2012-2013 Creation and reconfiguration of Montaña de Botaderos National Park

On 8 October 2012, the Honduran Congress passed a law (Legislative Decree 127-2012) creating the Montaña de Botaderos National Park to protect local biodiversity and ecosystems and as part of commitments to maintain the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (in 2017, the park was renamed Montaña de Botaderos Carlos Escaleras National Park, after a murdered environmental activist). The 2012 law catalogued the land of the new park, which included the source of 34 rivers, and the measures to preserve species and habitats. Article 4 of the decree established the Core Zones of the park as those areas where no productive activity was to be permitted, including mining, forestry, or dam building, and secondary areas, known as Buffer Zones (Zonas de Amortiguamiento), where some productive activity would be allowed.

In February 2013, the new National Park’s Management Plan was published by the National Institute for Conservation, Forestry, Protected Areas and Wildlife (Instituto Nacional de Conservación y Desarrollo Forestal, Áreas Protegidas y Vida Silvestre, ICF). This agency is responsible for the regulation, management and development of the park.

In April 2013, EMCO Mining Company, (which was later renamed as Inversiones Los Pinares (ILP), and incorporated into EMCO Group of companies), submitted requests to the Directorate for Mining (Dirección de Fomento y Minas, DEFOMIN), the predecessor to the Honduran Institute for Geology and Mining (INHGEOMIN) for two mining concessions, ASP1 and ASP 2, at sites within the Core Zones of the new National Park where mining was not permitted.

On 23 December 2013, then President Porfirio Lobo Sosa secured rapid Congressional approval for a new decree to reconfigure the designated Core and Buffer Zones of the National Park (Legislative Decree 252-2013). The reform was presented as increasing the Buffer Zones to better protect the park, but neither the ICF no other parties were consulted on the changes and their impact. In fact, the 2013 reform reduced the Core Zone of the national park to exclude locations such as ASP1 and ASP2. This reclassification of the sites as part of the Buffer Zone rather than within the Core Zone resulted in their no longer enjoying full protection from mining which was as established in the original 2012 decree that had declared the park as a protected area.

In 2014, the ICF issued a technical assessment (Dictamen Técnico DAP-031-2014) concluding that the proposed mining project was not feasible as it was located in a forest covered area and in the recuperation subzone of the National Park where mining activity was not permitted (“NO ES FACTIBLE ya que el proyecto está ubicado en un área con cobertura forestal y en la sub zona de recuperación de área protegida Parque Nacional Montaña de Botaderos, donde no se permite la realización de actividades mineras”) (ibid: 402).

In addition, ICF technical assessments (dictamen técnico CIPF-047-14, DAP-031-2014, OL-TOCOA-AP-001-2014, ICF-DVS-024-2014) and legal opinion of the Legal Counsel to the General Secretary of the ICF recommended that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MiAmbiente+) reject an environmental permit for the proposed ASP1 and ASP2 mining project (CMDBCP & CCI, 2019: 5). Despite this, in 2014 and 2015, INHGEOMIN issued permits to ILP for the mining concessions ASP1 and ASP2.