Health & safety
Yet, no sooner has mining started getting its own environmental house in order than the carbon they helped spread has begun wafting through the floorboards. From extreme heat to apocalyptic rain, companies the world over are increasingly being forced to grapple with a cascade of environmental threats, each with the potential to endanger staff and strangle profits. Nor are there straightforward solutions to this deluge of problems. Rather, operators are having to adopt a number of changes at once, buying new equipment even as they build better roads, reorganising emergency protocols as they reinforce tailings. Not that the situation is hopeless. Buoyed by increased funds, mining companies are battling to bolster operations at a time of climate crisis. Yet, in a world where the long-term environmental prognosis remains grim, the question remains: do mining operators ultimately need to cut back on operations altogether?
The cost of extreme weather Mining in Burkina Faso is rough at the best of times. From patchy employment to the risks of poison – the gold industry here has typically used mercury as part of the extraction process – miners here have always had it hard. Even so, you get the sense that the local community was nonetheless shocked by events in the first half of 2022. In April, unexpectedly heavy rains during the dry season caused flash floods at a Burkinan zinc mine, drowning eight miners who became trapped underground. Nor was mining in the West African country, eighth from bottom in the UN’s Human Development Index, the only place to recently suffer from extreme weather. In Brazil, operations at a Vale iron mine were derailed by torrential rains. Further north, platinum mining in Montana was suspended after unusually hot weather melted the snow on nearby mountains, blocking crucial roads and bridges.
If these varied events span the globe, they can nonetheless be understood collectively – as a result of climate change. According to work by Carbon Brief, after all, 71% of extreme weather events were found by scientists to be more likely or severe thanks to man-made climate change. And as Jan Morrill emphasises, many mining corporations have traditionally been unprepared for these challenges. To prove her point, the campaign manager at the Earthworks NGO focuses on her own speciality: tailings. Eager to avoid unnecessary expenditure, she says many mining companies built tailings on the assumption that catastrophic floods would only happen rarely. But with climate change upending those assumptions, Morrill claims mining companies are being caught short. A reasonable point: in January 2022, authorities in Brazil warned that weeks of intense rain had left 36 tailings dams at risk of collapse.
World Mining Frontiers /
www.nsenergybusiness.com
It goes without saying, moreover, that a lax approach can have dire consequences for workers. Quite apart from the flooding victims in Burkina Faso, that’s clear enough by staying in Brazil, where the 2019 Brumadinho dam disaster killed over 250 people. And even where extreme weather doesn’t lead directly to fatalities, miners can still suffer. Earlier this year, for instance, temperatures in the Australian outback hit 50.7°C, forcing workers to find shelter.
A tailings dam at a Vale iron mine in Brumadinho, Brazil, suffered a catastrophic failure due to torrential rain in 2019.
“It’s not just one single thing – which tyres do we need to use on the trucks, or which telecom equipment do we need to improve? It’s the whole system that leads to better health and safety for an operation.”
Christian Spano
All this can unsurprisingly weaken company profits too. In 2018, for example, a German potash miner was forced to temporarily close two locations due to sudden water shortages, leading to daily losses of nearly $4m. In 2021, Rio Tinto announced a 12% slump in iron ore shipments from its Western Australian operations, ultimately due to heavy rainfall. “I think the whole world has experienced a significant increase in radical climate events,” summarises Christian Spano, the innovation and climate change director at ICMM. “Mining hasn’t escaped from that.”
A progressive path
At first glance, the Sentinel Copper Mine looks like any other in rural Zambia. Workers in hard hats scurry about, and lorries trundle by. But look down towards your feet and you will notice something different. Rather than the dusty tracks typical of the region, the roads here are smooth and sheeted, a recent investment by owner First Quantum Minerals.
6% ICMM 17
Reduction in the carbon footprint of ICMM
members between 2016–18.
ILANA LANSKY/
Shutterstock.com
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