Making Argentine Mining Sustainable
Sunday, February 1st, 2009Argentina’s Secretary of Environmental Policy and Sustainable Development (SAyDS), Homero Bibiloni, recently met with the Mining Secretary, Jorge Mayoral, to discuss joint efforts to make mining in that country more environmentally sustainable. As well they should: in recent months the environmental reputation of the nation’s mining sector has taken a pounding. Recently the provinces of […]
A Unique GEO for MEROSUR
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008Last month a GEO for the Southern Cone Common Market (MERCOSUR or MERCOSUL) was finally unveiled with much fanfare by representatives of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the meeting of MERCOSUR Environment Ministers. What’s a GEO? It’s probably the best known type of comprehensive environmental diagnosis available. “GEO” was the acronym for “Global […]
Inspecting the World’s Largest Open Pit Coal Mine
Saturday, September 6th, 2008Recently Colombia’s Vice Minister for the Environment, Claudia Mora Pineda, the Ministry’s director of licenses and permits, and the head of the National Natural Parks Unit (UPNN) paid an “inspection” visit to El Cerrejón, Colombia’s largest coal mine and probably the largest open pit coal mine in the world. They also visited the mining firm’s […]
Loan for Environmental Decontamination in Argentine Mining Sector
Friday, August 1st, 2008From the World Bank: World Bank Approves US$30 Million for Environmental Decontamination in Mining Sector The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved today a US$30 million loan to support an environmental program designed to assist the Government of Argentina, specifically the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), to meet its legal obligations to remediate closed […]
If You Can’t Find It Here, You May Not Find It
Friday, February 1st, 2008Quite a few Temas Blog readers noticed the absence of new posts for several weeks. I was fully occupied with work day-and-night on the final stages of the total revamp and re-launch of my main site, temasactuales.com Although work continues on the Spanish and Portuguese versions (coming soon!), the burden has lightened enough that I […]
Aluminum Recycling Reconsidered
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007A Sixth Year as Aluminum Can Recycling Champion The Brazilian Aluminum Association (ABAL) recently announced that Brazil recycled 139,100 metric tons (Mt) of aluminum cans (about 10.3 billion cans) in 2006 for a recycling rate of 94.4%, assuring the first-place position for Brazil for the sixth year in a row, ahead of Argentina, Japan, Switzerland, […]
Gold Mining in Guyana (Re)visited
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007In an earlier post I examined a diagnosis of the environmental and health problems posed by current practice in small- and medium-scale gold mining in Guyana and the recommendations for addressing those problems and improving the policing of mining practices. Guyana’s official news service, GINA, reports that last week Cabinet members ventured out to see […]
Digitizing Environmental Enforcement
Saturday, August 4th, 2007Minas Gerais is moving to accomplish something no other Brazilian state — or probably any Latin American/ Caribbean (LAC) nation, for that matter — has yet done: digitize its environmental inspection and enforcement. Currently Minas is winding up a pilot project in which its 21 waste and sanitation inspectors do much of their work utilizing […]
The Mercury Threat Posed by Mining in Guyana
Monday, July 23rd, 2007Not long ago I discussed the various environmental and health challenges posed by gold mining in Guyana in the context of a Harvard study on the issue. Now comes word of a new study presented last week at workshop in Guyana co-sponsored by the Institute of Applied Science and Technology (IAST) and WWF on “Mercury […]
Cleaning Up Gold Mining in Guyana
Thursday, May 31st, 2007In March the International Human Rights Clinic of Harvard Law School‘s Human Rights Program (HRP) issued an indictment of the failings of Guyana’s gold mining regime and its adverse impacts on Amerindians in that country. With a catchy name like “All That Glitters,” the report’s PR caught the attention of several bloggers and regular media […]
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