MEND report for CEN

Catherine Coumans, MiningWatch Canada

The following is a personal reflection on the MEND meetings held in Ottawa, on April 11 and 12, 2002. Official notes are available from the MEND secretariat.

The purpose of the meeting was to reflect on the research completed to date by MEND and discuss possible future research opportunities. A report titled "Acidic Drainage Research and Technology Gap Analysis" prepared by SRK, in association with SENES, was to serve as the framework for discussions at the Strategy Session.

The questions underlying the meeting were: what has MEND accomplished to date with respect to better understanding the generation, prediction and management of ARD?; what gaps exist in our knowledge and what further research needs to be done?; Is MEND the vehicle to do further work?

There seemed to be a general consensus (this does not mean everyone!) that MEND had been successful on a number of levels: efficient use of funds; prodigious and useful research products; excellent international recognition; model for multi-stakeholder work. There seemed to be a desire to keep the MEND name, process and structure in place.

Following presentations on the outcomes from precursor meetings in Vancouver, Toronto, and Yellowknife, the results of which had fed into the SRK report, we were divided into multi-stakeholder sub groups to come up with research agendas around topics we felt were in need of further research and that fit the MEND mandate or might expanded on it.  

It is my sense that this process probably did provide insight into some very broad areas of common concern that may warrant further research but did not, generally, lead to very detailed descriptions of the research that needs to be done. Some of these broad areas included further work on reducing potential waste toxicity before disposal and engineering waste disposal systems that more closely emulate natural systems.

There was also considerable discussion about going back and checking field systems that had been put in place, such as wet and dry covers, to assess their level of success. The discussion of doing case studies raised the issue of confidentiality and the discomfort of companies to “air their dirty laundry.”

While the meeting ended with a seeming consensus that MEND works and that there is more to be researched, I did not get a strong sense of the direction people thought that research should go in. 

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