The head of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias' environmental program Peace With Nature has asked the president to declare a moratorium on open-pit mining following protests over a gold mine near the northern border.

This comes eight months after Arias repealed a ban on open-pit metal mining decreed by former President Abel Pacheco in 2002.

“Based on the recognized precautionary principle of our legislation, we urge (the president) to declare a moratorium on metallic open-pit mining until the mining code is reviewed and updated,” said Pedro León, head of Peace With Nature, in a statement released yesterday.

León said his office had put together a document entitled, “Environmental Safeguard Policy for Mining in Cost Rica,” provided to the president in May, that said few experiences with metallic mining in the tropics have been positive. “It is widely recognized that we have an obsolete mining code,” León said.

León declined to comment directly on the case of Las Crucitas – a Canadian-owned open-pit gold mine located a few kilometers from the Río San Juan, the natural border separating Costa Rica from Nicaragua – because of a series of legal challenges currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

President Arias was out of the country this week and unavailable for comment on his advisor's recommendation.