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How Indigenous Land and Water Defenders Strategized to Defend the Guatemalan People

This is part two of a two-part series on the Peaceful Resistance La Puya and Kappes v. Guatemala by Jennifer Moore at The Institute for Policy Studies and Ellen Moore at Earthworks. Read the first part here.

Nevada-based Kappes, Cassiday & Associates lost their international arbitration suit against Guatemala in December, 2025. The company was seeking damages because Guatemala’s courts had halted extraction at their gold mine there.

The Guatemalan government built its legal strategy in the case based on the legitimacy of the struggle of Peaceful Resistance La Puya, a social movement of Indigenous land and water defenders. Peaceful Resistance La Puya has maintained a 24-hour camp by the side of a road at the entrance to the mine for fourteen years. 

The government’s case also relied on the wealth of information La Puya had gathered. La Puya provided information on the company’s failures to uphold Guatemalan environmental regulations, its shoddy environmental studies, incomplete permits, and the overwhelming social opposition to the project from the start. 

Don Alvaro Sandoval on the road to the mine Fourteen Years of Resistance and Repression

Since the resistance began in March 2012, La Puya has stood up to many challenges, including violent police repression by the Guatemalan government. La Puya has faced disinformation campaigns, divide and conquer tactics, intimidation and threats from a private security outfit staffed with ex-military personnel, as well as the trauma of legal persecution and intense police repression in order to facilitate the mine’s operation from 2014-2016. 

Documenting Impact and Struggle

Like many frontline struggles opposing mining projects, the resistance built allies to document the human rights violations and to demonstrate the illegalities of the gold mine, including the fact that the project never had a valid municipal construction permit. 

As well, La Puya worked with independent experts to evaluate the mining company’s environmental impact assessment and found serious deficiencies and gaps, although authorities granted KCA a license to operate anyway.

A History of State and Company Repression

In KCA’s arbitration suit, the company argued that it had faced discrimination as a result of the mine suspension and that the government failed to provide it with adequate protection and security from the peaceful resistance to continue expanding the project.

For people from La Puya, KCA’s claim was surreal and infuriating. 

Alvaro Sandoval, from the nearby village of La Choleña, was indignant. He remembers that there were two permanent police check points while the mine was operating. One was on the road in front of the resistance camp and the other at the entrance to the mine.

It made me angry because it isn’t true that the state didn’t provide security to the company so that it could mine. Our bodies bore witness to the sacrifices, fears, anguish. And after all that the state did to us, in collusion with the company… It made me really mad and really upset.
Candelaria Carrera from the community of Carrizal in San Pedro Ayampuc

Weighing In on KCA’s Arbitration Case

Presenting an amicus curiae submission to the arbitration panel is the only formal channel of participation for third parties in ISDS cases. Amicus curiae (friend of the court) submissions are legal arguments presented by third parties who can share relevant information on cases.

However, the arbitration panel has no obligation to consider these requests. La Puya tried to make a submission and was refused. 

Looking back, La Puya member Ana Sandoval thinks this was fortuitous: “In the end, we came out ahead… The amicus brief would have been just a single document presenting our arguments and that would have been it. But the relationship that developed with the government instead is important.”

The Very Difficult Decision to Collaborate with Their Oppressor 

Around the time that La Puya was presenting its request to submit an amicus, the state’s lawyers approached the resistance to ask that they provide information and witnesses to support the state’s defense. The arrogance of the initial approach and the state’s role in repressing La Puya in order to open KCA’s mine provoked hard feelings and challenging discussions within the resistance. 

“It is really difficult,” Candelaria recalls, “because after someone has been messing with your life for so long, and we’ve been here resisting and defending life, defending water, and then they finally notice that we’ve been fighting and then they come and ask that of us, after they’ve knocked us around, criminalized so many of us, beat us… It made us angry.” 

But despite the conflicting feelings that the discussion provoked, La Puya decided to participate, contributing documentation and three witnesses who would testify to the arbitration panel. 

Given the high stakes of the multi-million dollar arbitration, for Alvaro Sandoval, the decision went beyond the local interests of La Puya.

“We’re doing this to defend the people of Guatemala, and if we have to do our part, we have to do whatever we can.”
Alvaro Sandoval, Peaceful Resistance La Puya

The Decision Pays Off

While ISDS proceedings tend to be plagued with misinformation and omissions, the reliance on La Puya´s records helped keep the facts straight. At the same time, La Puya and their national and international allies also brought public attention to the injustice of KCA’s arbitration and its gold mine that should never have been approved. 

