In response to the new Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management (the Industry Standard) launched today, a group of scientists, community organizations, and non-governmental organizations say the Industry Standard does not go far enough to adequately protect workers, communities, and ecosystems from future mine waste failures.
(Yerevan) Early on the morning of August 4, 2020, the new security company contracted by Lydian Armenia, a subsidiary of Restructured Lydian, brought in cranes and removed the wagons of Amulsar blockades and placed their own wagons instead. This caused a mass mobilization at the blockade point on August 4 which was marked by violence by the private security, arrests of peaceful protesters by the police and their cooperation with the private company.
On July 22, we come together with people around the world, as we have every year since 2009, to demonstrate against the devastation and dispossession caused by the ambitious possessors of capital who impose extractivism on our lands. Rather than considering it an anniversary - along with so many others in the “environmental calendar” – it is a time when those movements that defend the land denounce and expose the complicity between governments and capitalists who profit at the cost of the health, life and rights of the people.
On July 14th, as havoc, panic, and fear caused by COVID-19 continues to sweep through the Ecuadorian Amazon, Canadian company Solaris Resources celebrated its new listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange’s Venture Exchange (TSX-V). It then proceeded to launch a two-week Twitter campaign championing its successful community alliances around its Warintza copper-gold project, and their successes with the “novel consultation process” with Indigenous Shuar Warints and Yawi communities.
On June 11, 2020, 21 lakes, streams and wetlands in northern Ontario were re-characterized as a mine tailings impoundment for the proposed Magino gold mine. This magical transformation took place through Schedule 2 of the Metal and Diamond Mining Effluent Regulation (MDMER) under the federal Fisheries Act.
Although the Act says it is illegal to “put deleterious substances into waters frequented by fish,” the MDMER creates a number of exemptions for the mining industry. As of July 2020, across Canada there are 64 “water bodies” that are exempt.
Home to nearly half of the world’s major mining companies, Canada has failed to fully implement promised reforms to hold corporations accountable for abuses committed overseas, according human rights advocates.
Ahead of its 2015 election win, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party promised to create an independent ombudsperson to investigate companies that violate human rights or poison the environment when extracting resources in the developing world, along with better protections for land rights campaigners there.
Officials with Global Affairs Canada, the foreign ministry, began meeting with human rights activists, as described in internal government files. Going into one meeting, in March 2017, campaigners told Mongabay they felt a sense of optimism: after a decade of Conservative Party rule, when officials froze NGOs out of the decision–making process, a new administration promising “sunny ways” and increased corporate accountability wanted to hear from them.
(Ottawa) – Barrick Gold has announced that its Australian subsidiary, Barrick Australia Pty. Limited, is seeking international arbitration under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions of a bilateral investment treaty between Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Australia over the PNG government’s refusal to grant Barrick’s subsidiary Barrick Niugini Ltd.
A forest reserve in one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, originally set up with Australian Government support and home to over 200 species at risk of extinction, has been scheduled for a landmark legal case.
