The Rights of Nature Become a Rallying Point Against an Ascendant Mining Industry

As one of Argentina’s worst mining disasters unfolded above Domingo Jofré’s home, the company responsible remained silent while a million liters of cyanide-laced water spewed into local streams and rivers. 

Jofré and other residents in the downstream town of Jáchal learned of the spill only after an employee at the mine, owned and operated by the Canadian company Barrick Gold, sent a WhatsApp message to a family member, warning of the danger. 

That was in 2015. Today, Jofré is still awaiting his day in court. His organization, Jáchal No Se Toca, filed a lawsuit against Barrick Gold and government officials in 2015. But the Argentine federal court system still hasn’t set a trial date, Jofré said. In the meantime, Barrick Gold has continued to operate and at least two more chemical spills have happened at the open-pit mine, located in a United Nations biosphere reserve.

On Friday, Jofré and other witnesses told a people’s tribunal about how the Canadian mining industry, which makes up about 60 percent of the global mining sector, has impacted their cultures, polluted their lands and harmed the ecosystems they rely on. 

Barrick Gold did not respond to requests for comment. 

The hearing, held at the University of Toronto in Canada, took place two days before the mining industry’s largest annual gathering kicked off in Toronto. The industry has come under growing scrutiny amid a global surge in mining activity spurred by increasing demand for metals and minerals used in ubiquitous technologies like cell phones, computers and low-carbon technologies. 

The International Rights of Nature Tribunal investigates alleged breaches of the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth, which recognizes nature as a living entity with legal rights, including the rights to exist and evolve. 

The nonbinding declaration was written during a 2010 people’s conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and has inspired a proliferation of binding laws that give ecosystems and individual species enforceable legal rights, similar to other non-human entities like corporations. 

Ecuador, Spain, New Zealand, Colombia, Panama, Uganda and other nations have laws or court rulings recognizing nature’s rights. 

The laws do not give ecosystems and species absolute primacy over other interests and rights, but rather require governments to heighten protections beyond conventional regulations. Advocates say the laws also shift how people think about humanity’s relationship with the Earth—changing from dominance and extraction to one based on respect, interdependence and responsibility. 

The advocacy group Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature created the tribunal in 2014 to showcase how a justice system that recognized nature’s rights would work. It is modeled after other people’s tribunals, like the 1967 Russell Tribunal on Vietnam, which aimed to fill gaps in justice when government institutions failed. The rights of nature tribunal also seeks to collect testimonies and gather evidence to influence future legal actions. 

A representative from the industry group the Mining Association of Canada did not respond to a request for comment about the tribunal in Toronto.  

“We don’t want to be sacrificial lambs so some people can drive luxury cars.”

— Verónika Chávez, Santuario de Tres Pozos community

Friday’s session, called “The Impacts of Mining and the Post-Extractivism Era,” was intended to confront the narrative that the mining industry is environmentally friendly because it procures metals for use in low-carbon technologies, according to tribunal co-secretariat Natalia Greene. 

“We’re here to tell the truth of what is really happening,” Greene said. 

More than half of the world’s transition mineral reserves lie on or near Indigenous lands, placing many Indigenous communities at the center of resource extraction conflicts. At the hearing, some of the witnesses were Indigenous women who highlighted the disproportionate impact of mining on their communities and livelihoods.

Jordyn Burnouf, a Nehîyaw|Cree woman and Black Lake First Nation member, spoke about mining in Saskatchewan, Canada’s highest-producing province for critical minerals. 

Burnouf, who previously worked at one of the province’s uranium mines, detailed the industry’s impact on local ecosystems, particularly the decline of caribou populations, which have plummeted by more than 70 percent in Northern Canada. Losing the species, which hold deep cultural and spiritual significance for many Indigenous peoples, would be unfathomable, she said. 

Burnouf’s testimony also highlighted the connection between mining and violence against Indigenous women, who often play key roles in protecting water and land. This has made them targets of harassment, intimidation and violence. 

