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.

Mining companies are suing Latin American governments and making millions and even billions of dollars at the expense of people and the environment. Find out how this came to be, what affected communities from Colombia think about it, and what people are doing to stop it. Join us on June 17th at 6:30pm at 338 Somerset St. W. (Canadian Federation of Students), when we present the findings of Extraction Casino: Mining companies gambling with Latin American lives and sovereignty through international arbitration . The event will include presentations from the following experts from the...

Learn about the secret weapon Canadian mining companies are using to extract money from developing countries when environmental measures, Indigenous rights and community resistance create democratic roadblocks to their extracting oil, gas and minerals. Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) is an increasingly controversial but still overlooked part of Canada's free trade agenda. The Trudeau government has pulled NAFTA's ISDS system out of the new deal with Trump, the USMCA, because of its negative impact on democracy. But Canada continues to maintain the corporate-biased arbitration system...

MiningWatch Canada is saddened by tragic news coming out of Guatemala today. It is with great sadness that we learn of the sudden and tragic deaths of four tireless activists who have dedicated much time and energy to defending human rights. Ana Paula Hernández from the Fund for Global Human Rights and her colleague Sally O'Neill, who worked for many years from Honduras for Trocaire and most recently for the Fund, along with driver Daniel Tuc, well-known to human rights organizations in Guatemala, and Ana Velásquez, a part of the Consejo Wuxhtaj in Huehuetenango, died horribly in a car...