(Sydney, Ottawa) The Australian-Canadian mining company OceanaGold has been forced to cease mining for over a month at its Didipio copper-gold mine in Nueva Vizcaya, Philippines. The company faces a restraining order from municipal and provincial elected officials, a blockade of the site by Didipio villagers (most of whom are Indigenous peoples), a lapsed mining permit, and a renewal application that has not been approved by the President of the Philippines.

MiningWatch is one of eight leading environmental organizations that addressed this open letter to the Prime Minister regarding shortcomings in proposed regulations under the new federal Impact Assessment Act (the recently-passed bill C-69). We have been working on the update and modernization of federal impact assessment process since the review begin in 2016, and we believe that key aspects of the new Act represent an improvement over the existing environmental impact regime, the Harper government's Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (2012).

(Guatemala City/Ottawa/Washington D.C.) On Tuesday, lawyers representing four Guatemalan members of the peaceful resistance to the Escobal mine announced the conclusion of the precedent-setting lawsuit against Tahoe Resources, recently acquired by Pan American Silver.

(Chiapas, Mexico City, Ottawa, Toronto, Kamloops) In a decision published on July 18th, Federal Justice Keith Boswell conceded that “perhaps Mariano Abarca would not have been murdered” if the embassy “[had] acted in a certain way”. Mariano was a community leader from Chicomuselo, Chiapas, Mexico who was assasinated for his role in the struggle against the social and environmental impacts of Canadian mining company Blackfire Exploration’s barite mine on November 27, 2009. 

(Toronto) Last week, fourteen civil society organizations resigned from a federal advisory committee after the federal government took away powers to investigate from the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE).

Yesterday, over 1,500 people marched against "Toxic Mining" in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico to demand that the three levels of government respect their decision to be territories free of mining, and not grant any licences to Canadian company, Argonaut Gold (TSE: AR).

By Mi'kmaq Matters – a weekly podcast about the Mi'kmaq people and the Qalipu First Nation.

Participant funding for the Valentine Lake environmental assessment will be announced soon, and Jamie Kneen from MiningWatch Canada says groups planning to intervene on the gold mine development on traditional Mi'kmaq land need to start lining up experts and to back them.

From Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment

OceanaGold's 25-year Financial or Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) for the Didipio mine expired on June 20, 2019, but the company has defied restraining orders by the Provincial Government.

In July, 2019, a representative of the organization Putaendo Resiste met with MiningWatch Canada's staff to present them with an "Open Letter to the People of Canada: Canadian Los Andes Copper Ltd. Destroys, Kills, Exterminates, Lies and Bribes in Putaendo, Chile."

This report, from the Deep Sea Mining campaign in collaboration with MiningWatch Canada and London Mining Network, looks at companies that are driving a speculative rush for seabed minerals in an unholy alliance with the very UN body charged with regulating them, the International Seabed Authority (ISA). The report exposes blatant corporate capture of the United Nations-mandated International Seabed Authority (ISA) and the manipulation of Pacific regional decision-making processes by deep sea mining companies and their backers. It calls for a moratorium on the development of deep sea mining (DSM) regulations and on the issuing of exploration and exploitation licences in international and national waters.