Finally, after seven years of proceedings, the three-person arbitration panel ruled against KCA on almost all grounds in December 2025. It ordered the company to pay a portion of the government’s arbitration costs. However, the government would still have to pay over $4 million dollars in legal and arbitral costs. 

KCA’s Loss: A Relief for La Puya and a Wake Up Call for Guatemala  

The ruling was received by the Peaceful Resistance La Puya as an early Christmas gift. The outcome of this specific ISDS claim means the Guatemalan government will pay out less in public funds for a private mining project. But it also offers an important opportunity to reflect critically on how the investor protection system poses a wider threat to the defense of water, territory and Indigenous rights in Guatemala. 

Candelaria Carrera said it was hard to contain her emotion when they heard the decision “in the interest of the Guatemalan people; to ensure that public services, which are already inadequate, are not even less capable of reaching the population.”

They also felt joy at the role La Puya had played, “by providing information and agreeing to give interviews… La Puya contributed to this arbitration ruling in favor of Guatemala.” 

The post “We Have to Do Whatever We Can” appeared first on Earthworks.

Indigenous Land and Water Defenders Celebrate Arbitration Result

This is part one of a two-part series on the Peaceful Resistance La Puya and Kappes v. Guatemala. Read the second part here.

For fourteen years, the social movement Peaceful Resistance La Puya has maintained a 24-hour camp on the side of a dusty road just north of Guatemala City. The camp sits at the entrance to an open pit gold mine owned by Nevada-based Kappes, Cassiday & Associates (KCA). 

A lot can happen in that time. Kids who grew up at the encampment left home and went to college. Elders who spent their days supporting La Puya passed away, their commitment memorialized in photos displayed on a banner. 

This winter, what started as a handful of brave women risking their lives to physically block the entrance to the project in March 2012 contributed to a critical step in defense of land and water. 

Peaceful Resistance La Puya celebrated the 14th anniversary of its resistance camp in 2026. A Victory over Corporate Power

In 2016, KCA brought an international arbitration case against Guatemala for the Guatemalan courts’ decision to suspend operations at its mine. The case relied on privileges for transnational investors in the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement. 

KCA sued Guatemala for nearly half a billion-dollars after La Puya’s legal actions achieved the suspension of the mine. A permanent decision from the government about the future of the mine depends on results of an as of yet ongoing court-ordered consultation with affected Maya Kaqchikel and Xinka peoples. 

In December 2025, an arbitration panel at the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes concluded that the country did not have to pay damages to KCA for the decision to close its mine. It will still need to cover over $4 million in legal and arbitration costs.

Peaceful Resistance La Puya contributed significantly to Guatemala’s defense during the case. Leaders pointed out that countries often face unfavorable odds in an arbitration system skewed in investors’ favor.

We feel satisfied and vindicated in our peaceful struggle. KCA lost its wager to make millions of dollars through this international arbitration process, which it initiated knowing that it would never win the consent of the communities that have always said no to its unviable project. This project is so bad that the company couldn’t even defend it in an arbitration system designed to protect the investments of transnational companies. 

—Statement by Peaceful Resistance La Puya

An Unjust System

Investor State Dispute Settlement is a system envisioned by and for extractive corporations seeking to maintain control over the natural commons, especially in the Global South. As a one-way system in which only investors can sue governments through private arbitration, it only values corporate rights and deepens the already huge power imbalance between mining-affected communities and project-backers. 

Investors can leap-frog over local and national-level decision-making to bring their cases to arbitration tribunals presided over by corporate lawyers. They can do this without having to exhaust every legal avenue in national courts. This system frequently excludes affected people from participation and has no obligation to consider their rights or perspectives at all. 

Oil, gas, and mining companies are the most litigious in the ISDS system. Issues of Indigenous rights, community opposition and environmental protection often underlie their claims. These cases are used to coerce countries into ignoring these important priorities or to otherwise compensate firms for millions or even billions of dollars.

KCA’s suit was the first that Guatemala has faced from a mining company. 

International Arbitration Cases Undermine Self-Determination

Over 2,500 free trade agreements and bilateral investment treaties include provisions that allow transnational investors to unilaterally sue governments before a private arbitration panel when decisions are made that they believe affect the value of their investment. 

As a new report outlines, Guatemala exposed itself to ISDS claims when it began signing bilateral investment treaties and free trade agreements following the peace accords in 1996. Since then, it has faced 13 arbitration claims, over half of which stem from the energy sector and several of which — like KCA v. Guatemala —relate to underlying community struggles for water, collective well-being, and self-determination.

