WATER MANAGEMENT
From ‘pushback’ to pushing ahead How the Brumadinho disaster brought miners onboard with tailings reform By Alisha Hiyate
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n 2017, GRID-Arendal, an environmental centre based in Norway and a partner of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), published Mine Tailings Storage: Safety is No Accident. The report called for the development of a global standard covering the construction and operation of tailings dams, a global insurance scheme, and more oversight and transparency around tailings. While it was written in response to recent tailings failures, including Mount Polley in British Columbia and Samarco in Brazil (which killed 19 people), the mining sector was resistant at the time to many of the recommendations, says Elaine Baker, one of the authors of the report and director of the GRIDArendal office at the University of Sydney. “There was quite a bit of pushback about that report from the mining industry,” Baker says, noting that in addition to cost concerns, some of the recommendations were “fairly radical.” Above: A member of the search and rescue team after the Brumadinho disaster in January 2019. CREDIT: ISTOCK/SAMUEL CHAHOUD
JANUARY 2021
It’s been a different story since the Brumadinho failure on Jan. 25, 2019, and the shocking loss of life that resulted from it. The disaster at Vale’s Corrego do Feijao iron ore operation in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state killed at least 259 people (with 11 still missing), jolting the industry into action. While the previous tailings failures precipated smaller-scale changes, Brumadinho has proven to be a catalyst for deep, sweeping changes in tailings management. As we approach the two-year anniversary of the Brumadinho disaster, great progress has been made – most notably the launch of the Global Tailings Portal last January and the release of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management in August. Progress since Brumadinho While the mining sector was certainly shocked by the scale of the Brumadinho disaster, intense pressure from investors – headed by the Church of England Pensions Board and the Swedish National Pension Funds – has been key to the reforms that have been enacted since then. CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 CANADIAN MINING JOURNAL |
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