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tailings management mining

to emerge from the Brumadinho disaster For each dam in their portfolio, companies mining industry. Hopefully, the greater
is how investors can work together with were asked to answer 20 questions that uniformity in regulation and information
mining companies and regulatory bodies include: location, construction method, transparency that the investors are
to improve tailings management systems. status (active or inactive), maximum pushing for will lead to improved safety.
In fact, a group of investors is proving to be height, and stored volume. The deadline Professional organisations involved with
instrumental in the push for greater global to publish this information on companies’ tailings can help promote the adoption
oversight and improved regulations. websites was 7 June 2019. By 5 July, 218 of these interventions and work on the
An international standard for tailings companies had responded: 92 confirmed development and implementation of
management they had tailings facilities and 67 published policies that improve safety and reduce
risk.
the requested information.
Six days after the Brumadinho failure, a
group of investors led by, among others, It is difficult to overstate just how
big a step this is towards improving
the Church of England funds and the
Swedish Public Pensions fund, issued safety and transparency in tailings
dam management. To date, there is no
a call for a “global independent public
classification system” to monitor the risk global register of tailings dams. This
posed by tailings dams. compromises estimations of failure rates
and the relative safety of the different
Their call contained a reminder that a construction methods.
similar recommendation was made in For instance, there are three Luis Alberto Torres-Cruz, Senior Lecturer
in Geotechnical Engineering, University
2016 in a document commissioned by
the International Council on Mining and conventional types of tailings dam of the Witwatersrand
upstream,
methods:
construction
Metals. That report followed the failure of Robert C. Bachus of Geosyntech
the Samarco tailings dam, also in Brazil, in downstream, and centreline. The type of co-authored this article
2015. dams that have most frequently failed
are upstream dams.
The investors’ call has evolved into Although this
the Investor Mining and Tailings Safety appears to suggest
Initiative. Additional investors have joined that upstream
the group and some of their statements dams are the
are now supported by a collective more dangerous
pool of US$ 12 trillion in assets under type, quantitative
management. c ompar isons
The call for a public classification system of the different
to monitor tailings dams is well underway c ons truction
in the form of a Global Tailings Review, methods’ failure
co-convened by the International Council rates have been
on Mining and Metals, the United impossible so far
Nations Environment Programme, because we simply
and the Principles for Responsible do not know how
Investment. The initiative aims to produce many dams of
an international standard for the safe each type exist.
management of tailings dams. The information
The tailings information disclosure recently disclosed
mining
by
request companies will
enable researchers Proven fast fire detection - for high value industries
to conduct this
and many other UNIVERSAL - Detects every fuel and every fire
The Investor Mining and types of analyses SIMPLE - Single person can install and operate
in search for useful
Tailings Safety Initiative insights. FLEXIBLE - Can be installed in any environment
also conducted a second These initiatives
intervention that consists of illustrate how TRUSTED - Excellent false alarm rejection
an information disclosure investors can exert
request issued to 655 a major positive T +44 (0) 1462 444 740
extractive companies. influence on the E sales@ffeuk.com
risk managing W www.ffeuk.com
strategies of the

AFRICAN POWER Mining & Oil Review Vol 28, Issue 29, 2019 | 65