"Court deals a blow to the development of Conga", 31 August 2024

...Twelve years after the Conga project in Cajamarca was shelved, a court on 20 August upheld a ruling that the proposed mine would endanger the rights of people living in the area. The High Court in Cajamarca ruled this week that the project lacked measures to prevent environmental degradation and that moves to promote its development should cease.

The case against Yanacocha (the giant gold mining operation majority owned by Newmont Mining) and the Ministry of Energy and Mines was brought by Marco Arana, the former priest and member of Congress, in 2012. According to Mirtha Vásquez, a former prime minister during the government of Pedro Castillo, “the judgement warns that the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) fails to guarantee the mitigation of possibly irreversible damages” to the local population...

It is likely that the court ruling in Cajamarca will be the subject of an appeal to a higher court. Earlier this year, the minister of energy and mines, Romulo Mucho, declared that Conga, along with Tía María in Arequipa, was a project he intended to develop...