On March 7, in the framework of the Fifth Meeting of the Forum for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, the OLACEFS Public Works Audit Working Group (GTOP) participated as a guest in the parallel event “Pressures on Biodiversity and Ecosystems: Towards correct sustainable management of mining environmental liabilities,” whose purpose was to highlight the importance of moving towards correct management of environmental liabilities to reduce pressures, damage and risks to communities, biodiversity, and ecosystems.
The event was convened by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the German Cooperation through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources of Germany (BGR), the Latin American and Caribbean Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (OLACEFS), the Association of Ibero-American Geology and Mining Services (ASGMI) and the Ibero-American Federation of Ombudsman (FIO).
The meeting was attended by Loreto Valenzuela, Head of the Department of Environment, Public Works and Companies of the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Chile; Carlos de Miguel, Head of the Policy Unit for Sustainable Development, Division of Sustainable Development and Human Settlements of ECLAC; as well as Achim Constantin, Director of the program “Regional Cooperation for the Sustainable Management of Mineral Resources in the Andean Region” (MINSUS), BGR.
Also participating were expert panelists such as Mauricio Pereira, Researcher of the Sustainable Development Policy Unit, ECLAC; Benjamin Reyes, Auditor of the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Chile, OLACEFS member; Fredy Guzman, Project Manager of the Mexican Geological Service, ASGMI member; Lissette Vasquez, Deputy for the Environment, Public Services and Indigenous Peoples of the Ombudsman’s Office of Peru, FIO member; Luciano Grisales, Representative to the House of Representatives of Colombia; Mariano Castro, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of the Environment (MINAM), Peru; and Diego Inclan, Executive Director of the National Biodiversity Institute (INABIO), Ecuador.
Benjamin Reyes, presented the results of the Coordinated Audit of Mining Environmental Liabilities (CA MEL), delivering to the listening public, the conclusions of this work carried out by 14 SAIs of OLACEFS between the years 2019 to 2021, which seek to generate, in each of the governments involved, regulatory frameworks and institutional public policies that allow defining environmental regeneration standards, allocating resources to finance initiatives related to the MELs, favor access to environmental data development of MEL inventories and strengthen mechanisms for follow-up and evaluation of SDGs.
For this reason, a common denominator is the lack of regulations to prevent the existence of mining environmental liabilities, as well as the lack of access to information by citizens to counteract this problem.
The Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Chile, the leader of this coordinated audit, will continue, this year 2022, in the process of disseminating the results of this study in different forums and international meetings.
To learn more about the Coordinated Audit of Mining Environmental Liabilities (CA MEL), go to:
Mining Environmental Liabilities
