Less than a week after the Jan. 25 tailings dam collapse at Vale’s Feijao iron ore mine in Brazil that killed 251 people and left 19 missing, the Church of England Pensions Board, along with Sweden’s Public Pension Funds Council, Dutch funds APG and Robeco, New Zealand Super, the U.K.’s LGPS Central, and Canada’s BMO Global Asset Management — together representing over US$1.3 trillion in assets — jointly called for a global independent public classification system that would monitor the safety risk of tailings dams.
The Church of England Pensions Board estimates there are 18,000 tailings storage facilities (TSFs) worldwide, 3,500 of which are active, but says there is no consolidated public register of them. “Without a global register, the precise scale of the risks are not clear, nor is it clear which company has responsibility for which facilities,” it says.
“This proposal will drive a new level of accountability and transparency within the mining sector,” Adam Matthews, director of Ethics and Engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, stated on Jan. 31. “Simply put, these failures of tailings dams should not be happening.”
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Comments
Mario Rivera
No one mining company could warranty a good tailing management. In few years will be a problenmfor communities and states. Cost are very high and nobody has previous capitalization. In Ecuador, my country, we are beginning with the situation and we can’t see a good answer.