Greenland explores Arctic mineral riches amid fears for pristine region

Terry Macalister in the Guardian (UK): London Mining, a British mineral company, is trying to attract Chinese and other international investors to build a £1.5bn iron ore mine just outside the Arctic Circle in Greenland. The move comes as BP and Shell join others exploring for oil and gas in the pristine waters off Greenland, as concerns grow that the wave of industrialisation in the region will damage the pristine environment.

Greenland and the wider Arctic is seen as one of the new frontiers for exploiting mineral wealth, but uncertain national boundaries have also opened up potential political, if not military, conflicts.

London Mining, whose board includes a former British foreign minister in Sir Nicholas Bonsor, has already opened talks with Chinese mining group Sichuan Xinye and others about helping finance a new mine at Isua. London Mining chief executive Graeme Hossie said the company was looking at "all options, including Danish, other Nordic, Chinese and other global investors." He said the competition for funding was challenging and it was hard to predict when it would be in place.

The project has received government approval and could result in an influx of more than 3,000 construction workers into the country, which has a population of 57,000, to build a port and pipeline to serve the mine. At present there is no mining of any kind in Greenland, but the cash-strapped and semi-autonomous country is keen to break away from financial and political dependence on its historical owner, Denmark...

Nuuk Bay, Greenland, shot by Lovstromp, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Extent of Peruvian Amazon lost to illegal goldmines mapped for first time

Dan Collyns in the Guardian (UK): The area affected by illegal gold mining in Peru's south-eastern Amazon region increased by 400% from 1999 to 2012, according to researchers using state-of-the-art mapping technology.

Using airborne mapping and high-satellite monitoring, researchers led by the Carnegie Institution for Science also showed that the rate of forest loss in Madre de Dios has tripled since the 2008 global economic crisis, when the international price of gold began to rise to new highs.

Until this study, thousands of small, clandestine mines that have boomed since the economic crisis went unmonitored, according to the research team, which was led by Carnegie's Greg Asner and worked with Peru's environment ministry.

Crucial technological differences, such as the use of the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System-lite (CLASlite), meant the team was able to map both large and small mining operations.

"The gold miners are working in thousands of small groups, so it takes our high resolution techniques to map their activities," said Asner, who developed the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO), technology that uses algorithms to detect changes to the forest in areas as small as 10 square metres (about 100 square feet), allowing scientists to find small-scale disturbances that cannot be detected by traditional satellite methods....

This CLASlite map shows the areas along the Madre De Dios river damaged by small, clandestine gold miners between 1999 and 2012. Photograph: CLASlite Team

El Salvador mining ban could establish a vital water security precedent

Meera Karunananthan in the Povertymatters blog in the Guardian (UK): Five hundred scientists meeting in Bonn last month warned that 9 billion people would face the consequences of severe water shortages within a generation or two, but did not point the finger at industries devastating fresh water supplies.

Meanwhile, a battle against a metal mining industry that has ravaged freshwater supplies in El Salvador shows just how difficult it is for a developing country to build economic alternatives for a water-secure future. Two mining companies are dragging El Salvador through a costly legal challenge at an international trade tribunal for attempting to protect limited water supplies by refusing permits for their operations.

With 90% of its surface water heavily contaminated and a quarter of its rural population lacking access to safe drinking water, El Salvador is embroiled in a clean water crisis. More than two-thirds of the population rely on the Lempa river basin for drinking water – the same number that would be threatened by water-intensive and water-contaminating metal mining projects were El Salvador to reopen its doors to the industry.

In 2008, after strong public pressure to protect water from mining, Antonio Saca, El Salvador's president at the time, declared he would not issue any new mining permits. There are no active metal-mining operations in the mineral-rich country, which a majority of Salvadorans would like to become the first in the world to prohibit metal mining permanently. A bill to ban the industry has the support of more than 62% of the population and was initially backed by the ruling FMLN party....

Impacts of climate change on Canadian mining industry studied

Sheila Bautz in the Leader-Post (Saskatchewan): Natural Resources Canada is funding a project to examine the impacts of climate change on mining in Saskatchewan. The goal is to distribute the results of the project's recommendation documents across Canada by compiling the information in a program called "Enhancing Competitiveness in a Changing Climate."

