In a small but significant step towards ending corporate impunity for destroying the environment and people’s health, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Ecuadoran villagers should be allowed to try to get hold of Chevron assets in Canada, to collect on the $US9.51 billion that Ecuadoran courts had awarded them for extensive pollution of the Amazon rainforest.

Here in Canada and throughout the Americas, many governments have embraced resource extraction as the key sector to fuel economic growth, neglecting other sectors – or even at their expense. This is creating unprecedented demand for land and other resources, such as water and energy. Increasingly, when Indigenous and Afro-descendent peoples, farmers, environmentalists, journalists, and other concerned citizens speak out against this model for economic growth, particular projects and/or their impacts, they become the targets of threats, accusations, and smears that attempt to label and punish them as enemies of the state, opponents of development, delinquents, criminals, and terrorists. In the worst cases, this leads to physical violence and murder.

(Santiago/Ottawa) While Barrick has been offloading assets and reducing operational costs in order to improve its standing with shareholders, the social costs of the Pascua Lama project in Chile’s Huasco Valley continue to grow.

Canada’s multinationals work hand-in-hand with corrupt governments and threaten democracy in post-conflict Central American nations.

Guest blog by Alexandra Pedersen.

Canadian mining companies account for 75 percent of the world’s extractive corporations. Canada is literally digging up the globe.

A new study reveals that catastrophic mine waste failures are increasing in frequency, severity, and costs all around the world. The authors point toward poor regulations, poor practices, dicey mining economics, and ever larger mines as key factors behind those disasters.

This dangerous trend needs to stop.

By Ana Simeon and Ugo Lapointe

On August 4 last year, Quesnel Lake residents and communities along the Fraser River were eagerly anticipating one of the largest sockeye returns in recent history.

What they got instead was a nightmare: over 24 billion litres of mine waste burst through Imperial Metals’ Mount Polley dam into their watershed.

Mount Polley is the largest mining waste spill in Canada’s history. The consequences and overall costs of this disaster concern us all, including a steep cost on the industry’s reputation and public trust.

(Ottawa) In a recent letter sent to Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AANDC), the Hon. Bernard Valcourt, MiningWatch Canada calls on the federal government to uphold the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s (NIRB) ‘no-go’ recommendation for AREVA’s Kiggavik uranium mine proposal.

Canadian, US and other international civil society organizations welcome Infinito Gold’s announcement that it is calling it quits on its tortuous quest to open the Crucitas mine in Costa Rica in spite of the determined opposition of the Costa Rican people and repeated court decisions against it.