BHP-Billiton

Joint news release with Ecojustice and Great Lakes United: New data released Friday in response to a lawsuit won last year by Ecojustice, on behalf of Great Lakes United and MiningWatch Canada, is beginning to shine a light on the toxic legacy of Canada's mining and tar sands industries. Unfortunately, despite a lawsuit and a government order to report pollutant releases, some facilities have failed to comply.

There are no clean diamonds. Exploring for them, digging them out of the ground and selling them requires sacrifices from the natural environment, from the wildlife and fish that live on it, and from the Aboriginal people who depend on it.

We want to ensure that the public understand that Canada’s Aboriginal communities are engaged in a daily power struggle to ensure that the mines benefit their people, and to ensure that these mines do not irreversibly damage the intricate web of life on which we all depend.

In the municipal jurisdiction of El Estor in northeastern Guatemala, Maya Q'eqchi' communities represent more than 90% of the population. They are scattered over an area of nearly 3,000 km² in more than 100 villages as well as the town of El Estor, totaling over 35,000 persons. The Guatemalan Ministry of Energy and Mines has granted more than 1,000 km² of the area of El Estor to international mining companies* for the purposes of exploration and exploitation of nickel using a strip mining process. Nearly all of these areas are lands on which indigenous communities live and work. Some have titles to their lands, but many are still in the process of collective titling of the lands they possess.

While ethnography ordinarily privileges anthropological interpretations, this book attempts the reciprocal process of describing indigenous modes of analysis. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with the Yonggom people of New Guinea, the author examines how indigenous analysis organizes local knowledge and provides a framework for interpreting events, from first contact and colonial rule to contemporary interactions with a multinational mining company and the Indonesian state.

Submitted by Alternatives North.

What is BHP-Billiton so afraid of? That’s the question Mining Watch’s Joan Kuyek asked recently in Yellowknife, NWT, while speaking about the strike at the Australian mining giant’s Ekati diamond mine, 300 kilometres north of the city.

Rio Algom, a subsidiary of BHP-Billiton, and Denison Mines Limited have awarded a contract for laboratory analytical work to monitor 14 decommissioned uranium mines and 130 million tonnes of residual radioactive tailings in the Serpent River basin area to a large commercial laboratory in Peterborough, Ontario.

The winners of the 2003 Dirty Digger Awards have been decided. The awards are being made to coincide with the Mining Journal's 'Outstanding Achievement' Awards, to be presented at the Mines and Money Congress on 3rd December 2003.

International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) announcement:

We have a number of concerns with the amendments to CEAA which I will address here with reference to some specific mining projects.

1. Public Involvement must not be discretionary.
2. The New Electronic Registry is weaker than the existing system.
3. The Minister must be able to change Environmental Assessment Tracks if public concern or new information warrants it.
4. The new regulations should make it impossible for deals to be worked out with proponents to avoid triggering CEAA.
5. Programs and policies should be able to trigger Environmental Assessments.
6. There is an unrealistic reliance on mitigation measures that frequently do not work or are not carried out.
7. The EDC should come under CEAA.