The federal government is funding the Saskatchewan project entitled, "Risk To Mining Companies Related to Extreme Climate Events: Case Studies of Adaptation Actions Focusing On The Qu'Appelle Water Sheds" for inclusion with their program.

Although federally funded, the Water Security Agency (previously Saskatchewan Watershed Authority) is leading the provincial project. The Water Security Agency leads management of the province's water resources to ensure safe drinking water sources and reliable water supplies for economic, environmental, and social benefits for the people of Saskatchewan. Ben Brodie has been contracted as the project manager by The Water Security Agency to deliver the project. Brodie is managing the extensive research team undertaking various areas of research and documenting case studies, as well as integrating input from different agencies involved with the mining industry in Saskatchewan.

"You don't have to go far to see the impact the extremes have had on the region, the prairies have always had an extreme climate which has been highlighted in recent years with widespread flooding having a major impact around the province. If you read the research that has been done on the impacts of climate change in the prairies, it looks like the extremes - the excessive droughts and flooding - may become more common," said Brodie....

The McArthur River Uranium Mine in Saskatchewan, shot by Turgan, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Mining companies are underprepared for climate change

Barton Loechel in the Conversation: Recent research suggests only a minority of mining companies are preparing for the biophysical impacts of climate change. Those that are preparing are going it alone: there is little collaboration on planning between miners and local government.

The preparedness of Australia’s resource communities for climate change will depend on adaptation planning across multiple sectors. For example, a range of climate change effects – drought, and conflict over water use, heatwaves and intense rainfall – will adversely affect mining operations as well as other industry sectors, communities and the surrounding environment.

Climate change in Australia is projected to lead to more frequent and severe droughts, floods and heat waves; increased cyclone intensity; and sea-level rise and ocean acidification, albeit with significant regional variations over different time frames.

Droughts cause competition between water users in rural areas – notably miners, farmers and rural townships. Intense rainfall events, such as those experienced in the Bowen Basin coal mining region of Queensland, led to extensive flooding of mine pits, damage to transportation routes, on-going disruption to production and export of coal, reduced state royalties, and community outrage over the effects on downstream water quality caused when pit water was released into streams.

Heat waves can reduce the liveability of mining communities and pose occupational health and safety risks for mine operational staff. Sea-level rise and ocean chemistry changes have implications for the integrity of port infrastructure and offshore platforms, while greater storm surge heights may affect mining-related infrastructure in low-lying coastal areas...

A pit at the Morenci Mine, the largest US copper mine. Shot by TJBlackwell, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Ghana risks acute water shortage as mines devastate sources

Justice Lee Adoboe in Coastweek via Xinhua: The Ghanaian government is making efforts to find a lasting solution to the perennial water crisis brought about by increased human activities and commercial ventures, with its negative impact on both urban and local communities.

Water bodies, which used to serve as intakes for water treatment plants providing potable water for urban communities, are either dying off or have been polluted that it does not make economic or social sense to continue treating water from them for human consumption.

Activities such as farming, dumping of liquid and solid waste into rivers and streams, bush burning, illegal logging of timber and mining activities have been identified as the main threats to Ghana’s water security.

These activities result in seasonal water shortages, resulting in the reliance on unconventional sources and expensive processes of water production and distribution to meet growing water demands. Official records say the capital, Accra, and neighboring port city Tema reel under a 35 million-gallon water supply deficit....

Mining, logging contributed to Philippine disaster

Terra Daily via AFP: Unchecked illegal gold mining and decades of indiscriminate logging contributed to the high death toll in the Philippines' worst natural disaster this year, officials and experts say.

Whole towns were washed away or buried by landslides when Typhoon Botha smashed into a mountainous region on the southern island of Mindanao last week, leaving 548 people confirmed dead and 827 missing.

Poverty, greed and the lure of the precious metal have long drawn thousands of prospectors to the region.

"Mining and logging may have had an effect," said civil defence chief Benito Ramos.

"The mountains have been denuded for decades, and filled with holes by our countrymen who are small-time miners. It pains me to say this, but these are the facts," he said....