Another of these, also decided in 2025, did not go well for Guatemalans. Energía y Renovación Holding, a company owned by Guatemalan partners but registered in Panama, was awarded $64.5 million plus interest and costs. This company attempted to develop a hydroelectric project on Indigenous lands in the Yichk’isis (Ixquisis) Microregion of Huehuetenango despite the communities’ opposition expressed in a community-led “good faith” consultation and repression of the movement. Guatemala is attempting to annul this decision.  

Overall, arbitration tribunals have ordered the government to pay more than $160 million to investors, an amount equivalent to more than three times the budget of Guatemala’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in 2025.

While La Puya values the lessons they gained from an effective inside-outside strategy during the course of KCA’s ISDS suit against Guatemala, they recognize that the threat is ongoing. They are calling on Guatemalan authorities to review the commitments that expose the country to further suits. 

The post A Mining Company Loses Its Bet appeared first on Earthworks.

The Aika People Say Freeport’s Grasberg Mine Operates Without Their Consent and Dumps Its Waste in the River. Copper Mark Certified It Anyway.

Just weeks ago, Copper Mark awarded PT Freeport Indonesia a renewed certification claiming that their Grasberg facility “fully meets” all but one of its 33 criteria for responsible mineral producers. The Indigenous Aika Tribe in Central Papua filed a grievance challenging the credibility of the company’s claims.

The Aika People’s complaint against a Copper Mark audit is of global significance. Voluntary mine site audits are on the rise across the world. The majority of deposits of energy transition minerals are located on or near the lands of Indigenous Peoples. The mining industry’s use of voluntary standards to hide or dismiss Indigenous Peoples’ rights violations is an ever-growing concern.

Company Claims Don’t Match Reality

The complaint, submitted on May 25th by the Aika Indigenous Council (LEMASAI), accuses Freeport Indonesia of excluding their community from consultation, compensation and land governance processes despite operating on territory recognized as their ancestral and customary land.

At the center of the dispute is the assessment conducted by auditor Ernst & Young, published on April 8, 2026. That assessment concluded that Freeport “Fully Meets” Copper Mark criteria on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, stakeholder engagement and tailings management.

For the Aika Tribe, the certification renewal represents a glaring contradiction between corporate sustainability claims and realities on the ground.

“How can a company receive ‘Fully Meets’ status when the Indigenous People most affected by the operation say they were never properly recognized or consulted?” asked Mombiot Yoseph Akoha, chairman of the Aika Indigenous Council.

Aika Excluded from Negotiations

According to the filing, the company relied on what the community describes as “proxy representation” through an MOU from 2000 involving other Indigenous Peoples. It excluded the Aika People from negotiations over compensation and benefit-sharing.

The Aika People cite a 2019 decree issued by Majelis Rakyat Papua (a government body charged with protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples) recognizing the mine’s operational area as part of the customary territory of the Aika Tribe.

In another development highlighted in the grievance, LEMASKO — one of the other Indigenous institutions previously involved in the compensation arrangement — issued a declaration in 2024 acknowledging that the territory in question belongs to the Aika People and suggests that there had been manipulation in the processes that led to the signing of the 2000 MOU and its exclusion of the Aika People.

River Dumping Threatens Livelihoods

In addition to the lack of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and compensation for the Aika Tribe, the grievance also raises concerns over environmental impacts linked to decades of dumping mine waste into the Ajkwa estuary system. The practice has disrupted traditional fishing routes, navigation channels and subsistence livelihoods for the Aika Tribe.

Weak Audit Affirms Concerns About Industry-Backed Standard

The Copper Mark is one of four industry-backed standards bodies that joined together to form the Consolidated Mining Standard Initiative (CMSI). The CMSI has been widely criticized by civil society organizations, including numerous Indigenous Peoples’ rights groups, for the risks it poses. The weak standard has the potential to uphold and normalize the systematic abuse of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, human rights and ecosystems by the mining sector. 

Both of the Copper Mark-audited mines in Indonesia have resulted in grievances by Indigenous Peoples for the failure of these audits to accurately identify and capture the harms and rights violations they face.

That trend has broad implications. Downstream buyers and investors rely on audits as data points in their due diligence and risk evaluation processes. Policymakers should also be concerned since they integrate voluntary certification schemes into legislation (as the European Commission has in the EU Batteries Regulation and Critical Raw Materials Act).

Learn more about efforts to strengthen voluntary mining standards from the Mining Standards Accountability Alliance.

The post Indigenous Council Files Complaint Over Indonesian Mine’s Responsible Producer Certification appeared first on Earthworks.

