There is no shortage of examples for lasting damage caused by mining: In the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, a single waste heap from a mining project is expected to leak acidic water for 9,229 years. Following the collapse of a tailings dam in Brumadinho in 2019, researchers in Brazil noticed changes in the microbiome of the Paraopeba River, including a newly developed resistance to antibiotics. Since 2011, coal seams have been burning uncontrollably in a disused mine under the South African township of Wesselton, leaving cracks in the landscape and sending up columns of smoke. In Pilbara in Western Australia, mining giant Rio Tinto destroyed a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal historic site while expanding a mine. Parts of the Ruhr valley in Germany will forever be dependent on water treatment and constant pumping operation.
Every year, new bodies are created to further develop standards for managing the long-term consequences of mining, such as the Global Tailings Management Institute in London, whose foundation was supported by the United Nations Environment Programme and companies committed to responsible investment. But these institutions cannot manage abandoned mining infrastructures themselves – this is and remains the responsibility of the individual countries concerned. Another example of how challenging and costly the long-term management of the environmental impacts of mining can be was provided by the Director of Environmental Policy at the South African Department of Mineral Resources and Energy. He estimated in 2007 that rehabilitating the country’s 6,100 abandoned mines would take about 800 years and cost about $6.87 billion. For context: South Africa has only been a republic for 61 years and the estimated amount represents 1.64 percent of its gross domestic product in 2021.
Sourcing raw materials at the expense of sustainability in developing countries
Regulating the consequential damage of raw material extraction at mining sites has long been neglected and is now more urgent than ever, particularly in view of a global, equitable energy transition and the containment of global warming. The fact that we need to replace fossil fuels must not be an excuse to procure the raw materials needed for this purpose at the expense of sustainability in developing countries.
In many countries, particularly in the Global South, there is not even a definition for documenting lasting consequential damages from mining and assessing the costs – let alone rules, strategies or regulations for handling them. Monitoring and mitigation are very costly. This is extremely concerning as these damages represent not only an environmental problem, but also pose enormous economic and health risks to the surrounding communities.
Unfortunately, some interest groups ignore this problem or actively oppose any attempts to regulate mining – or even just to put the issue on the public agenda. During the public debate about the public discussion on the new Ecuadorian water act (2021), the Chamber of Mines sent a letter to the president of Ecuador’s National Assembly and to its Natural Resources Commission, in which it argued that placing the burden of proof regarding the consequential damages of mining on the mining companies would be contrary to the presumption of innocence. According to the letter, the concept of consequential damages was not defined in Ecuadorian law (which was the very reason for the new regulation) and it was discriminatory to specifically target metal mining. Some companies, universities and even public institutions in Colombia have engaged in similar propaganda efforts to discredit the concept of consequential damages per se and to deny that they even exist, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Obfuscation of environmental and socio-cultural effects
These companies apparently regard it as subversive to inform the public of the full costs of mining. They feel discriminated against when strict legal frameworks are demanded and view the application of the «polluter pays» and the precautionary principle as hostile to technology. They would prefer to continue to obscure the lasting environmental and socio-cultural impacts and pass on the costs of monitoring and mitigation to the public once the deposits are exhausted.
All of this goes to show that, for one thing, the source countries must urgently meet two demands: First of all, they need to establish clear standards and methods for assessing the lasting impacts of mining on water quality and other natural resources, including participatory decision-making processes. Secondly, they must explicitly prohibit lasting consequential damages in both areas. The purchasing countries, for their part, must be required to conduct adequate due diligence and to continuously advocate for local regulations that are at least as stringent as those in their own countries.
Only by implementing these necessary and urgent changes can we achieve a better design of mining projects, prevent those projects that do not meet the requirements and move closer to our goal of environmental justice.
Andrés Ángel is a Colombian geologist with more than ten years of experience in assessing the socio-ecological impacts of extraction projects, particularly in the mining sector. He has worked as a consultant in the civil society sector and in academia in both Latin America and Europe.