Typhoon Bopha making landfall in the Philippines on December 3, 2012, via NOAA

Mining saps a thirsty desert

Michelle Tolson in IPS: The Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine in the southern Gobi desert in Mongolia has become a symbol of a looming crisis: a limited water supply that could be exhausted within a decade, seriously threatening the lives and livelihoods of the local population.

Oyu Tolgoi is one of the largest copper deposits in the world and has attracted major investors over the years, from Robert Friedland of Ivanhoe Capital Corporation, to the mining giant Rio Tinto, which now holds a majority stake in the investment, while the Mongolian government controls just 34 percent of the project.

Now, local communities fear that returns on investments will take precedence over their own subsistence, while simultaneously heightening the region’s acute water shortage. A 2010 World Bank water assessment report for the southern Gobi region projected a “lifespan” for water resources based on the number of mining projects in the pipeline, as well as a study of the region’s growing population whose primary occupation is herding and rearing livestock.

...Subsistence herders must share a limited water supply with numerous mines. A 2009 World Bank report found that mining exploration licences cover 55 percent of this area. Omongovi province, for instance, “has 63 licences issued for extraction and 400 licences for exploration.”...

A desert landscape in Inner Mongolia, shot by Fir0002, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Pollution as big a health problem as malaria or TB, finds report

Stephen Leahy in the "globaldevelopment" blog at the Guardian (UK): Waste from mining, lead smelters, industrial dumps and other toxic sites affects the health of an estimated 125 million people in 49 low- and middle-income countries. This unrecognised health burden is on the scale of malaria or tuberculosis (TB), a new report has found.

This year's World's worst pollution problems (pdf) report was published on Tuesday by the Blacksmith Institute in partnership with Green Cross Switzerland. It documents, for the first time, the public health impact of industrial pollutants – lead, mercury, chromium, radionuclides and pesticides – in the air, water and soil of developing countries. "This is an extremely conservative estimate," said Bret Ericson of the Blacksmith Institute, a small international NGO based in New York City. "We've investigated 2,600 toxic sites in the last four years, [but] we know there are far more."

The US has an estimated 100,000-300,000 toxic sites, mainly factories or industrial areas, but toxic sites in the low- and middle-income countries assessed in the report are often in residential areas. "We see a lot of disease when we go into these communities," said Ericson. "But we were surprised the health burden was so high – as much as malaria."

Ericson cited gold mining in the Nigerian state of Zamfara by way of example. In 2010, Médecins Sans Frontières doctors carrying out vaccinations in villages in Zamfara were shocked to see so few children. The villagers were small-scale gold miners who crushed gold-bearing rocks inside village compounds; the raw ore contained extremely high levels of lead, which had killed hundreds of children and left thousands more with lead poisoning.

The health impact of exposure to toxins at the 2,600 sites identified in the report was estimated using the disability adjusted life years (DALYs) metric, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other bodies use to measure overall disease burden. The metric is expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability or early death, with one DALY equivalent to one lost year of healthy life. The estimate for impact of pollution from toxic sites is 17m DALYs; according to the WHO, malaria's annual toll is 14m DALYs....

A gold mine uphill from a river, location unknown, shot by Nateko, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Argentine court upholds glacier law in mining area

Reuters: Argentina's Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that key articles of a glacier protection law should apply in a northern province where the world's largest gold miner, Barrick Gold Corp, is building a huge mine high in the Andes.

Tuesday's ruling takes precedence over a 2010 decision by a federal judge in San Juan province who suspended the application of six key articles of the law following a complaint presented by mining industry groups.

"The Supreme Court revokes the precautionary measures that suspended the application of the glacier law in the province of San Juan," the official judicial news agency said.

San Juan province is home to Barrick's Veladero mine, which lies at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters (13,000-feet) not far from the company's huge Pascua Lama project - a roughly $5 billion gold-silver mine set to enter production in 2013...

At the Veladero mine, shot by GRITTA, Antonio, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Major efforts still needed to clean up Lake Titicaca

Franz Chávez in IPS via Tierramérica: Efforts to combat pollution in Lake Titicaca, which straddles the borders of Peru and Bolivia high up in the Andes mountains, have shown slightly better results in Puno Bay on the Peruvian side, but have barely made a difference in Cohana Bay on the Bolivian side, according to local fishers and specialists interviewed by Tierramérica.

