Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos has appointed Mauricio Cardenas as the country’s new mining and energy minister, a crucial position for Colombia’s future.

As the price of coal and minerals keeps rising, the Colombian mining industry has prospered immensely, and Colombian miners are digging faster and deeper than ever before to bring cheap energy, gold and platinum to the world market.

On 17 October 2011, the Special Rapporteur presented his third annual to the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The Report provides a summary of the activities over the first three years of the Special Rapporteur's mandate.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is pouring into Colombia. In the last six months FDI was $7 billion—equivalent to 91.4 percent more than in the same period last year, according to new figures released by the Central Bank. Most of the money (64 percent) is going to oil and mining exploitation.

Despite the unprecedented possibilities of development and the promises of a better life for the communities located in coal, gold or copper areas or places with millions of barrels of oil and gas, the sudden arrival of new and powerful actors has generated unrest, distrust and fear.

OTTAWA, Sept. 30, 2011 /CNW/ - As recognized by the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Round Tables on the Extractive Sector, strengthening community capacity and governance is a key strategy to ensuring benefits from resource extraction are maximized both domestically and abroad.  CIDA's implementation of the Andean Regional Initiative (ARI) for Promoting Effective Corporate Social Responsibility announced by Minister Oda yesterday helps to do this in three countries that receive significant Canadian foreign direct investment from the mining sector.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, recently presented his annual report to the UN General Assembly.

From August 31st to September 2nd, 2011, the Grand Convention Plaza and Exposition Center witnessed the seventh annual International Mining Fair, organized by the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Regional Government of Antioquia, and Asomineros (Miners Association Chamber) of the ANDI (National Association of Industries). Outside of the event thoe opposed to the “mining locomotive” – proposed by President Santos –were demonstrating against it.

Gold fever is sweeping across South America. Nowhere is it more lethal than in Colombia, where the gold rush has become a new axle in Colombia's civil war. Turf wars are erupting between paramilitaries, and leftist rebel groups fighting to take control of mining regions. It's fueling an old ideological conflict and has displacing hundreds of people.

Some days ago, journalists of Fault Lines, a programme of the international news channel, Al Jazeera, showed up in Marmato to make a documentary related to the town and about what it called the “gold fever in Colombia”. The programme has an interview with Juan Carlos Santos, corporate manager of Medoro Resources and cousin of President Juan Manuel Santos.