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Renewables promising for miners, but edge may go to most responsible operators

1 May 2019By

The rise of renewable energy to meet global climate goals could be a boon for global mining companies but new customers may also bring higher levels of scrutiny to corporate responsibility practices in the sector.

Increased production of renewable energy resources to meet the goals set out by the Paris Agreement on climate change is expected to drastically boost demand for valuable materials including lithium, cadmium, silver, rare earth metals, aluminum and copper. As demand rises, a growing number of stakeholders are calling for close attention to the environmental, social and governance practices of mining companies crucial to the renewable energy supply chain.

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50 NGO’s sign open letter recognizing responsible sourcing through IRMA

30 April 2019By

50 NGOs including Greenpeace, Earthworks, Global Witness and others signed an open letter to the World Bank stating that ‘where sourcing from mining operations is absolutely necessary, purchasers must insist that those operations adhere to stringent international environmental and human rights best-practices standards (such as those developed by the multi-stakeholder Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance) with independent, third-party assurance of compliance.’

The letter was signed on the launch of the Climate Smart Mining initiative in Washington DC. The leaders also stated that an ‘essential shift is necessary in order to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees and avert the most disastrous impacts of climate change. And yet, even as new renewable energy infrastructure ramps up, we are concerned about the impacts of extracting minerals.

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B.C. needs to act quickly to prevent future mine-tailings disasters

14 March 2019By

Loretta Williams, chairwoman of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining and Calvin Sandborn, QC, legal director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria call on Premier John Horgan to act now to protect the workers and communities below tailings dams.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press.

About five years ago, both B.C. and Brazil got dramatic warnings of the danger that tailings dams pose. In 2014, the Mount Polley mine dam collapsed, creating one of Canada’s most epic environmental disasters. Only 15 months later, a tailings dam in Mariana, Brazil, collapsed, wiping out a neighbourhood, killing 19 and poisoning a vast watershed. Fish literally leaped out of the river to flap on the banks, trying to escape lethal effluent.

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Catastrophic spill from mining dam threatens thousands of lives

28 January 2019By

“Vale’s Brumadinho mining waste dam failure is all the more tragic because the mining industry knows how to prevent them, yet failed to act.” — Payal Sampat, Earthworks.

Photo Credit: BBC.

The Independent Catholic News reports that:  Hundreds of people are missing, 37 people have been confirmed dead and more than 24,000 people have been evacuated from the Brazilian town hit by a deadly mudslide unleashed by a ruptured mining dam, as rains raised fears a second dam could collapse. . .

Payal Sampat, the Mining Director of our US counterpart organisation, Earthworks, said: “Vale’s Brumadinho mining waste dam failure is all the more tragic because the mining industry knows how to prevent them, yet failed to act. 200 people are missing and some presumed dead because Vale and the rest of global mining industry haven’t adopted the Mount Polley Independent Expert Panel’s recommendations made in response to a similar catastrophic mining waste dam failure in 2014. These recommendations have been globally recognized, including by the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2017 assessment of tailings dams failures, and by the multi-sector Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance standard. Until these recommendations are adopted and independently verified, preventable mining disasters will continue to occur wherever the mining industry operates.

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Tiffany brand launches new diamond sourcing initiative

21 January 2019By

Tiffany & Co, an IRMA founding member, to share diamond provenance with customers.

Leading American jeweler Tiffany & Co. announced a new initiative Wednesday to ensure transparency in its diamond sourcing. “Tiffany & Co. will begin sharing with our customers the provenance, meaning region or countries of origin, of our newly sourced, individually registered diamonds – a significant step for diamond transparency,” said CEO Alessandro Bogliolo, as the company launched the Diamond Source Initiative.

. . . Each Tiffany diamond is engraved with a tiny, invisible serial number using a laser. That helps to make it unique and traceable to each owner.

Andy Hart, the company’s vice president of diamond and jewelry supply, says the best way to ensure responsible sourcing is to know where a diamond came from.

. . . “We were early supporters of the Kimberley Process and helped found the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), an organization making significant strides in establishing global mining standards.”

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WWF Calls on Corporates to Implement Credible Mining Certification

18 December 2018By

WWF Germany recently published a report, Boom in Raw Materials: Between Profits and Losses, which offers one of the first concrete rebuttals from a major environmental group against the notion that industry actions alone are enough to move the global industrial mining sector towards greater responsibility.

Overall the report says companies need to take the following actions:

  • Identify their risks and impacts related to mining and metals, and seek strategies with a range of stakeholders including NGOs.
  • Demand supply chain due diligence from their suppliers to uphold credible mining standards.
  • Implement credible certification at the mine site level.

In the sections of the report calling for corporate action, the authors point primarily to the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) as a credible, multi-stakeholder-driven option for assurance of more responsible industrial mining at the mine site level. . . IRMA was cited throughout the report as it is the only current certification system that offers a comprehensive standard offering one-stop coverage of the full range of environmental and social issues related to the impacts of industrial-scale mines.

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