At 3,810 meters above sea level, Lake Titicaca is the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. It has a total surface area of 8,562 square kilometers, of which 3,790 lie on the Bolivian side of the border and 4,772 are in Peru.

Its deep blue waters are a source of livelihoods for 400,000 people who make a living from fishing, harvesting its vegetation for use as livestock feed, and building boats from the totora reeds that grow in the lake, using techniques that date back to pre-Columbian times.

But the inhabitants of the Puno region in southeastern Peru are deeply concerned by the current state of the lake’s waters. In May, Aymara indigenous communities in the region staged a two-week roadblock on the international highway used to transport Bolivian export goods through Peru to the Pacific Ocean. The roadblock was aimed at protesting new mining concessions that could lead to even further contamination of Lake Titicaca, which already receives the waste effluents of six Peruvian gold and uranium mines....

Puerto de Puno on Lake Titicaca, shot by Alfredobi

Gold prices spur six-fold spike in Amazon deforestation

Terra Daily: Deforestation in parts of the Peruvian Amazon has increased six-fold in recent years as small-scale miners, driven by record gold prices, blast and clear more of the lowland rainforest, according to a new Duke University-led study. The study, published in the online journal PLoS ONE, combined NASA satellite imagery spanning six years with economic analyses of gold prices and mercury imports to document the forces responsible for deforestation in Peru's biologically diverse Madre de Dios region.

Roughly 7,000 hectares, or about 15,200 acres, of pristine forest and wetlands were cleared at two large mining sites between 2003 and 2009, with a dramatic increase in deforestation occurring in the last three years. "In addition to these two large sites, there are many scattered, small but expanding areas of mining activity across Madre de Dios that are more difficult to monitor but could develop rapidly like the sites we've tracked over time," says Jennifer Swenson, assistant professor of the practice of geospatial analysis at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.

Much of the deforestation visible in the satellite images has been caused by unregulated, artisanal mining by miners who are often among the poorest and most marginalized members of their society. "These are small-time miners; there is no big 'Goliath' mining company to blame," Swenson says. The miners often lack modern technology, have limited knowledge of mining's environmental or human health effects and rarely have safeguards to limit the release of the mercury they use to process their gold into the air, soil or water….

A gold coin depicting Septimius Severus, 193–211 AD. Aureus (7.23 gm). Struck 193 AD to celebrate the legion that proclamed him emperor. Image from Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Climate change threatens Peru’s farmers

Naomi Mapstone in beyondbrics, a blog at the Financial Times: Rising investment in Peruvian agriculture is increasing tensions over one of the Andean country’s most precious resources: water. Peru is home to 70 per cent of the world’s tropical ice fields; but they are shrinking: 22 per cent of its glaciers - equivalent to 10 years’ water supply for Lima, the world’s second driest city - have been lost over the past 30 years.

That is a symbol of Peru’s vulnerability to climate change, a phenomenon that is challenging farmers in several emerging markets, just as the world food system is being challenged by rising food demand from those very same countries.

…Major irrigation projects to divert water to Peru’s arid Pacific coastline for agroindustry have successfully transformed several coastal valleys into plantations of citrus, table grapes and avocados that Peru exports overseas. But they have also drawn heated objections by communities that farm potatoes, asparagus and artichokes and fear being left high and dry.

In the past two weeks, protests over the newly approved Majes-Siguas II irrigation project for the southern department of Arequipa have killed one person and closed down the airport in Cusco, a tourist hub close to the Machu Picchu ruins. Communities who fear losing their water to big mines have also protested, putting a spoke (or several) in the works of projects such as Southern Copper’s Tía María mine and Zijin’s Rio Blanco.

“It is of the essence to discuss matters of water, especially in countries as dry as Peru,” Roque Benavides, chief executive officer of Buenaventura, Peru’s biggest listed precious metals company, told beyondbrics. Buenaventura’s Zanja gold mine, a joint venture with Newmont, will pour its first gold bars this month, but only after a painstaking community consultation that saw one person killed during protests back in 2004….