The male dominated-mining industry, Burnouf said, brings additional risks to women in these communities, including those who work for the companies. Burnouf spoke about her own experience.

“I was warned on my first day, ‘Be prepared to be sexually harassed.’ That was my introduction to the industry,” Burnouf said. 

Verónika Chávez, president of the Santuario de Tres Pozos community in Northern Argentina, came to Toronto to tell the judges that the rush to mine lithium, a key battery component, from the salt flats where her family has lived for generations is straining communities’ water resources and impacting their land rights.

Argentina is home to the second-largest known lithium deposits in the world, with dozens of mining projects underway to extract it. A large share of those deposits are in the province of Jujuy, where Chávez and thousands of other Indigenous people live. Though they have a federal constitutional right to their ancestral territories, scores of Indigenous communities still lack formal land titles. In 2023, Jujuy’s government passed a state law opening up untitled Indigenous lands to mining. 

“We don’t want to be sacrificial lambs so some people can drive luxury cars,” Chávez said. 

Zenaida Yasacama and Hortencia Zhagüi travelled from Ecuador to give testimony about seven Canadian mining companies extracting gold, copper, silver, zinc and other metals throughout the country. 

Zhagüi, a representative of the Board of Potable Water Administrators of Victoria del Portete and Tarqui, told the tribunal that Indigenous and small farming communities living in Ecuador’s high-altitude wetlands have consistently rejected mining operations. Despite their opposition, projects moved forward. When residents peacefully protested, she said, security forces were deployed to suppress them. 

One of Zhagüi’s greatest concerns is the long-term impact of mining pollution on their land and water. Many in her community rely on traditional plant-based medicines, but if mining contaminates the rivers and soil, she said, those natural remedies could disappear. With limited access to quality healthcare, she fears the consequences could be devastating.

“We’re peaceful people, we’re hardworking people and we won’t bend the knee to companies that have come to break our families and communities apart,” Zhagüi said. 

From the Xingu River region in Brazil’s Northern Amazon, Ana Laide Soares Barbosa and Verena Glas de Aguiar Magano appeared before the tribunal to talk about the Belo Sun open-pit gold mine, owned by a Canadian company of the same name. 

For over a decade, local residents have fiercely opposed the project, warning of its devastating impact on fragile ecosystems and communities. Residents have accused the company of illegally acquiring public land, violating environmental and public consultation rules and attempting to criminalize land defenders. 

Glas de Aguiar Magano contrasted the company’s extractivist approach to the land with the deep connection that local communities have with the rainforest. 

“We know what nature means,” she said. “The nonhuman beings are what gives sense to life, what makes us alive, what our essence is.” 

Belo Sun did not respond to a request for comment.

Mining operations in Chile and Serbia were also covered at the tribunal.

The Rights of Mining Companies

Witnesses didn’t just condemn mining companies.

The tribunal also heard evidence about how a legal system embedded in trade and investment treaties can be weaponized by foreign mining companies. That system, known as investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, gives foreign investors extensive rights and allows those businesses to sue governments before closed-door panels of international arbitrators. 

In some arbitration cases, mining companies have won disputes despite leaving behind toxic pollution or being linked to human rights abuses against local communities. 

That happened when the Canadian mining company Copper Mesa won a $24 million award against Ecuador in 2016, using the ISDS provisions in the Canada-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, which are designed to protect investments made by foreign companies. 

As soon as Copper Mesa began operating in the Intag Valley, an ecologically sensitive cloud forest, local communities intensely opposed its open-pit copper mine. In response, the company hired private paramilitary forces that fired gunshots at locals for blocking a road to the mine. The Ecuadorian government, invoking a new mining law that raised environmental and social protections, revoked the company’s mining license. 

That’s when Copper Mesa turned to ISDS. 

