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URGENT ACTION - Tell Multinational Mining Companies to Back Off. Chubut Already Said "No" to Mining.
We, the undersigned organizations, are deeply concerned about reports emerging from Chubut, Argentina, a province in the beautiful Patagonia region, about the increased presence of the mining lobby in the provincial legislature pressuring deputies to amend Environmental Law XVII-Nº 68 (former Law 5001), which bans open-pit metal mining and the use of cyanide. Chubut was the first province in Argentina to pass this kind of environmental standard in 2003. The law has been supported by 17 years of widespread mobilization across the province by communities who are opting for a more ecological...
06.12.2019
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: economic inequality and disparity between the rich and the poor; a dictatorship-era constitution which severely restricts civil liberties; terrible distribution of social services like health and pensions for the working population; and a pro-extractivist...
25.11.2019
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.
21.11.2019
Statement leading up to the COP25 in Santiago de Chile (now relocated to Madrid, Spain) Faced with the undeniable climate crisis and the false solutions proposed by multilateral spaces which have been co-opted by the transnational business sector and supported by governments, the Regional Gathering: Climate crisis, energy transition and mining extractivism in Latin America was held from September 26 to 28 in Santiago de Chile. The meeting was organized by the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), the Observatory of Mining Conflicts of Latin America (OCMAL)...
13.11.2019
This article was originally published in the November/December 2019 edition of the CCPA Monitor – a special edition on taxes. Mining enjoys massive government support in Canada. Politically, it’s treated as a preferred development option for remote communities and Indigenous peoples. Former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall once said, “The best program for First Nations and Métis people in Saskatchewan is not a program at all—it's [uranium mining company] Cameco.” The law backs this up. Mining companies still have rights to “free entry” in much of Canada, since mining is legally...
01.11.2019
Originally published in Australia's Arena Magazine When I mention that the global mining industry is eyeing the deep seabed as the next frontier in mining I am commonly met with gasps of disbelief and dismay. That gut reaction is often followed up with sensible exclamations about the fact that the world’s oceans are already overstressed by contaminants from human activity, such as plastics, and by overfishing, and, from those in the know, by acidification. Unsurprisingly, these apprehensions do not factor into the rapacious ambitions of industry pitchers for deep-sea mining, nor do...
30.10.2019
The events of October 2019 dealt a hard blow to the economic plans of Ecuador’s elites, in particular their programme for eliminating fuel subsidies. But for the people these dates will be remembered as beautiful days of solidarity, of re-encounter with living traditions, of mutual recognition among equals, and of respect for differences. Indigenous people from rural areas flooded the cities, above all Quito. Non-indigenous urban dwellers and young people joined them, as well as indigenous inhabiting marginal zones. Together, they transformed the city. There were times of confrontation and...
24.10.2019
On October 14th, a US foundation, Defend them All (DTA) , sent an open letter to Canadian mining company INV Metals urging the company to abandon its activities in Ecuador following a field visit to the Kimsakocha páramo in south-central Ecuador. DTA is a non-profit organization with offices in the USA and Canada which is “dedicated to improving the legal protections of animals and the environment.” It writes that it has been cataloguing and evaluating the impacts of the project since 2015, and sees the project as posing a grave risk to endangered animal and plant species, as well as...
22.10.2019
Since October 2, Indigenous organizations, along with trade unions, social movements and peasant organizations, have been demonstrating across Ecuador against a set of economic austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international lending institutions that have resulted in: increases of up to 120 percent in fuel prices; labour reforms that undermine labour protections in Ecuador, such as turning good private sector employment into precarious jobs, and the downward “harmonization” of wages resulting in a 20 percent cut in wages for new hires in the public...
15.10.2019
Since October 2, Indigenous organizations, along with trade unions, social movements and peasant organizations have been demonstrating across Ecuador against a set of economic austerity measures (called the Paquetazo) imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international lending institutions that have resulted in increases of up to 120% in fuel prices; labour reforms that seriously undermine worker protections in Ecuador, such as job precarization, a downward “harmonization” of wages resulting in a 20% cut for new contracts in public sector jobs; and imposition of extractive projects (mining, oil, and gas) in a misdirected effort to solve the debt crisis. These mobilizations are indicative of a broad, decades-long opposition of Indigenous and campesino communities in particular to the imposition of extractive projects in their territories.
10.10.2019