May 5, 2021 — A booming Canadian mining area known as the Golden Triangle is key to northwest British Columbia’s economy. But Southeast Alaska tribes, fishermen and other concerned citizens say that the Canadian mining sector enjoys all of the economic benefits, while those downstream bear most of the ecological risks.

Efforts to elevate the issue to the international level have had some success. And recently, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights informed a coalition of 15 tribes that it had agreed to take up the matter.

The Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission’s Tis Peterman told lawmakers at an April 27 meeting of the Alaska House Fisheries Committee that its most recent petition was submitted “which basically stated that the transboundary mining will have devastating effects on our way of life and downstream communities.”

The Washington D.C.-based IACHR is an arm of the 35-member Organization of American States, which Canada joined in 1990.

Formal cross-border efforts at the state and provincial level have been in place since 2015, when both sides signed an agreement pledging cooperation on transboundary resources.

Read the full story at KTOO