The company’s website is now inactive, and its lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

A growing number of human rights advocates, environmentalists and economists have been calling on governments to reform or abolish ISDS, arguing that the mere threat of an ISDS suit can lead to regulatory chill, preventing governments from implementing necessary environmental and climate policies or exercising oversight over corporations. 

In 2009, Ecuador withdrew from its free trade agreement with Canada, part of a larger effort by the country’s then-president to disentangle Ecuador from the ISDS system. The year prior, the country ratified a new constitution prohibiting ISDS. 

Yet, last year, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa introduced a ballot proposal aimed at overturning the constitutional ban. The move came as Noboa’s administration began confidential negotiations with his Canadian counterparts for a new free trade agreement. According to debates in the Canadian parliament, the governments were seeking to include ISDS. 

Ecuadorians overwhelmingly voted down the ballot measure in 2024. 

The two countries have since signed a final free trade agreement. For the agreement to become operable, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court and Canada’s parliament must ratify it. 

On Friday, Viviana Herrera, the Latin America program coordinator at the advocacy group MiningWatch Canada, told the tribunal that she and other advocates fear ISDS is in the agreement, which is still not yet public. 

A spokesperson for Canada’s Minister of Export Promotion, International Trade and Economic Development did not respond to Inside Climate News’ questions about the trade agreement, including whether ISDS was included. 

Canada’s mining industry, Herrera told the tribunal, was a key constituency pushing for the free trade agreement. 

The testimonies cut a sharp contrast with promotions for the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada’s conference, the global mining summit taking place in Toronto this week. 

James Yap, acting director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, participated in the hearing as prosecutor, advocating on behalf of nature. He directed the judges’ attention to a law firm’s advertisement for its conference seminar. 

“Caliente Caliente Ooh Aah: Latin American Mining is Heating Up!” the advertisement says, telling industry officials that the “mining party is starting again” and inviting them to come “dance to the Latin beat through the various regulatory issues affecting the region.”

Yap, who also sits on the Board of Directors of Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights, said he wanted the tribunal to shine a light on what the industry doesn’t want the public to see and on failures of the Canadian government to carry out oversight. 

Some countries in Europe, including France, have mandatory due diligence laws that require their largest multinational companies to identify and prevent human rights violations and environmental damage throughout their operations. Neither Canada nor the United States have such laws on the books.

During the judges’ closing remarks, several noted the schism between the Canadian government’s reputation—as a proponent of human rights and the environment—and its mining companies’ track record abroad. 

“It’s beautiful to visit Canada,” said judge Enrique Viale. “It’s not so beautiful when Canada visits you.” 

Viale also represents Jofré’s community in its lawsuit against Barrick Gold.

Following the hearing, the tribunal, led by Heather Milton-Lightening, a founding member of Native Youth Movement, released a set of recommendations, including that Canada and Ecuador not ratify the Ecuador-Canada Free Trade Agreement and that mining companies fully comply with Indigenous peoples’ legal right to free, prior and informed consent about projects that impact them. The judges will release their full findings and judgment at a later date and provide the information to United Nations human rights experts. 

Friday’s hearing was part two of three sessions. The first, held in New York City last September, focused on the end of the fossil fuel era. The third session will take place at this year’s climate conference in Belem, Brazil, where the tribunal will lay out a vision for what a post-extractive world could look like. 

A spokesperson for the tribunal said the judges will invite all the mining companies mentioned at Friday’s hearing to participate at the hearing in Belem. 

In addition to Milton-Lightening and Viale, the judges at Friday’s hearing were Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project; Casey Camp-Horinek, elder of the Ponca Nation and board member for Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network; Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative; Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network; Danii Kehler, an artist and Plains Cree woman from the Kawacatoose First Nation; Francesco Martone, founder and spokesperson of In Difesa Di, an Italian nonprofit network that supports human rights defenders; and Lucio Cuenca, director of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts. Natalia Greene, Ecuadorian activist and political scientist, and Shannon Biggs, co-founder and director of Movement Rights, served as co-secretariats.