Richard Fifer

Administrative staff, teachers and students of the Jose Agustin Arango School, had a standing out participation in the Ecoart Contest, event sponsored by the Corredor Biologico Mesoamericano del Atlantico Panameno (CBBAP) and PTQ, which included contests directed to creating environmental awareness within the students.

Supported by the mining company under the vision of entrepreneur Richard Fifer Carles, Ecoart Contest was centered in presenting paintings for the creation of a mural, and was related to the positive and negative impacts to the planet’s biodiversity.

There were also interactive and innovating lectures related to global warming, as well as a time tunnel which consisted on a presentation of a banner that illustrated the biodiversity over time.

Contests and expositions were part of the events sponsored by PTQ at the Jose Agustin Arango School, with the purpose of instilling environmental awareness among the children, all of this included in the Corporate Social Responsibility policy focused on the protection of the environment, within the vision of entrepreneur Richard Fifer Carles, of taking care of the forest canopy and the natural resources.

The event was sponsored by the Corredor Biologico Mesoamericano del Atlantico Panameno (CBMAP), backed up by the Ministry of Education, and supported by companies like Xerox, Dulceria Tia Mami, Delicias Caseras, Maxell, Ecotoner, and Gulf.

The day also included the delivery of coloring books to the children with images related to climate change, as well as the planting of saplings of wood and fruit species that are in dangere of extinction.  From here comes the importance for companies like PTQ to encourage and support these educational events because they guarantee maintaining a healthy childhood, and for the next generations to watch over and be more compromised to the protection of the environment.

Beyond the walls of Fort San Lorenzo there is “history, goblins, and magic” since there is a background that can be exploited by recreating the battles starring the Spanish and the English for the control of these strategic facilities, highlighted the director of the Public Enterprises of the Autonomous Region of Extremadura in Spain, who was fascinated and bewitched by this historical place.

When announcing the concept, as an expert on tourism topics related to historical structures from his native Spain, Ruiz Pena considered they should not bet on a mass tourism, but on one that offers a unique product like Fort San Lorenzo, which could become the tourism engine of the Colonial Colon.

The director of the Public Enterprises of the Autonomous Region of Extremadura in Spain travelled to Panama invited by the Castilla del Oro Foundation in Spain and Panama, led by entrepreneur Richard Fifer-Carles, so he could share his knowledge and experience on rural tourism his origin region has, in order for the authorities of the rural regions of Panama to benefit from this experience and replicate it.

The international president of the Castilla del Oro Foundation, Duke of Veragua, Cristobal Colon de Carvajal, visited Ocu’s San Sebastian Inn as a part of the organization’s interest on renovating the symbolic facilities so they can be used to host events that attract the attention of national and international tourists.

The renovation works on this installation constitute one of the most ambitious and significant projects the Foundation will execute, organization created by Richard Fifer Carles, with the vision to boost the tourist attractions of the rural communities of the country’s central region.

The Duke of Veragua led a delegation constituted by the Castilla del Oro Foundation in Panama, Pascual Montanes Duato; Jaime Ruiz Pena, General Director of the Public Companies of the Autonomous Region of Extremadura, Spain; Beatriz Flores, Luis Miguel Montanes, Gabriel Bellomusto, and Juan Rivera.

The Foundation Castilla del Oro, led by Richard Fifer- Carles and chairman Cristobal Colon in Spain will develop a social and environmental labor very important in the zone of Cerro del Andevalo – Huelva-. Under this line is born the concerns about environmental subjects, in this case will address the protection of nature.

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM ON THE EVALUATION OF THE MILLENNIUM ECOSYSTEM

In the year 2001 coinciding with the Environmental Day of 2001, the then Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, launched the international Program of the Evaluation of the Millennium Ecosystem (MA, its acronym in English) (http://www.maweb.org/) using its presentation speech the following statement “The Program is an outstanding example of international cooperation between scientist and politicians necessary for the cause of sustainable development. The good government policies should base in solid scientific facts” (Annan, 2000). The program took the importance of the necessity to visualize the stretch links that exists between the natural system and human welfare.

The Program ended in the year 2005 gathering for the first time, in a standardized form, a base line of scientific interdisciplinary information, in an international level, about the changes of the ecosystem and biodiversity and their effect on human welfare. Five year later of its completion, its scope and impacts have been very important both in terms of research, public politics or education, but with uneven success (Reid 2006).

