Canada has more mine tailings spills than most other countries in the world, according to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which urges governments and the mining industry to improve safety, accountability and oversight.

During the last decade there have been seven known mine tailings spills in Canada, only one less than reported in China, which tops the list, says the report.

The UNEP assessment “Mine Tailings Storage: Safety Is No Accident” looks at 40 tailings accidents, including the 2014 Mount Polley disaster that saw 24 million cubic metres of sludge and mine waste flooding into nearby waterways.

It is estimated that, since 2008, mining waste failures have killed more than 340 people, damaged hundreds of kilometres of waterways, affected drinking water sources, wiped out fish populations, destroyed heritage sites and monuments and jeopardized the livelihoods of many communities.

And the documented disasters may not tell the whole story as there is no global database of mine sites and tailings storage facilities — something the report calls for.

“This is just a glimpse of what we know. A lot of the data is missing. We need an international database of mining spills and mining failures. If you don’t collect that solid data, you are not in the best position to correct the problems,” Ugo LaPointe of MiningWatch Canada told DeSmog Canada.

“We should be asking the regulators and the industry why no one on the planet is tracking spills and failures.”

The root of the problem is that environmental and human safety is not the first priority for mining operations, says the report, which recommends that regulators, industry and communities move to a “zero-failure objective” rather than focusing on the bottom line.

“The increasing number and size of tailings dams around the globe magnifies the potential environmental, social and economic cost of catastrophic failure impact and the risks and costs of perpetual management,” says the report.

“These risks present a challenge for this generation and, if not addressed now, a debt we will leave to future generations.”

Canada Has Second-Worst #Mining Record in World: UN https://t.co/wHdbhwaiAM #mountpolley #bcpoli #cdnpoli @MiningWatch pic.twitter.com/r5ED6hkkUd

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) October 27, 2017

Jessica Draker, Mining Association of Canada (MAC) communications director, said the organization wholeheartedly agrees with the United Nations call for a zero-failure objective.

“In fact, MAC and its members committed to a goal of zero catastrophic failures of tailings facilities and no significant adverse effects on the environment and human health well before the report was published,” she said.

MAC’s tailings management guide is recognized as leading the field globally, Draker said in an e-mailed response to questions.

After the Mount Polley mine disaster, MAC struck an independent task force — with 29 recommendations now being incorporated in the guidelines — and held a parallel internal review, Draker said.

“Next month MAC will release a revised Tailings Guide informed by these reviews,” she said.

The guide will incorporate recommendations by the Mount Polley expert panel, said Draker, adding that it is important to learn from mistakes such as Mount Polley.

The United Nations report does not speculate about why countries such as China and Canada have a high dam failure rate, but the data underlines that Canada is doing poorly, with almost 20 per cent of the documented failures, LaPointe said.

“The problem is that the industry is not yet acknowledging publicly that there are too many financially risky, marginal mines that are being permitted,” he said.

Marginal companies cut corners in safety, dam construction and monitoring and then do not have the financial capacity to ensure the safety of people and the environment around those sites, LaPointe said.

Alaska and Quebec demand large financial securities, paid up front, and other provinces should follow suit and consider the financial profile of each mine as one of the criteria for approval, LaPointe suggested.

“If we were to put the bar higher and require payment of financial securities ahead of permitting and ahead of mining, this would be one one way to get rid of the mines that would be marginal and you would end up with the mines that are safest,” he said.

A paper by researchers Lindsay Bowker and David Chambers, published this month in the journal Environments, draws the connection between economics and high failure of mining waste storage facilities and concludes that financially marginal mines push existing infrastructure beyond design capacity.

The paper estimates that between one third and one half of technically operating mines are no longer economically viable or never were viable.

However, regulators stand by passively, assuming production of the mines will resume and jobs will be retained, despite the flaws in infrastructure, it says.

“These are not assumptions supported by available data or expert economic analysis,” says the paper.

Meanwhile, B.C. is facing increasing criticism from Southeast Alaskans who say they do not trust B.C.’s regulation or oversight after the Mount Polley spill and decades of inaction on the Tulsequah Chief, which is leaking acid mine drainage into a tributary of one of Alaska’s major salmon rivers.

With up to 10 mines planned on the B.C. side of the border, Southeast Alaskan tribes, fishing organizations, local politicians and environmental groups are pushing for the U.S. federal government to step in and mediate water quality concerns.

“There aren’t currently any enforceable protections for Southeast salmon rivers should Canadian mine runoff impact water quality,” said Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission Chairman Frederick Olsen Jr.

Among the concerns is the Red Chris mine, owned by Imperial Metals, which also owns Mount Polley. Despite recommendations by the Mount Polley expert panel for companies to move to dry tailings, Red Chris uses a tailings pond that has seven times the capacity of Mount Polley.

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By Mike De Souza for the National Observer.

Erik Solheim doesn’t mince his words when it comes to industry giants that fail to embrace change in the global economy.

Solheim, a former Norwegian cabinet minister, is the new top boss of the United Nations Environment Programme. Speaking at an early-morning breakfast with a mixed crowd of environmental stakeholders, policy experts and media in Ottawa, he said that Canada’s fossil fuel companies need to take stock of what’s happening before it’s too late for them.

