Project
Offering communities scientific support to stop mining’s damages
Mining is an economic activity with serious environmental costs. Often, communities located near mining projects do not have access to truthful, complete and objective information on the harms and benefits of extractive industries.
This is compounded by the pollution and water depletion such activities cause in nearby rivers, lakes and other water sources. These risks often occur when mining projects are not adequately evaluated before being approved. And, too often, environmental impact assessments are not based on the best available scientific information.
Now more than ever, we must bridge the information gap between communities and the mining projects that affect them.
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Infographic: Lakes Poopó and Uru Uru, at-risk Bolivian wetlands
Located in the central-eastern Bolivian highlands, lakes Poopó and Uru Uru are important sources of water for indigenous and rural communities and the area's planet and animal life. Both ecosystems, considered Wetlands of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention, are at serious risk due to mining activity, river diversion and the climate crisis.
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Mine tailings dams: a history of failures
Once again, tragedy looms over Brazil. Last Friday, for the second time in less than four years, a tailings dam broke in the State of Minas Gerais—this time in the municipality of Brumadinho—leaving catastrophic human and environmental damage in its wake. Once again, the losses are incalculable. We’re faced with disappearances and death. We see the same, disconcerting images: survivors evacuated by helicopter; trees, animals, and homes covered in toxic sludge; a swollen river carrying mining waste downstream. Once again, nature and society have been damaged, torn apart. As if in an endless loop, the tragedy has repeated in Minas Gerais. Five similar incidents, at least of which there is evidence, occurred in 1986, 2001, 2007, 2014, and 2015. The tragedy in November 2015 in the city of Mariana is considered the worst environmental disaster in the history of Brazil. It destroyed the town of Bento Rodrigues and contaminated the Doce River basin, carrying toxic sludge all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. A tragic cycle Far from isolated events, the failures of mine tailings dams have become a common occurrence, and statistics suggest we can expect many more in the future. Like any infrastructure work, a dam has a certain useful life—a period of operation with a firm beginning and end. That period is based on the dam having adequate design, execution, and maintenance, something that often does not occur. Thanks to the World Information Service on Energy’s Uranium Project, we know that over the last 30 years there have been 73 accidents or incidents involving mine tailings dams worldwide. The United States (17), China (8) and the Philippines (7) lead the list of affected countries. The project’s database offers an account of the main accidents and indicators including breakdowns, overshoots, collapses, partial failures, and lining ruptures. These figures should lead us to reflect on large-scale mining, particularly metal mining, which requires these types of dams and impoundments. Instead of continuing to build mines, wouldn’t it be better to concentrate our efforts on recovering and reusing the metal we discard? When will we transition to a circular economy that avoids such catastrophes? How many more disasters can our ecosystems and our human populations endure? Quite often, affected communities do not have objective or sufficient information about the benefits and harms of the mining projects proposed near their homes. Breaking that information gap is urgent. At AIDA we contribute to this task by providing useful information about the potential harms of mining, and using it to strengthen legal actions undertaken to protect people and the environment. It’s urgent that the governmental, non-governmental and private sectors do whatever is necessary to avoid more tragedies like those we’ve seen in Brazil. They must make a conscious decision to put the value of people and nature above profit. For more information, consult the database of major tailings dam failures: http://www.wise-uranium.org/mdaf.html 73 tailings dams have failed over the last 30 years, wreaking havoc on the environment and affected communities: https://t.co/G6xZibNIAk How many more avoidable disasters can we endure? #MinasGerais #BrumadinhoSOS #ValeAssassina #mining pic.twitter.com/ceuNTUUpkL — AIDA Americas (@AIDAorg) January 28, 2019
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Mining Arc threatens majestic lands of Southern Venezuela
For decades, one of the greatest socio-ecological tragedies in Latin America has been developing in Venezuela. Small-scale gold mining is inflicting irreversible damage to one of the continent’s most biodiverse natural areas. It’s happening South of the Orinoco River, amidst majestic waterfalls, impressive mesas, and long-established indigenous communities. Despite its major impacts on the states of Amazonas and Bolívar, mining there has advanced rather silently. Up until a few years ago, not many researchers were even paying attention. The situation changed in 2011, when then-President Hugo Chavez announced the creation of the Orinoco Mining Arc National Strategic Development Zone, a project finalized five years later through a presidential decree. Photo: Bram Ebus / Infoamazonía. Mining’s large-scale damages The Orinoco Mining Arc involves permitting undefined mining activities in 111,843 square kilometers of territory—an area larger than Guatemala and almost twice the size of the Orinoco Oil Belt. Its implementation has legitimized and exacerbated the damages of small-scale mining, chief among them water pollution, deforestation and the destruction of fertile soils. The project also aims to develop large-scale mining in this mega-diverse region. Now, independent researchers like Carlos Eduardo Pacheco and others, hailing from organizations such as the Venezuelan Society of Ecology and Provita, warn of the huge damages that may occur due to the nation’s lack of environmental regulation. Thanks to their studies, additional research, and an analysis of satellite images, we know that: in the area around the Mining Arc there exist at least five or six large pockets of deforestation, and hundreds of smaller ones; the Caroní and Ikabarú river basins are being destroyed; and damages have reached Caura and Canaima National Parks, as well as the territories of the Pemón, Yekuana, Akawayo and Yanomami indigenous people, among others. The consequences, the researchers warn, are not only ecological; they are social as well. There has been a mass exodus from major cities, people fleeing poverty and heading to the Mining Arc to seek economic opportunity. Photo: Bram Ebus / Infoamazonía. In addition, mining activity has lead to multiple reports of human trafficking, prostitution, drug trafficking, extortion, murder, and the presence of both paramilitary groups and guerillas from Colombia. Many of the mining projects in the zone are under the control of a mafia known as “Pranato Minero,” whose leaders are relatively unknown. Increased mining has also caused serious harms to the health of informal miners and their families due to the use of mercury. Statistics from the Ministry of People’s Power for Health demonstrate a strong increase in mortality—at least 500 percent between 2002 and 2013 in municipalities close to the Arc, including Sifontes, El Callao, Cedeño and Roscio. And large-scale transnational mining hasn’t been left out of the picture. Even Canadian companies that recently sued Venezuela for controversies related to their investments have returned as partners in the mining exploitation of Orinoco. Raising awareness of Orinoco In all this development, where is the social and environmental responsibility? There seems to be no place for accountability in Venezuela, a nation with non-existent institutions and inapplicable laws. We must to ask what we can do, as members of civil society, in the face of this latest chronicle of deforestation, mercury contamination, and outright destruction of the natural world of Southern Venezuela. At AIDA, we’re doing what we can by providing technical and scientific support to the Venezuelan organizations studying the Mining Arc’s development. By supporting them, we’re working to raise awareness of the issue and put one of the most serious social and environmental attacks in the region in the public eye.
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