(October 28, 2010) Last night Canadian lawmakers defeated legislation that would hold mining companies accountable to taxpayers—who subsidize their investments through the Export Development Corporation—and citizens in the developing world on the front line of such investments. Read the story from the Globe and Mail below.
Last minute action for Bill C-300
(October 27, 2010) Contact your Member of Parliament to show support for tonight’s third reading of Bill C-300.
He who pays the piper calls the mining tune
(October 26, 2010) Industry wants carte blanche use of taxpayers’ funds, writes Patricia Adams in the Financial Post.
Bill C-300: Putting the mining companies in check
(October 18, 2010) Probe International’s Executive Director, Patricia Adams, discusses the upcoming third reading of Bill C-300, which would hold Canadian mining companies accountable for their environmental and human rights abuses.
Thousands march in Chile against dams in Patagonia
(June 8, 2010) This past Saturday, June 5, colleagues in Chile marked the annual International Day for the Environment (el Día Internacional del Medioambiente) with a nationwide day of action.
Patagonia’s peril
(January 25, 2010) With its glacier-carved peaks and fjords, southern Chile remains one of the wildest places on Earth. But that could soon change.
Clear water, big fish
(December 12, 2009) Twenty-three hundred kilometres of transmission lines, to be built by Transelec Chile SA (investors include the CPP Investment Board, the British Columbia Investment Management Corp. and Toronto conglomerate Brookfield Asset Management Inc.), would require the world’s longest clear-cut up through the heart of Patagonia’s untouched temperate forests.
Canadians funding destruction of Patagonia forests
(December 9, 2009) A recent article in Pique highlights concerns about the involvement of the Canadian-owned company Transelec in a hydro electric project in Chile’s Patagonia region. The project, which plans to build five dams and 2,300 km of transmission lines with a parallel highway that would pass through 14 legally protected natural areas, has been criticized by environmentalists in the country and around the world, as well as business leaders.
Ethiopia’s Tekeze Dam fiasco
(November 28, 2009) The recently completed Tekeze hydroelectric dam in Ethiopia is said to be the largest public works project in Africa. It also could turn in to the biggest blunder with disastrous environmental impact, as the investigative report below tries to illustrate. There is so much secrecy surrounding the project that it is not even clear who really paid for it, although the ruling Woyanne junta claims that it has provided all the funding.
Ethiopia’s Tekeze dam limps into operation
(November 23, 2009) The vastly over-budget and long-delayed Tekeze hydro-electric in Ethiopia is finally finished. The project, which was first proposed seven years ago and was scheduled to be competed in 2008, in the end cost $360-million—$136-million over budget.
UK taxpayers foot the bill for PR campaigns by foreign aid groups, says UK economic development think-tank
(October 20, 2009) Stimulus packages aside, the so-called “Great Recession” is forcing government leaders across the world to look for ways to cut back on the cost of public services. No sector, or service, will be spared they say. But Carl Mortishead, writing in The Times, reports there is one government office in the UK that—far from being forced to trim costs—will be given a larger budget: The Department for International Development (DfID), the British government’s foreign aid flagship.
Chile: Patagonia senate candidates unhappy with Hiydroaysen dam projects
(October 19, 2009) A multi-million PR blitz by the owners of HidroAysen had little impact in making the project attractive to the region’s 11 Senate candidates.
Hidroaysen: Pressing priority or utterly unnecessary?
(July 2, 2009) Long a source of serious environmental concerns, Chile’s controversial HidroAysén dam project is now being questioned along technical lines as well. Despite its billing as a “national priority” critics say that from a basic supply and demand perspective, the multi-billion-dollar hydroelectric plan is simply unnecessary.
Canada pension fund urged to abandon Chilean transmission scheme Eco groups call it harmful and unnecessary
(June 21, 2009) Probe International is calling on the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board to halt its investment in a controversial hydro transmission project in Chile’s Patagonia region. The CPP is currently listed as an investor in a 1,500-mile (2,400 kilometres) transmission project designed to handle power from five proposed hydroelectric dams in the Chilean Patagonia.
PRESS RELEASE: Canada Pension Plan urged to abandon Chile’s Patagonia dam scheme
(June 18, 2009) In a letter submitted yesterday to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, environmental group Probe International urged CEO David Denison to abandon a controversial hydro-transmission scheme in southern Chile’s Patagonia region.
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