Wetland

• Gold Resource Corporation (NYSE American: GORO) (the “Company”) is pleased to announce its mid-year and quarterly operational results from its Don David Gold Mine (DDGM) near Oaxaca, Mexico, and a corporate update on its other activities.
• To offset these factors, we continue to identify and implement opportunities for other cost reductions and operational efficiencies.
• Safety at Gold Resource Corporation is paramount.
• The DDGM diamond drilling program has progressed as planned during the second quarter with encouraging results.

• The Murray Darling Basin Plan is an historic deal between state and federal governments to save Australia’s most important river system.
• But now, less than a year out from the plan’s deadline, it’s in a dreadful mess.
• The Albanese government was elected on a promise to uphold the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

A refresher: what is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan?

• Around 5% of the basin consists of floodplain forests, lakes, rivers and other wetland habitats.
• Vast amounts of water are extracted from the rivers to supply around three million Australians, including irrigating farms.
• The Murray-Darling Basin Plan became law in 2012, under the Labor government.
• Under the plan, 3,200 billion litres a year would be returned to rivers – about 14% of total surface water in the basin.

So how’s the plan going?

• As of November last year, the offset projects were likely to deliver between 290 and 415 billion litres of the 605 billion litres required.
• And of the 450 billion litres to be retrieved through water-efficiency projects, only 26 billion litres has been recovered.
• So how do we get the basin plan back on track?

1. NSW must get its act together on water plans

• These plans bring the basin plan into legal force and detail how much water can be taken from the system and how it is divided between users such as farmers, communities and the environment.
• NSW must produce 20 plans.
• The new NSW Minns government must prioritise the remaining water resource plans and have them accredited by the Commonwealth government.

2. Federal water buybacks must ramp up

• The Albanese government is taking steps to improve water recovery under the plan, such as consulting stakeholders and restarting water buybacks.
• For this to occur, a Coalition-era cap must be lifted from 1,500 billion litres to enable more federal government water purchases from farmers.

3. Abandon questionable water-saving projects

• Another project at Yanco Creek in NSW has also fallen behind, and four of the nine Victorian projects have been paused.
• What’s more, the ecological merit of these projects are contested – as is the scientific rigour of the proposed auditing method.

4. Reconnect rivers and floodplains

• To date, just 2% of these parts of the basin are inundated each year by managed flows (or in other words, intentional water releases by authorities).
• Delivering the water requires compensation for the owners of inundated properties, as well as upgraded roads, bridges and levee banks.
• The federal government needs NSW and Victoria to help implement their agreement for watering floodplains, but this cooperation has been extremely slow.

5. Make information transparent

• In its final report in 2019, a South Australian royal commission into the Murray-Darling Basin was highly critical of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.
• Making such information freely available is crucial for accountability and to build public trust.

Time for tough decisions

• Attention must now also turn to a review of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which is legally required in 2026.
• If the Albanese government is to uphold its election promise to deliver the plan, hard decisions – and trade-offs – will be required.

• Report highlights progress on climate change actions, ED&I, and Reconciliation
  TORONTO, July 13, 2023 /CNW/ - Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has released its annual Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report , updating performance in these key focus areas over the past year.
• The report also demonstrates how OPG incorporates ESG principles into its corporate strategy, business model, risk management framework, and performance targets, to deliver value to the Province and the communities OPG serves.
• "As we work to electrify life in one generation, we will continue to prioritize sustainability, safety, diversity, and Reconciliation," said OPG Board Chair, Wendy Kei.
• "And we will keep striving to be a socially responsible and beneficial neighbour for communities and Indigenous partners across the province."

• We humans rely on the soil to provide us with a stable supply of food, clean water and clean air.
• Yet despite our reliance on soil, humans entrenched in colonial mindset and systems have been poor soil stewards and generally ignorant to the destructive and extractive practices we inflict on soil.
• If we do not listen to the stories of the soil, we as humans might destroy the soil which supports countless lives.

Impacts of human activity

• The region has traditionally been stewarded by the Niitsitapi, Îethka Nakoda and Tsuut’ina Nations, and more recently Métis Nation Region 3.
• We try to imagine, from the soil’s point of view, how detrimental the impacts of human activity have been.
• In this single event, human activity undid the thousands of years it took for the soil to be a space where life could thrive in harmony with the local climate.

Repairing our relationship with the soil

• Ironically, plants such as dandelions and thistles that were carried here alongside European colonization also thrive on the soil impacted by colonial legacy.
• Over time the compacted soil will recover, but it will never be the same.
• We run the Soil Camp, an educational project that explores what more soil-centric relationships could look like in action.
• Asking these questions can help us take action to be a better partner to the soil beneath our feet.