Over 40 organizations from around the world have signed a statement in solidarity with the popular assemblies of the southern Argentinian province of Chubut as well as the Indigenous communities and organizations who have been peacefully resisting the imposition of industrial mining in their territory for more than 17 years.

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.

(Ottawa) Yesterday, members of the Legislative Assembly of the province of Chubut, Argentina, condemned ongoing pressures by the pro-mining lobby to amend a law which protects the province’s environment and bans open-pit mining and the use of cyanide. 

Three Tjiwarl women, Shirley Wonyabong, Elizabeth Wonyabong and Vicki Abdullah, have been awarded the 2019 Peter Rawlinson Award for their decades-long campaign to protect their country and culture from a proposed uranium mine at Yeelirrie in outback Western Australia.

Today, the Peruvian organization Human Rights Without Borders-Cusco (DHSF, from its initials in Spanish) presented the findings of its report “Mining Impacts Invisibilized: A view from the ground on HudBay’s Constancia Project” in Santo Tomás, Chumbivilcas province, where the Constancia mine is located. 

We the Assemblies of Chubut manifest our energetic rejection of the recent statements that governor Mariano Arcioni made about the need to re-open the debate on mega-mining. Yes, Arcioni, the governor of a province which has spent the last four months without classes [teachers are on strike], says, yet again, that it is necessary to debate mining in Chubut.

Members of the civil society group “No a la Mina Esquel” are condemning lobbying efforts by Canadian company Pan American Silver (PAS) in the weeks prior to newly-elected representatives taking office in the southern Argentine province of Chubut. PAS’s plans to develop an open pit silver-lead mine in Chubut have been stymied for years due to a legislative ban on mining in the province.

On November 21st, Nautilus Minerals' court-appointed monitor, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) confirmed that the relevant legal papers had been filed to assign the company into bankruptcy.[1] Whilst this news was expected, there has been no news on plans for the Solwara 1 deep sea mining project in Papua New Guinea, leaving local communities and civil society who are opposed to the project with many questions.

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.

(Ottawa/Port Moresby) Last week, Jonathan Mesulam travelled from his home in Papua New Guinea in the south Pacific to speak about deep sea mining at an international conference on climate change and mining organized by MiningWatch Canada.