By Dan Klotz
National Geographic
The lure of precious metals and other natural resources has long been a source of conflict in Latin America, from the Andes to the Amazon and most everywhere else. But new research has begun to put a price tag on this conflict, and investors have started to respond. When the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples are uprooted by large-scale mining developments, their opposition is driving up the cost of these developments, a point that is finally starting to get noticed in corporate financial statements.
In a class action lawsuit filed last week, investors of the Barrick Gold Corp. argued that the company misstated the financial risk in its $8.5 billion Pascua Lama mining development on the border of Chile and Argentina. The project was originally estimated to cost $3 billion.