In the educational aspect, especially in University, its documents constitute as leaders in the integration of doctrines from the social scientific and biophysics with ends of conservation. In the international conventions that credited, their results they are serving to center objectives and lines of action. On the contrary, its impact on the drivers of change that degrade the ecosystems and erosion of biodiversity as consequence of multiple international politics has been very small, especially if we compare them with the media papers that have the quadrennial assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, its acronym in English).

Either way, one can argue that MA did what was expected of it; to generate an international debate of the consequences of change in the ecosystems and the human welfare and to give the first steps to becoming a species of IPCC about ecosystems (Montes and Sala, 2007). This introductory framework justifies the reason why the Evaluation of the Millennium Ecosystem in Spain (EME), which has launched the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of the Environment, Rural and Marine Affairs, is not born in an improvise form but overlaps within the global evaluation of the United Nations and continues the international tendencies and European to promote the Program on a national, regional, local scale,

The preliminary draft that will be presented by the government to the National Assembly to modify the Mineral Resources Code includes a new payment for supervising and inspecting the mining projects, which will contribute funds for the Ministry of Commerce and Industries (MICI) to hire qualified personnel who could follow up on the increase of the mining grants.

These changes count with the support of companies like Petaquilla Gold S.A., led by entrepreneur Richard Fifer; they also include a maximum sanction increase from 500 dollars to 10 thousand dollars for explorations and extractions carried out without a grant.

The MICI minister, Ricardo Quijano, announced that within the next 30 days the government will present this draft to the National Assembly, and ensured the new proposal will be less controversial than the revoked law, which caused protests in different areas, mainly in the indigenous regions, who opposed to mining in their lands.

During the ceremony of royalties delivery to the Municipality of Donoso, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Henriquez, stated that with the modification proposal of the Mineral Resources Code this payment would have been more than double of the 193 thousand dollars that were delivered to the Municipality of Donoso.

Henriquez who as Commerce and Industries titular promoted these reforms, added that if what was approved hadn’t been abolished, the contribution from the Petaquilla Gold, S, A company, under the direction of engineer Richard Fifer Carles, would have totaled half a million dollars.

However, the minister pointed out the commitment of Petaquilla Gold, S, A. of paying the established percentage in a recent abolished regulation, whenever it is restored by the National Assembly, because otherwise the government can not force the company to pay more than what is stipulated by Law.

What for others could be a problem Petaquilla Gold, S. A. will turn it into a profitable business, with which it will achieve a true transformation and real investment in sustainable development at the Molejón miningsite: this is the “Petarcilla” project with which the mineralized material left over from the mining process will be used.

Petaquilla Gold, S. A., with engineer Richard Fifer–Carles’s vision, announced in a paid advertisement in the La Estrella newspaper on the prospects for  Petarcilla’a new projection which uses material from the tailings basins, after the leaching process, to produce clays that will be used to manufacture blocks and tiles.

José Luis Dieguez, general manager of Panama Infrastructure Development (PDI), a subsidiary that runs the project, said the goal is to maintain a productive activity that generates jobs for 15 to 20 years more, once Molejon’s reserves are exhausted.

The Sindicato de Industriales de Panama (SIP) emphasized that the environmental labor done at the Molejon Mining Project by Petaquilla Gold SA, under the leadership of Engineer Richard Fifer Carles, is an example to be followed by other companies

In the column Punto de Vista, published by the Panama America newspaper, the influential group also highlighted the labor of Minera Panama, who develops a copper extraction project, emphasizing that the mines have qualified staff that actively protect the forest.

They also indicated that besides recovering the intervened areas, the mines have to fulfill with Environmental Impact Studies and reforest the areas degraded outside the mining concession.  “Here we have an example on how to protect the forest and improve the economy”, stated SIP while exhorting the replication of these projects in other areas to take advantage of the mining potential of the country.

From the beginning the National Heritage Office of the National Institute of Culture has being very excited upon the initiative shown by the citizens of the district of San Francisco de la Montana to recover the tower of the church of this district, which is a historical heritage of the nation and it was well received by the Castilla del Oro Foundation and has worked along with the Tourism Authority of Panama to keep it going on, said the sub director of this government office, Yamileth Stanziola.

Stanziola said once they received the request from the mayor of the district of San Francisco de la Montana Bernardino Borbua to recover this historic heritage, they provided a guide page with the established criteria to make this intervention, respecting the concepts of heritage assessments since the church of San Francisco de la Montana is a historical monument.