Chile has no standards for emissions and environmental quality. Legislation and policies in Chile are very favourable to company investment rather than environmental protection. Caught between the companies and the pro-business government, Chilean communities need a lot of help to protect their environmental and social interests. In Peru, FOE's NGO partners insist that although mining is important to the economy, Peru must address the tremendous social and ecological costs and ensure that mining provides a base for sustainable development. FOE Canada's goal is not to shut down the Canadian mining industry.
Mining provides critical raw materials and is a major source of jobs both here and around the world.
Our goal is to ensure that mining provides a base for sustainable development, which means providing livelihoods, healthy communities and returns on investment, but with an ever-decreasing impact on the environment. We will work hard to ensure that mining is carried out in such a way that its negative environmental and social impacts are minimized. Positive changes that are needed include using cleaner technology, protecting sensitive areas and species, making legislation more effective, and enhancing the capacity of communities to understand mining's impacts and to effectively negotiate for their fair share of its benefits. The objective of the meeting was to develop joint projects to protect ecosystem health in Canadian and Latin American mining communities. The meeting concluded that the enormous investment momentum in mining worldwide is overwhelming affected communities, and that decision-making and accountability mechanisms to control mining's negative impacts are grossly inadequate.