Mining liabilities to motivate law reforms

Future legislation in South America will have to regulate the cleanup of past environmental mining liabilities not dealt with under current laws, an international conference held in Chilean capital Santiago heard this week. Governments must introduce legislation to tackle pollution caused in the past by the mining industry and not only focus on the damage that may occur in the future, said Fernando Albavera, director of natural resources and infrastructure at the Economic Commission for Latin America & the Caribbean (Eclac). Mine closure regulations and the requirement to carry out environmental impact studies, for example, only affect new projects but do not deal with the problem of pollution caused before these rules were introduced, Albavera said. "Mining liabilities are an accumulated capital loss over time," he added. The issue of mining-related environmental liabilities is not, in a strict sense, the responsibility of each government but rather the international community, the Eclac official said. The November 11-12 conference was promoted by Chile's national geology and mining service SERNAGEOMIN, Germany's federal geosciences and natural resources institute BGR, and Eclac (or Cepal as it is known in Spanish). The event aimed to open debate on mining liabilities in an attempt to define the necessary elements to introduce remediation programs.