Sep 14, 2011
Two decades after the World Bank took the lead in liberalizing mining codes across Africa, the continent is united on the need to reform their mining codes to derive greater benefits. In 2008, the African Union adopted the African Mining Vision (AMV) 2050, which lays out a roadmap to achieve mining reforms on Africa’s own terms. Under the directive of the AU, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) constituted a body known as the International Study Group (ISG) to produce a report that would provide an intellectual basis for translating the AMV into policy. The report has been produced and was validated at a continent-wide meeting organised by the AU/UNECA in October 2010.
May 25, 2011
The recluse Huguette Clark was a poster child for the taxation of vast inherited fortunes.
Jan 31, 2011
When the EPA revoked a permit for decapitating West Virginia’s mountains, some politicians decided the sky was falling.
Nov 8, 2010
Mining endangers communities everywhere with safety hazards and environmental destruction.
Oct 4, 2010
Here’s the perfect cure for lawmakers’ job grievances: Become coal miners for a while.
Sep 6, 2010
There’s just too much corn and coal.
Aug 23, 2010
The Pentagon is suddenly getting suspiciously into geology.
Jul 12, 2010
The Pentagon’s newfound reasons to keep spending American lives and tax dollars are suspect.
Apr 29, 2010
Transnational corporations are increasingly turning to international arbitration tribunals to resolve disputes over natural resource rights, a new report reveals.
Apr 26, 2010
Miners from Utah to sub-Saharan Africa to China’s Shanxi province die, in part, for us.
Apr 19, 2010
By putting its profits over human life, America’s coal industry is killing people, passing it off as a “cost of doing business.”
Oct 27, 2009
As the international community’s attention is fixed on the coup and crisis in Honduras, another Central American country fights the constraints and inequalities caused by flawed Free Trade Agreements between the United States and the hemisphere.
Sep 28, 2009
Community leaders from El Salvador will be in Washington to receive the 2009 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award on behalf of the National Roundtable on Mining. This broad coalition of environmental, faith-based, and community activists has successfully worked to block permits for potentially environmentally devastating mining in El Salvador.
The coalition will speak about the investor-state suits recently filed under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) by U.S. and Canadian mining companies against El Salvador. They will also discuss their work to oppose mining, and the attacks and threats that they and other members of the National Roundtable have suffered in El Salvador.
Speakers:
Representatives of El Salvador’s National Roundtable on Mining: William Castillo, Center for Research on Investment and Trade (CEICOM); Francisco Pineda, Environment Coordinating Committee of Cabañas
Sarah Anderson, Global Economy Project Director at the Institute for Policy Studies. Anderson will report on her recent experience serving on an official advisory committee to the Obama administration on bilateral investment treaties (BITs). The administration is currently reviewing the U.S. Model BIT, which includes rules that are similar to those in the investment chapter of CAFTA and other trade agreements.
Rep. Michael Michaud, Democratic Congressman from Maine and the lead sponsor of the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment (TRADE) Act. One provision of the TRADE Act would ensure that trade agreements no longer permit foreign investors to sue governments in international tribunals over domestic regulatory policies that protect public health and the environment.
Stephanie Burgos, Oxfam America (moderator)
For more information on this event, please contact Manuel Perez-Rocha, Institute for Policy Studies, at manuel@ips-dc.org or (240) 838-6623 (mobile). For more information on the struggle over mining and the investor-state cases, read El Salvador’s Gold Fight, a Foreign Policy In Focus commentary.
This event was organized by the Institute for Policy Studies, Oxfam America,and the Washington Office on Latin America, and sponsored by Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME).
Jul 16, 2009
At stake in El Salvador’s movement to ban mining is the question of whether private interests can trump national sovereignty.
