Mining 2025

BOLIVIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Ramiro Guevara, Jorge Inchauste and Rosario Echeverría, Dentons Guevara & Gutiérrez S.C.

No specific governance regulations or guidelines have been introduced for the mining sector in Bolivia. 2.8 Illegal Mining In recent years, illegal gold mining has affected indigenous territories and the Bolivian Amazon Nature Reserve. In order to stop the contamina - tion of water resources in this area, the indig - enous peoples of northern La Paz filed a con - stitutional action against the people who were illegally carrying out these activities. These indig - enous peoples obtained a favourable ruling that analyses the importance of prior and informed consultation. This ruling also encourages the development of statutes for autonomous indig - enous communities that have decided to pro - tect their forest resources and reject any mining activity in their territories. In addition, in recent years the AJAM has carried out controls to stop illegal mining activities in fis - cal areas of state domain and in areas that are available to operators under administrative min - ing contracts or mining licences, or the obtaining of prospecting or exploration licences. 2.9 Good and Bad Examples of Community Relations/Consultation Impacting Mining Projects Bad Example A bad example of how a poor strategy in com - munity relations impacted negatively on an important mining project in Bolivia leading to the revocation of the foreign investor’s mining rights is the international arbitration case brought by South American Silver Limited against the gov - ernment of Bolivia (Arbitral Award PCA Case No 2013-15), after the Bolivian governmental author - ity (AJAM) revoked its mining rights. Regarding the importance of negotiation with indigenous

communities to maintain mining rights, the Arbi - tral Tribunal of SAS v Bolivia stated the following: “505. (…) What is clear for the Tribunal in con - nection with the Project, is that the Company undertook certain community relations activities which led to unrest in the communities directly affected by the Project and which were ques - tioned by its own advisors, and that, as the con - flict ensued, the Company adopted a strategy that contributed to increase the divisions among the Indigenous Communities, the radicalisa - tion of the opposition groups and the practical impossibility of seeking the consensus that its advisors warned would be necessary in order to operate in the region. The documents provided by Witness X render an account of an aggres - sive strategy that helped worsen the conflict and that is very far from the search for consensus or agreement, and which intended to show majority support and to weaken the Project’s objectors”. This led the Arbitral Tribunal to consider that: “Bolivia sought a dialogue, proposed solutions, attempted to reach an agreement with the com - munity members, and finally issued the Rever - sion Decree in response to the general violence, the social conflict – which based on the evi - dence was neither simply temporary nor minor – making it clear that the risk existed that the conflict would continue for as long as CMMK remained in the region. Having established the existence of the conflict, as well as its sever - ity and consequences, the Tribunal is unable to conclude that the measure adopted by Bolivia was unnecessary or disproportionate and, much less, to speculate without any evidence on other measures that could have been implemented to resolve the conflict”.

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