Chinese-Owned Serbian Mine at the Center of Allegations Highlights the Human Price of the Global Race for Minerals

On June 16, 2026, US Customs and Border Protection, citing “use of forced labor in their production,” effectively blocked imports of copper mined by Serbia Zijin Copper D.O.O, a  mine operating in Serbia but largely owned by China-based Zijin. The mining company has a history of labor abuses.

The Zijin copper mine complex is located in the Eastern part of Serbia, in the City of Bor, home to about 28,000 Serbians. Production has skyrocketed in recent years.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment named Bor one of the most polluted places on earth. Most recently, Serbian labor inspectors found the company failed to take action to protect workers from heavy metal contamination. 

Bor, Serbia literally lies in the shadow of a copper mine A History of Labor Abuses

Border Patrol’s order is the newest development in a litany of concerns about labor abuses at the Serbia Zijin copper mine. It adds a new layer of worry that workers may be exposed not only to unsafe working conditions but also coercion and control that violates basic human rights.

There have been numerous reports of abysmal working conditions and abuses at the mine, which uses both Serbian and Chinese labor. 

Most recently, Serbian labor inspectors found the company failed to take action to protect workers from heavy metal contamination. 

Harm to Public Health

During a visit to Bor last year, I heard first hand how the continued pollution is impacting the lives and livelihoods of the residents of the city and surrounding communities. In Serbia, it is common to post obituaries in public spaces, and I saw bulletin boards in Bor and surrounding areas packed with pictures of the recently deceased.

A bulletin board with tributes to deceased residents.

A report from January 2024 revealed frequent spikes in sulfur dioxide levels around the city. Sulphur dioxide can contribute to respiratory problems, as well as acid rain. The study also found fine particulate matter, PM10, containing heavy metals including lead, cadmium, nickel, and arsenic. 

A WHO study found a correlation between air pollution in Serbia and the exacerbation of cardiovascular issues. 

Workers and Residents Caught in the Minerals Conflict

Workers in the copper mining complex and the residents of Bor are on the front lines of the geopolitical competition for minerals and metals. 

But this goes beyond politics. Workers have a basic right to safety and dignity. So do communities. 

Human rights abuses remain common at mines around the world. Human rights need to be taken seriously no matter who owns a mine, and no matter where it is located.

Read more about the impacts of copper mining in Bor.

The post US Customs Blocks Copper Imports Over Allegations of Slave Labor appeared first on Earthworks.

The headlines are inescapable: In Washington D.C., generations-long environmental rules are currently under assault. Industry-friendly officials and lawmakers seem intent on enriching multibillion dollar corporations while lowering life expectancies for thousands of Americans.

These efforts are as concerning as they are morally reprehensible. Thankfully, some of the impact is limited. States are in charge of developing and implementing their own rules intended to limit harmful emissions from polluting industries. 

In Colorado, this important responsibility falls on the Air Pollution Control Division (APCD). The staff at APCD:

• Grant and enforce permits for polluting facilities
• Monitor and model various air pollutants
• Craft policy and programs intended to reduce emissions of those pollutants
• And respond to public concerns about air quality issues. 

Due to the successful advocacy of Colorado communities fighting for changes to policy and legislation, APCD staff have also taken on additional responsibilities in recent years. The APCD must now provide expanded regulatory oversight of dangerous air toxics like benzene. They must advance environmental justice when developing and when enforcing air quality rules. And they must respond to community air quality complaints rapidly and with thorough, on-the-ground inspections.

All of this work is essential. It is also costly, in part because much of it remains unfinished. For instance, we recently highlighted significant improvements in responsiveness from APCD enforcement staff when we share evidence of harmful oil and gas pollution with the agency. Maintaining and building on these improvements requires sustained investment in staff capacity and resources for years to come. 

(Top) Gas plant in Weld County. (Bottom) Optical gas imaging (OGI) video showing significant hydrocarbon emissions including methane and other harmful volatile organic compounds from permitted venting from the facility’s compressors.

Fortunately, the state of Colorado is making these investments. In late May, the Air Quality Control Commission in Colorado unanimously approved a fee increase on polluters that will generate an additional $13.5 million to help fund the APCD. 

This means that polluters are footing the bill for advancing environmental justice and regulating air toxics, not Coloradans.

Colorado’s fee increase follows a historic fee increase in New Mexico. Regulators in New Mexico can now invest in new staff and resources to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their pollution. 

The federal government is stepping back from a commitment to protecting communities and the environment from polluting industries. States like Colorado and New Mexico have an even greater responsibility to demonstrate leadership and take action. Ensuring that regulatory agencies have the resources to enforce air quality rules is essential for this important work.

The post In Colorado, Polluting Just Got More Expensive appeared first on Earthworks.