Peru Indigenous Community Bids for Part of China-Owned Las Bambas Copper Mine
An Indigenous community in Peru is proposing to buy part of a copper concession from MMG Ltd., the Chinese-owned operator of the Las Bambas mine, and turn thousands of artisanal miners working there into formal suppliers to the company. Under the proposal, sent to MMG last month and reported by Bloomberg, the Pamputa community would acquire mining rights over an area occupied by about 3,000 artisanal diggers and related workers, commit to formalising their operations, and MMG would buy their production. Community and company representatives were scheduled to meet in Cusco on October 16 in government-facilitated talks; MMG did not immediately comment.
High metal prices have drawn large numbers of informal miners into Peru's mining industry in recent years, fuelling disputes over mineral rights. At Las Bambas, one of the world's largest copper mines, artisanal workers on the company's concessions threaten the development of a third mining pit, and MMG has filed a series of illegal-mining complaints. Peru is the world's third-largest copper producer, and under Peruvian law ownership of land is separate from the right to mine the minerals beneath it.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于秘鲁安第斯山区的拉斯班巴斯铜矿矿区。图片来源：Ondando，CC BY-SA 4.0。Photo: The Las Bambas copper mine in the Peruvian Andes. Image: Ondando, CC BY-SA 4.0.
