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Mining Conflict and Opposition

Alberta Rockies coal mining panel granted 6-week extension to deliver its report (Canadian Press/CBC News Calgary – November 10, 2021)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary

Extension to Dec. 31 granted due to ‘extraordinary volume, breadth and depth’ of input from Albertans

A panel gathering public input on coal mining in the Alberta Rockies has been given another six weeks to hand in its report.

“Due to the extraordinary volume, breadth and depth of the input provided by Albertans, the coal policy committee requested an extension to the deadline for both their engagement and final reports,” said a statement by provincial Energy Minister Sonya Savage.

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Could an Indigenous conservation area in Hudson Bay also be the key to saving carbon-rich peatlands? – by Inori Roy (The Narwhal – November 6, 2021)

The Narwhal

The Mushkegowuk Council has been pushing to protect the area in northern Ontario — a major carbon sink the size of Portugal — for decades

Lawrence Martin can’t put a date on when he first heard community Elders call for conservation efforts in James Bay and Hudson Bay — but the interest goes as far back as he can remember.

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Pond Inlet woman’s barrage of criticism shakes up Baffinland hearings – by Jane George (CBC News Canada North – November 4, 2021)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

A Pond Inlet, Nunavut, woman managed to lambaste the Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. on several fronts Wednesday, despite being about 1,000 kilometres north of the Nunavut Impact Review Board hearing underway in Iqaluit.

Anita Uuttuvak sat alone in a chair in front of a microphone, while speaking by videoconference in her home community. She looked straight into the camera, and spoke in Inuktitut and English about the mining company and its proposed expansion of the Mary River iron mine, now in its final assessment by regulators.

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Iamgold beefing up security amid repeated terror attacks in Burkina Faso – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – November 1, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Canadian gold miner Iamgold Corp. is attempting to reassure investors after the company suffered its second attack on a bus convoy of workers inside of three months, amid growing jihadist violence in West Africa.

On Friday, a convoy of buses and supply trucks carrying 33 employees and contractors to Iamgold’s Essakane gold mine in Burkina Faso was ambushed. Immediately following the attack, which occurred twelve kilometres from the mine, one employee and one contractor went missing.

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Editorial Counterpoint: Assault on mining harms all Minnesota, America – by Kelly Osborne (Star Tribune – October 31, 2021)

https://www.startribune.com/

Kelly Osborne is chief executive, Twin Metals Minnesota.

The Star Tribune Editorial Board recently lauded the federal government’s announcement that it would be reinitiating a mineral withdrawal study on nearly a quarter-million acres of land in northeast Minnesota that could lead to a 20-year ban on mining in this area (“A win for Boundary Waters Stewardship,” Oct. 25).

The question I pose to the board, to our nation’s leaders and to mining opponents is this: Do you value smartphones, medical technology, clean energy solutions, broadband, electricity, roads, buildings and infrastructure? If you’re like most common-sense Americans and answered unequivocally yes, then do you realize that the hardworking people of the mining industry produce the raw materials critical to all these things?

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Corb Lund, Alberta’s unlikely activist, mounts final resistance against coal mining interests in the Rockies – by Jesse Snyder (National Post – October 26, 2021)

https://nationalpost.com/

“It’s the goddamned drinking water,” says an exasperated Corb Lund, still in disbelief over a government decision last year to re-open the Rocky Mountains to coal mining interests, which opponents say could threaten critical water supplies in southern Alberta.

The country music star and sixth-generation Albertan became a key figure last year in the campaign to resist new development in Alberta’s foothills, after the provincial government in June 2020 rescinded a decades-old ban on open-pit mining along the region’s southern slopes.

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Canadian miners pursue prospects in war-torn Tigray – by Geoffrey York and Zecharias Zelalem (Globe and Mail – October 4, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

With a devastating war still raging on, the Tigray region in northern Ethiopia has become a land of famine, massacres and brutal destruction. Its suffering has led to allegations of genocide, threats of sanctions and fears of a humanitarian catastrophe.

But some Canadian gold-mining companies see Tigray as something else: a potential bonanza. Their jostling for mineral rights has continued even as the war deepens, with the miners confident that the region holds billions of dollars in gold.

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Record number of environmental activists murdered – by Claire Marshall (BBC.com – September 12, 2021)

https://www.bbc.com/

A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group. 227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global Witness said.

Almost a third of the murders were reportedly linked to resource exploitation – logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure.

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Serbs Protest Against Lithium Mining, Other Eco Problems – by Darko Vojinovic (U.S. News/Associated Press – September 11, 2021)

https://www.usnews.com/

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Several thousand people protested in Serbia on Saturday demanding a ban on planned lithium mining in the Balkan country as well as a resolution to scores of other environmental issues that made the region one of the most polluted in Europe.

