artillery stationed around its core, the streets were patrolled and cordoned off by the state military, police officers, and private security.

Just north of the city, delegates from around the world, including Canada, were descending for the sixteenth annual meeting of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), or COP16. They gathered to introduce new agreements and review progress on targets established last year, with the goal of helping nature recover from biodiversity loss by 2050.

But behind the veneer of tropical fauna adorning the official stages and the conference’s stated vision of finding “Peace with Nature,” there was a different, grim reality. It was a reality of environmental destruction, mafia rule and black markets, and the persecution of Indigenous peoples, land defenders and community leaders in Colombia—one in which Canada is implicated. 

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