Just as Premier Christy Clark announces more direct and indirect subsidies to the mining industry, groups are calling on the BC government to better industry practices and stronger regulations to protect the environment, communities, and taxpayers from further...
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Thousands Protest HudBay Minerals’ Constancia Mine in Peru, Force Company to the Table
This week, thousands of affected-community members protested against HudBay Minerals’ Constancia open-pit copper mine in southern Peru.
The Velille Defense Front (FUDIV) convened the 72-hour peaceful preventative strike, which took place from Monday to Wednesday. The communities decided to...
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Communities Announce Protest Against HudBay Minerals’ Constancia Project in Peru
After failed attempts to dialogue with HudBay Minerals, the Velille Defence Front, community presidents, community boards, the Chumbivilcas Defence Front and nearby districts have announced a preventative strike for 72 hours starting January 25, 2016 against the company’s Peruvian subsidiary...
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Ottawa, we have a problem
The Canadian Ambassador to Mexico is apparently not worried about violence, kidnapping and extortion at Canadian mine sites.
This despite a Canadian mining executive having admitted this year to the Business News Network to having a good working relationship with organized crime groups in Sinaloa...
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Fears of Contamination of Drinking Water of Turkey’s Third Largest City Fuel Opposition to Eldorado Gold’s Efemçukuru Mine
By Üstün B. Reinart for the Aegean Environmental Platform
(Turkey) Community groups, professional associations, and environmentalists want Eldorado Gold out of Efemçukuru, Izmir, while the company manœvres behind closed doors to illegally increase capacity three-fold.
Eldorado Gold Corp (through...
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Too Much To Ask? Put mining justice on the foreign policy leaders’ debate
Among questions about the Syrian refugee crisis and Canada’s military deployment abroad, the central role of the Canadian mining industry in the dispossession and forced displacement of many thousands of people around the world, including countless men, women, and children murdered, wounded, and...
Supreme Court of Canada Affirms International Enforcement of the Law, Allows Ecuadorans to Pursue Chevron Assets in Canada
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...
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Crumbling Political Support for Tahoe Resources in Guatemala
If the militarized security strategy that Tahoe Resources used to put its Escobal silver mine into operation isn’t enough to raise questions about the ethics of the company’s operations in Guatemala, the recent resignation of Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina should be. Pérez Molina stepped...
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Canadian Mining Undermines Democracy in Central America
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...
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New Study Indicates Increasing Mine Disasters Worldwide - Why is the industry incapable of learning from its biggest mishaps?
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...
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Mount Polley Mine Disaster’s First Anniversary No Reason to Celebrate
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...
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Good Riddance Infinito Gold, A Long Overdue Farewell to Costa Rica
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.
On...
Deep Sea Mining – A new frontier for ecosystem destruction
This week the United Nations’ International Seabed Authority (ISA) is meeting in Jamaica to consider draft regulations for the exploitation of seabed mineral resources. MiningWatch Canada joins a growing global outcry over the speed at which the ISA is moving from licensing deep sea exploration to...
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In Wake of Guatemala Corruption Scandals, Tahoe Resources’ Escobal Licence Faces Legal Challenge
Guest Blog: Ellen Moore, Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA)
On July 12, 2015, the Guatemalan Centre for Environmental and Social Legal Action (CALAS) filed criminal charges against former Minister of Energy and Mines, Erik Archila, and former mines director at the Ministry...
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Letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights re: Barrick Gold’s Grievance Mechanism at Porgera Mine
Barrick Gold’s proposed assessment of its project-level non-judicial grievance mechanism for sexual assault victims in Papua New Guinea does not meet criteria set by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2013, particularly with regard to process, independence, inclusiveness and transparency...
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Canadian Mine Among Sites of Gross Human Rights Violations in Eritrea – UN Report
A new report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea describes “a totalitarian state bent on controlling Eritreans through a vast security apparatus that has penetrated all levels of society.” Nevsun’s Bisha gold-copper mine is repeatedly cited for appalling labour abuses by the...