A view in Arequipa City, in the same department as the irrigation project mentioned above, shot by MapachitoMD, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Report suggests mining companies are failing to fully recognise risks posed by inevitable climate change

PR Newswire: According to an Acclimatise report, backed by IBM, over 80% of global mining companies surveyed claim their physical assets would be affected by extreme weather events, yet only 13% report taking action to protect their assets that are critical to business success, attracting financial investment and the safety of employees.

The report findings highlight the critical choices mining companies now face to help prepare their business for anticipated additional costs and challenges created by a changing climate. The challenges facing mining enterprises today are pushing leaders to adapt the traditional ways of thinking about their business to discover and explore new practices that will improve the business of mining.

Without building adaptation measures into their business plans, climatic risks could impact upon a company's financial and operational performance, potentially increasing operational and capital expenditure. This is particularly true for mining companies where long term investment decisions have to be made. However only 3% of companies surveyed provided evidence that they mainstream adaptation into decision making, highlighting the need for more mining companies to consider action.

…"The mining industry has been an essential contributor to society and the economy for many years and has continually adapted successfully to changes. IBM believes this rate of change is increasing and many within the industry realise that the modern miner will need to work differently and work smarter to succeed," said David Carter, Mining Industry Lead, Growth Markets, IBM Global Business Services. "Increasingly companies need to think about the potential impacts from inevitable climate change resulting from past greenhouse gas emissions. Whether this takes the form of adapting to reduce risks, complying with regulations aimed at increasing energy efficiency or reducing greenhouse gas emissions."….

Using waste to recover uranium

Science Daily: Using bacteria and inositol phosphate, a chemical analogue of a cheap waste material from plants, researchers at Birmingham University have recovered uranium from the polluted waters from uranium mines. The same technology can also be used to clean up nuclear waste. Professor Lynne Macaskie, this week (7-10 September), presented the group's work to the Society for General Microbiology's meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Bacteria, in this case, E. coli, break down a source of inositol phosphate (also called phytic acid), a phosphate storage material in seeds, to free the phosphate molecules. The phosphate then binds to the uranium forming a uranium phosphate precipitate on the bacterial cells that can be harvested to recover the uranium.

This process was first described in 1995, but then a more expensive additive was used and that, combined with the then low price of uranium, made the process uneconomic. The discovery that inositol phosphate was potentially six times more effective as well as being a cheap waste material means that the process becomes economically viable, especially as the world price of uranium is likely to increase as countries move to expand their nuclear technologies in a bid to produce low-carbon energy.

As an example, if pure inositol phosphate, bought from a commercial supplier is used, the cost of this process is £1.72 per gram of uranium recovered. If a cheaper source of inositol phosphate is used (eg calcium phytate) the cost reduces to £0.09 for each gram of recovered uranium. At 2007 prices, uranium cost £0.211/g; it is currently £0.09/g. These prices make the process economic overall because there is also an environmental protection benefit. Use of low-grade inositol phosphate from agricultural wastes would bring the cost down still further and the economic benefit will also increase as the price of uranium is forecast to rise again….

The Shinkolobwe mine was exploited by the Belgian Union Minière du Haut Katanga. The majority of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project came from that mine

Climate change to hit Canadian mining industry hard: Suzuki Foundation

Melanie Kuxdorf in the Tyee (Canada): A study released today predicts that the Canadian mining industry will be hit hard by climate change, and must adapt. The study, undertaken by the David Suzuki Foundation, made clear that the industry is already feeling the impacts of global warming, that there are solutions to the problem.

“Because of its dependency on the natural environment, the Canadian mining sector is particularly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change,” said co-author Jason Prno in a press release. Dale Marshall, climate policy analyst with the Suzuki Foundation, told The Tyee they commissioned the study because there wasn’t a lot of research that had been done before in the area.

…Researchers surveyed employees of six mining operations. Most mining companies expected negative impacts from climate change. Marshall said that people in the mining sector pointed to flooding and drought as two major impacts. Flooding can wash out a vital access road and drought can take away the water needed in mining processes.

The survey showed that all mine employees in the field recognized climate change as a threat. Only 25 per cent of senior management, however, believed that climate variability would impact their operations….

Korite International's ammolite open-pit mining operations in Alberta, Canada. Submitted with the permission of Kenneth Hare of Korite International. Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License