Members of the civil society group “No a la Mina Esquel” are condemning lobbying efforts by Canadian company Pan American Silver (PAS) in the weeks prior to newly-elected representatives taking office in the southern Argentine province of Chubut. PAS’s plans to develop an open pit silver-lead mine in Chubut have been stymied for years due to a legislative ban on mining in the province.

On November 21st, Nautilus Minerals' court-appointed monitor, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) confirmed that the relevant legal papers had been filed to assign the company into bankruptcy.[1] Whilst this news was expected, there has been no news on plans for the Solwara 1 deep sea mining project in Papua New Guinea, leaving local communities and civil society who are opposed to the project with many questions.

Last week marked one month since Chilean president Sebastian Piñera used a dictatorship-era constitutional power to declare a state of emergency in ten out of sixteen regions of the country, declaring war on protesters. The conflict, which has been superficially described as a reaction to a spike in metro fare in Santiago, has deep roots.

(Ottawa/Port Moresby) Last week, Jonathan Mesulam travelled from his home in Papua New Guinea in the south Pacific to speak about deep sea mining at an international conference on climate change and mining organized by MiningWatch Canada. 

We prepared this list of key readings as background for the conference "Turning Down the Heat: Can We Mine Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?" It is not exhaustive nor comprehensive, but we hope it represents some of the key threads in this discussion.

(Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaʔɬ/sel̓ílwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh)/Vancouver, B.C) Representatives of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) and the Xinka Indigenous Parliament of Guatemala joined forces Wednesday night to call on Canadian mining companies to respect Indigenous rights no matter where they operate.

(Ottawa) The environmental, social, and climate impacts of mining metals to meet the demands of the booming renewable energy economy are the focus of an international conference opening today in Ottawa. The non-profit group MiningWatch Canada aims to highlight the high environmental and social costs of mining and identify ways to reduce demand for newly mined metals as the world moves urgently away from fossil fuel energy.

Statement leading up to the COP25 in Santiago de Chile (now relocated to Madrid, Spain)

September 26-28, Santiago, Chile

On the morning of the annual Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, in February 2017, a group of samba dancers stood solemnly in front of a massive parade float depicting five venomous snakes, their forked tongues protruding from the back of a bearded man with bloodshot eyes.

While other jurisdictions like Quebec and Alaska require mines to post full remediation costs as a condition of approval, B.C. rules allow environmental liabilities from mining projects — which are often on Indigenous lands — to fall to the taxpayer

Judith Lavoie, Nov 8, 2019

The First Nations Energy and Mining Council has added its voice to increasingly insistent calls for B.C. to toughen up mining rules and make polluters pay.