Water wins again – and the consultation for Cuenca is coming

It is an historic day for the defence of water in Cuenca in the face of the attempted imposition from the central government. Today, Thursday, August 13, 2020, the Environmental  Commission of the Cantonal Council of Cuenca, in an extended session, unanimously approved the popular consultation regarding metal mining in the water recharge areas of five rivers in the canton.

Faced with the Upcoming Ruling Concerning the Shutdown of Canadian Barrick Gold’s Pascua Lama Mining Project: 14 Reasons Why the Environmental Court and the Chilean State Cannot Allow its Continuation

The Pascua Lama Mining Project is owned by Canadian Barrick Gold and is located in the high mountain area of the Huasco Valley, Atacama Region, Chile. This project is currently suspended due to serious environmental noncompliance, but there’s an upcoming ruling that could order its reopening.

(JUNEAU) This week British Columbia (B.C.) made significant progress toward the closure and cleanup of the abandoned and polluting Tulsequah Chief mine in the transboundary Taku River watershed. Yesterday the Province released a cleanup and closure plan for the mine. It also announced funding for preliminary cleanup steps. And at a Tuesday hearing in front of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, both the Province and the Taku River Tlingit First Nation (TRTFN) asked the court to end the receivership process, which started in 2016 when mine owner Chieftain Metals (incorporated in Ontario) went bankrupt, and to allow B.C to take responsibility for mine remediation.

On August 4th, Peruvian organization Derechos Humanos Sin Fronteras-Cusco (DHSF) published a note on its web site responding to a statements made by Hudbay Minerals, first to a local newspaper, then during its AGM, and finally in a letter written to the Business and Human Rights Centre, denying an outbreak at its Constancia mine in Peru.

Quebec’s independent Office of Public Hearings on the Environment (Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement) today made public its report on the state and management of asbestos and asbestos mining wastes in Quebec. The three-member Commission was mandated by Quebec’s Minister of the Environment to carry out an inquiry and advise the government how to deal responsibly with the more than 800 million tons of asbestos mining wastes left by asbestos mines that operated in Quebec for more than a century. In particular, the Commission was asked to make recommendations regarding multi-billion dollar projects to extract magnesium and other metals from the asbestos mining wastes.

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.