“Many of you will remember Kodak,” Solheim said at the event hosted by the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development. “They didn't believe in digital photography. Where is Kodak now? In industrial museums somewhere.”

Ottawa is the first stop on Solheim's tour of North America after he was appointed a few months ago as executive director of the UN agency based in Nairobi, Kenya.

His message was also delivered in a series of private meetings with federal cabinet ministers — Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna, Global Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion and International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau — and comes at a time when Canada’s energy debate has been hijacked by arguments about new pipelines to Canada’s east and west coasts.

“The world is full of companies that oppose change and many of them are out of business now.”

Solheim used the example of cell phone maker Nokia.

“Basically because they didn’t believe in touch screens," he said, drawing some chuckles from the room. "Steve Jobs believed in touch screens. The Koreans believed in touch screens. Nokia didn't believe in it and they are out.”

Energy companies, along with some business and union leaders say that new pipelines such as TransCanada Corp.'s Energy East, Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Expansion and Enbridge's Line 3 replacement are key to boosting fortunes for slumping oil and gas companies.

On the other side, many environmentalists, First Nations leaders and politicians are skeptical of the long-term economic benefits of new pipelines, while warning the projects pose unacceptable risk of oil spills and would push Canada’s climate change goals out of reach.

“If Canada doesn’t embrace change, it will lose,” he said. “For economic and environmental issues combined. Of course some fossil fuels will remain a source of energy for some time, but the changes are coming much faster than anticipated. The price of solar is going down much faster than anyone thought. And energy efficiency provides solutions to a lot of issues if we really embrace it. So embrace the change.”

Rumours circulating in Ottawa have spread across the country suggesting that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government wants to approve at least one major new pipeline project to support Alberta’s NDP government.

Some federal Liberals believe this would prevent Conservatives from regaining control of the oil-rich province, which is home to the oilsands, the world’s third largest reserve of oil — after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela — and Canada’s fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Without weighing directly into the country’s pipeline debates, Solheim said Canadians would have to create space for Trudeau to make bold decisions.

“We need to make people out there (to be) enthusiastic because if there’s not a citizens movement, for (sustainable) development and environment it’s very difficult for political leaders to do it,” he said.

“I mean business leaders and political leaders, even if they are of the caliber of Mr. Trudeau, need the support of the people. So we must speak with people and make people enthusiastic for the environment.”

He also stressed the importance of working closely with businesses to encourage more leadership and solutions. He said that last year’s international climate summit in Paris achieved results because some important companies said they were willing to take action, recognizing the potential to make money and create jobs by seizing the green agenda.

“There has been a long-term view in the UN and in the development of the environmental community and fostered maybe by people like me, coming from the left, that business was something dirty, something you should be afraid of, rather than an enormous opportunity for change,” he said.

Solheim said he sees a fast-growing list of companies and countries that are leading the way to the future.

Image: Erik Solheim. Photo: Mattis Folkestad, NRK P3 via Flickr

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In less than a decade, climate change-induced sea level rise could force thousands of people to migrate from some small island developing states (SIDS), according to the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

The world’s 52 small island developing states (SIDS) increasingly share sea level rise and other escalating environmental threats that are further aggravated by economic insecurities, Achim Steiner added.

“What makes this situation even more grievous is that the climate change threats facing many SIDS are by-and-large not of their own making,” Steiner wrote in The Guardian. “Their total combined annual carbon dioxide output, although rising, accounts for less than 1% of global emissions.”

In his commentary, published in advance of this week’s third international conference on Small Island Developing States in Samoa, Steiner said small island states are suffering disproportionately from acts of environmental negligence of which humankind is collectively guilty.

“Larger economies, until recently, have managed better than small ones to mask the impacts of exhausting their natural capital and contributing heavily to greenhouse gas emissions, but the consequences of this neglect are catching up with them too,” he said.

Steiner said that recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates indicate that if average global temperatures increase by approximately 4 C, sea levels could rise as much as one metre by 2100.

That scenario, he added, “would see nations such as Kiribati, Maldives, Marshall Islands and Tuvalu become uninhabitable, while a large share of the population of many other SIDS could be displaced or otherwise.”

Addressing the conference, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a press release Monday that the world needs to listen to small islands as their issues have global consequences.

“I see small island developing states as a magnifying glass,” Ban said. “When we look through [their] lens, we see the vulnerabilities we all face. And by addressing the issues facing small island developing states we are developing the tools we need to promote sustainable development across the entire world.”

Ban added that the plight of small island developing states highlights the moral case for climate action. “By failing to act, we condemn the most vulnerable to unacceptable disruption to their lives.”

He also urged governments to commit to significant action at the Sept. 23 climate summit in New York.

“Small island developing states will have an important role. You can tell the largest emitters what action you expect from them. And you can show how you are working to build resilience and create the green economies of the future,” he said.

Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi said global action is required to deal with sea level rise caused by climate change.

“Climate change is a global problem, yet international action to address it, remains grossly inadequate,” the Samoan prime minister said.

In addition to dealing with the ramifications of climate change, the conference is addressing environmental degradation and access to energy.

Photo: Easa Shamih via Flickr

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