Rapanui Blog

Rapanui is an Eco-Fashion company from the Isle of Wight, that makes Organic, Ethical clothing using Renewable Energy with award-winning traceability. Rapanui is about making eco-fashion cool.

MENS / WOMENS

Rapanui Blog Latest

Drying for Freedom

Store 1 Officially Open

Rapanui on BBC News

How it's done

Peru Disappears

Category: Environment

Can you find Peru on a world map? I'd hurry up if I were you, it's about to be mined to nothing...

Cerro de Pasco Peru

As you can see from the images, the city of is slowly being eaten away by an ever expanding open pit mine; a colonial church dating back to 1748 has disappeared, along with the town's centre square. History is fading away into the ground.

There's a mile-wide gash in the earth that grows almost daily, with each dynamite blast. The Peruvian government is pushing to extract vast mineral and oil reserves from the city of 70,000, and is caught between environmental degradation and jobs, With the mine owner, Volcan Compania Minera S.A, threatening to close the mine, and bury 4,000 jobs, the government gave the company permission to take more of the town, including the historic church and centre square.

While mining in the region has brought employment and some infrastructure, the industry has also produced serious and irreversible environmental damage: waste from the mine seeped into the water supply and polluted the springs which run through the pastures, and fumes have polluted the air. The health of residents and livestock has been badly affected, animal numbers have declined and few farmers now make a living from herding alone.

Cerro de Pasco disappearing

The city is supposed to be condemned and relocated due to environmental contamination and the mine expansion, but funding and action are more than 10 years away, people have been leaving the city but the poor can’t afford to move, and at an estimated cost of 1,000 million soles, or $322 million who will foot the bill?