(Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico) The Canadian company Argonaut Gold intends to exploit its Cerro del Gallo project in the immediate vicinity of the Cradle of Independence. If realized, the project would encompass a total area of more than 20,000 hectares (494,210 acres) and the extracted minerals would be benefited with sodium cyanide by means of the heap leach technique that usually causes serious damage to the health of the nearby populations as well as the use and contamination of large amounts of water.

(Victoria/Vancouver, B.C.) As Taseko Mines once again attempts to force its way with an injunction to start drilling in Tŝilhqot’in ancestral territory at Fish Lake (Teztan Biny) without the consent of the Tŝilhqot’in Nation, a broad network of citizens, experts, and environmental organizations are calling for urgent reform of BC’s outdated mining laws. 

On July 3, 2019,the coordinator of the Maritimes - Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network delivered a letter signed by sixty-seven International and Guatemalan organizations to the Attorney General of the Guatemalan Public Ministry. In the letter, organizations expressed their solidarity and demanded that protective measures be guaranteed for Xinca lawyer Quelvin Jimenez as well as communities involved in the peaceful resistance against the Escobal mine.

(Williams Lake, BC) The Tŝilhqot’in Nation is assembling for a peaceful action to exercise their Aboriginal rights and ancestral laws in protecting Teẑtan Biny (Fish Lake) and Yanah Biny (Little Fish Lake), a place of profound cultural and spiritual significance for the Tŝilhqot’in people, from an extensive drilling program by Taseko Mines Ltd. (TML) in support of the rejected New Prosperity mine proposal.

On June 27, 2019, TML wrote to the Tŝilhqot’in Nation advising that it would mobilize heavy equipment, including logging and road-clearing equipment, starting July 2, 2019. TML also wrote to say that the ground disturbance work would begin on July 3, 2019. This is in direct violation of Tŝilhqot’in law; Taseko Mines Ltd. does not have Tŝilhqot’in Nation consent to undertake this work. The company’s refusal to consider the request by the Nation to halt the work program has forced the Tŝilhqot’in Nation to take action to protect its sacred site.

Negotiations between the world’s largest gold mining company and indigenous landowners in Papua New Guinea have broken down, leaving the future of a mine that’s produced twenty million ounces of gold in doubt.

Canadian company, Barrick, is under pressure to have its Porgera Joint Venture gold mine lease in Papua New Guinea renewed for another 20 years before the current agreement expires on the 16th of August 2019.

By Judith Lavoie

Study of four catastrophic dam collapses — including one at B.C.’s Mount Polley mine — finds bonus schemes encourage managers to take more risks in the name of short-term profits

Generous bonuses for mine managers, rewarding them for cutting costs or increasing production, are linked to tailings dam failures, a new research paper has found.

Yesterday news outlets in several countries simultaneously released the results of investigations by a consortium of journalists into human rights and environmental abuses at Barrick Gold’s North Mara gold mine in Tanzania. This exposé by, among others, Canada’s Toronto Star, UK’s Guardian, and Switzerland’s Tagesanzeiger confirm findings of six years of investigations – reported on regularly by MiningWatch Canada – into assaults on men, women and children by the mine’s private security and by police contracted by the mine.

On Monday June 17^th, Global Affairs Canada will release its updated “Voices at Risk Guidelines on Supporting Human Rights Defenders”. 

MiningWatch Canada received an embargoed version of the finalized guidelines and will be available for comment on Monday following their release on the following issues:

Barrick Gold is implicated in very serious and ongoing human rights abuses at the company’s North Mara mine in Tanzania, related to excess use of force by mine security, and is failing to provide equitable remedy to the indigenous men and women who have suffered life-altering physical harm and mental distress.

There is an urgent imperative to cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to keep global warming from getting worse than what is already “locked in.” But many current projections for a ‘decarbonised’ energy economy require massive amounts of metals to be able to generate, store, and transmit electricity.

Improved efficiency, recycling, and new technologies will help meet that demand, but in many cases this also means massive increases in mining for increasingly scarce metals and minerals, pushing mining into more remote and fragile places – even including the ocean floor – and into greater conflict with communities and greater destruction of fresh water and biodiversity.

The challenge, therefore, is how to respond to the climate crisis without destroying more of the planet we are trying to save – to reduce the need for more mining, limit and manage its impacts, and to the extent possible, repair the damage it has already done to communities and ecosystems.