The rally in downtown Belgrade was organized by about 30 ecological groups who recently gained popularity in Serbia amid widespread disillusionment with mainstream politicians and amid major pollution problems facing the region.

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Chile indigenous group asks regulators to suspend lithium miner SQM’s permits – by Dave Sherwood (Reuters – September 13, 2021)

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Indigenous communities living around Chile’s Atacama salt flat have asked authorities to suspend lithium miner SQM’s operating permits or sharply reduce its operations until it submits an environmental compliance plan acceptable to regulators, according to a filing viewed by Reuters.

Chile’s SMA environmental regulator in 2016 charged SQM with overdrawing lithium-rich brine from the Salar de Atacama salt flat, prompting the company to develop a $25 million plan to bring its operations back into compliance. Authorities approved that plan in 2019 but reversed their decision in 2020, leaving the company to start again from scratch on a potentially tougher plan.

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Mining company ‘caught in the middle’ between Ginoogaming First Nation and Ontario – by Gary Rinne (TBnewswatch.com – September 7, 2021)

https://www.tbnewswatch.com/

TORONTO — A Superior Court judge has extended an interim injunction against mineral exploration in the non-reserve portion of Wiisinin Zaahgi’igan, an area that Ginoogaming First Nation has described as a sacred and cultural part of its traditional territory.

Justice Susan Vella has ordered Ontario to engage in “meaningful consultation” with Ginoogaming, and to appear before her again in six months. The decision leaves the future of Greenstone businessman Michael Malouf’s mining claims up in the air. Malouf owns Quarternary Mining & Exploration Inc. and Hardrock Extension Inc.

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How his plan to open the Canadian Rockies to coal mining set Alberta’s Jason Kenney against country music stars – by Alex Boyd (Toronto Star – August 15, 2021)

https://www.thestar.com/

Corb Lund is not enjoying this interview. The lanky Juno-winning musician, known for his playful lyrical takes on rural life on the Prairies, is calling while on his way home to southern Alberta after a stint in studio in Edmonton working on some new music.

But he hasn’t phoned to talk about his latest project, or even the one before it, an album released to critical acclaim in the middle of a pandemic.

Instead, he’s stolen time from his primary gig to talk about a side project that has recently rebranded him as an emerging, albeit reluctant, advocate: stopping a controversial plan to open up the Rocky Mountains to coal mining.

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Documentary shines a light on lithium mining and conflicts in Argentina – by Fermin Koop (Dialogochino.net – August 3, 2021)

Years in the making, the film tells the story of the communities of Salinas Grandes, Jujuy province, who resist the arrival of mining companies for lithium extraction in Argentina

Clemente Flores lives in the El Moreno community in Salinas Grandes, Jujuy, Argentina, where indigenous communities are trying to prevent mining companies from extracting lithium. The amount of water needed to obtain the mineral, used to power electric car and phone batteries, would radically alter their way of life, Clemente argues.

In the name of lithium, a new documentary directed by Cristian Cartier and Martín Longo, tells the story of a conflict generated by lithium extraction. The film, which took more than five years to make, is available online for free until 9 August and is then scheduled for release in cinemas across Argentina.

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Lithium boom could be coming to Salton Sea area, and residents need to be included – by Mariela Loera (Desert Sun – August 4, 2021)

https://www.desertsun.com/

Mariela Loera is a policy advocate with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability.

Will the dream of renewable energy in the “Lithium Valley” around the Salton Sea be a nightmare for surrounding communities?

The area contains huge amounts of lithium, and demand for electric cars — which use lithium-ion batteries — is booming. So we are at a vital moment to meaningfully engage residents and ensure that future decisions and actions not only prevent harm but also benefit local communities.

Early community involvement before the work to extract the lithium begins in earnest will enable preventative action that considers the existing circumstances of surrounding communities and ensures no further harm, which is essential for equitable progress and true climate resilience.

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Will This Court Case End the Mining Industry’s 150-Year Dominance of the West? – by Elizabeth Royte (Mother Jones – August 2, 2021)

https://www.motherjones.com/

One legal loophole might change everything.

Early one May morning, I escaped Tucson’s unrelenting grid and drove south through Pima County on Arizona’s state Route 83, into the heart of the Madrean Sky Islands, an almost mythical landscape of shadowy, isolated peaks where several biological zones overlap.

The blue-gray Whetstone Mountains marked the distant eastern horizon, the Patagonias loomed to the south, and to the immediate west rose the camelback ridgeline of the Santa Ritas. There, oaks and junipers stippled upper elevations, and rolling swells of grass blanketed low slopes.

A haven for wildlife and a balm for those seeking respite in nature, this region contains some of the rarest intact ecosystems and the highest-quality streams among the deserts of the Southwest, providing habitat for ocelots, jaguars, and a dozen other endangered species.

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