Angel Pasuy stood on his tribe’s land in the Colombian cloud forest, listening to a symphony of birdsong. An Indigenous land-use planner from the Kamentsá Biya de Sibundoy reservation, Pasuy and his people have called the steep slopes of the Mocoa area home for centuries.
His reservation borders a nationally protected forest reserve that connects the Amazon basin to the Andes mountains, home to hundreds of plant and animal species and the origin of dozens of waterways.
But Pasuy now worries about the forest’s future. In the past year, exploratory drilling for a prospective copper mine has picked up just outside the reserve’s eastern border, two miles from his reservation’s boundary. A Canadian mining company, Libero Copper & Gold, holds the rights to conduct exploratory mining in a 30-square-mile area that overlaps partially with the reserve, his reservation and another.
The proposed mine would be the first legal metals mine in the country’s Amazon, part of Colombia’s push to become a major copper producer. Its development is being fueled by the global drive for metals for green energy, and in part by the family of New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.
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Sununu’s politically connected, climate change-denying father, John H. Sununu, and brother, Michael Sununu, are more than just investors in Libero Copper & Gold. Michael is a board member of Libero, and he and his father sit on the board of the company’s largest shareholder, Anglo Asian Mining PLC, which operates in Azerbaijan. John Sununu is the second-largest shareholder of that company, with a nearly 10% stake. He and Michael Sununu both declined to comment and referred all questions to Anglo Asian Mining.
Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.
