The Supreme Court of Chile determined that the list of projects enumerated in the EIA regulations is not exhaustive, that any project that causes negative environmental impacts may be subject to citizen participation procedures, and that Mina Invierno’s project to incorporate blasting methods will cause negative environmental impacts and, therefore, may be subject to citizen participation procedures. Thus, the Supreme Court declared invalid the administrative resolutions that rejected the petitions for citizen participation procedures for the project to incorporate blasting methods and ordered the EIA process for said project to be subject to citizen participation procedures.
The Land and Environment Court of NSW decided that the proposed mine expansion project would cause unacceptable environmental and social impacts, which were not adequately evaluated in the economic assessments, and that the approval conditions would not satisfactorily offset such impacts, so it decided to refuse Warkworth’s expansion project proposal and replace the administrative decision with its refusal.
Reviewing question of whether an EIA for a coal mine, should have considered the impact to the climate of burning the coal, the judge declared, “I consider there is a sufficiently proximate link between the mining of a very substantial reserve of thermal coal in NSW . . . and the emission of GHG which contribute to climate change/global warming . . . to require assessment of that GHG contribution of the coal when burnt in an environmental assessment….”
This project has been made possible by the generous
support of the Philip Stoddard Brown and Adele Smith Brown Foundation
