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From the salmon-spawning waters of Alaska to the cloud forests of Ecuador, communities are standing up to mining projects that threaten their health, environment, and livelihoods.
But mining corporations are fighting back with a powerful tool buried in trade and investment agreements: the ability to go to private, unaccountable tribunals and sue governments that act to protect communities from mining.
In these private tribunals, which sit outside of any domestic legal system, corporate lawyers - not judges - decide whether governments must pay corporations for halting destructive mining projects. To date, mining corporations have used these private tribunals to sue over 40 governments more than 100 times.
In two-thirds of the concluded cases, governments either have been ordered to pay the mining corporations or have settled with them, which can require handing over payment and/or weakening mining restrictions. In the 44 publicly available mining cases still pending, mining corporations are demanding over $53 billion from governments.
And it's getting worse. In the first five months of this year, mining corporations used private trade and investment tribunals every 2.5 weeks on average to launch, advance, or win cases against mining restrictions in Latin America alone.
Just a few months later, U.S. corporation Tobie Mining and Energy launched a similar case against Colombia for protecting Amazon rainforest land where the corporation planned to mine for gold. Tobie claims that the government's decision to create a nature reserve and prohibit mining within its borders violates the corporation's broad rights under the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Tobie is asking a private tribunal to order Colombia either to allow mining in the Amazon, or to pay $16.5 billion - over 25 percent of Colombia's national budget - to the corporation. Despite admitting having spent only $11 million in mining-related preparations, Tobie justifies the $16.5 billion demand by claiming it's what the corporation hypothetically could have earned if allowed to extract all the gold and iron believed to lie beneath the rainforest land.
This barrage of corporate attacks on mining safeguards offers a clear lesson: we cannot afford to empower more mining corporations to use private tribunals to undermine communities' efforts to shut down dangerous mines. But the TPP - and TTIP, as proposed - would do just that. To respect communities' rights to protect their air, water, and livelihoods, we need to replace these polluter-friendly deals with a new model of trade.
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From the salmon-spawning waters of Alaska to the cloud forests of Ecuador, communities are standing up to mining projects that threaten their health, environment, and livelihoods.
But mining corporations are fighting back with a powerful tool buried in trade and investment agreements: the ability to go to private, unaccountable tribunals and sue governments that act to protect communities from mining.
In these private tribunals, which sit outside of any domestic legal system, corporate lawyers - not judges - decide whether governments must pay corporations for halting destructive mining projects. To date, mining corporations have used these private tribunals to sue over 40 governments more than 100 times.
In two-thirds of the concluded cases, governments either have been ordered to pay the mining corporations or have settled with them, which can require handing over payment and/or weakening mining restrictions. In the 44 publicly available mining cases still pending, mining corporations are demanding over $53 billion from governments.
And it's getting worse. In the first five months of this year, mining corporations used private trade and investment tribunals every 2.5 weeks on average to launch, advance, or win cases against mining restrictions in Latin America alone.
Just a few months later, U.S. corporation Tobie Mining and Energy launched a similar case against Colombia for protecting Amazon rainforest land where the corporation planned to mine for gold. Tobie claims that the government's decision to create a nature reserve and prohibit mining within its borders violates the corporation's broad rights under the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Tobie is asking a private tribunal to order Colombia either to allow mining in the Amazon, or to pay $16.5 billion - over 25 percent of Colombia's national budget - to the corporation. Despite admitting having spent only $11 million in mining-related preparations, Tobie justifies the $16.5 billion demand by claiming it's what the corporation hypothetically could have earned if allowed to extract all the gold and iron believed to lie beneath the rainforest land.
This barrage of corporate attacks on mining safeguards offers a clear lesson: we cannot afford to empower more mining corporations to use private tribunals to undermine communities' efforts to shut down dangerous mines. But the TPP - and TTIP, as proposed - would do just that. To respect communities' rights to protect their air, water, and livelihoods, we need to replace these polluter-friendly deals with a new model of trade.
From the salmon-spawning waters of Alaska to the cloud forests of Ecuador, communities are standing up to mining projects that threaten their health, environment, and livelihoods.
But mining corporations are fighting back with a powerful tool buried in trade and investment agreements: the ability to go to private, unaccountable tribunals and sue governments that act to protect communities from mining.
In these private tribunals, which sit outside of any domestic legal system, corporate lawyers - not judges - decide whether governments must pay corporations for halting destructive mining projects. To date, mining corporations have used these private tribunals to sue over 40 governments more than 100 times.
In two-thirds of the concluded cases, governments either have been ordered to pay the mining corporations or have settled with them, which can require handing over payment and/or weakening mining restrictions. In the 44 publicly available mining cases still pending, mining corporations are demanding over $53 billion from governments.
And it's getting worse. In the first five months of this year, mining corporations used private trade and investment tribunals every 2.5 weeks on average to launch, advance, or win cases against mining restrictions in Latin America alone.
Just a few months later, U.S. corporation Tobie Mining and Energy launched a similar case against Colombia for protecting Amazon rainforest land where the corporation planned to mine for gold. Tobie claims that the government's decision to create a nature reserve and prohibit mining within its borders violates the corporation's broad rights under the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
Tobie is asking a private tribunal to order Colombia either to allow mining in the Amazon, or to pay $16.5 billion - over 25 percent of Colombia's national budget - to the corporation. Despite admitting having spent only $11 million in mining-related preparations, Tobie justifies the $16.5 billion demand by claiming it's what the corporation hypothetically could have earned if allowed to extract all the gold and iron believed to lie beneath the rainforest land.
This barrage of corporate attacks on mining safeguards offers a clear lesson: we cannot afford to empower more mining corporations to use private tribunals to undermine communities' efforts to shut down dangerous mines. But the TPP - and TTIP, as proposed - would do just that. To respect communities' rights to protect their air, water, and livelihoods, we need to replace these polluter-friendly deals with a new model of trade.