After the Bell: Tailings dam collapse in Zambia an ominous sign in a world that needs more mining

The catastrophic failure at the Sino Metals’ tailings dam in Chambishi, Zambia, on 18 February 2025 is a major setback to global efforts to prevent such disasters and an ominous sign in a world that, love it or hate it, needs more mining. 

As my colleague Yeshiel Panchia reported this week, the collapse spewed more than 50 million litres of acidic effluent into the Mwambashi River, cutting water supplies off to 500,000 residents in the Copperbelt town of Kitwe and befouling farmland in a region that was scorched by last summer’s searing El Niño. 

The full human, economic and ecological impact will not be known for some time and lawyers are no doubt gearing up for battle. 

Tailings facilities — used to store the discarded byproducts of mining operations in a dam-like setting — have been in the spotlight since 2019 in the wake of the collapse of the Brumadinho dam operated by Vale in Brazil in 2019. 

The toxic sludge unleashed by that disaster killed 270 people and triggered a concerted effort by the mining industry to set global benchmarks for the design and maintenance of tailings facilities. 

This has been spearheaded by the London-based International Council on Mining and Metals. 

Council members have committed to implementing its Global Standard on Tailings Management, which it updated earlier in February during the African Mining Indaba in Cape Town. 

Unveiled initially in August 2020, the standard “... strives to achieve the ultimate goal of zero harm to people and the environment”. 

“The standard aims to prevent catastrophic failure and enhance the safety of mine tailings facilities across the globe. It embodies a step-change in terms of transparency, accountability and safeguarding the rights of project-affected people.” 

This initiative is welcome, but it cannot realistically be enforced at a global level.

The International Council on Mining and Metals has 24 members, including the big players on the mining stage: BHP, Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Vale, Barrick, AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields and Sibanye-Stillwater.

Together, its members account for about a third of the global metals and mining industry — which means that two-thirds of the industry does not have to abide by its standards, unless of course they are adopted by regulators in jurisdictions in which they operate.

Pointedly, neither Sino Metals nor its parent company China Nonferrous Metal Mining — the world’s leading copper producer — are International Council on Mining and Metals members. 

Beyond that, there are other omens looming on the tailings front. 

Take, for example, US President Donald Trump’s suspension of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). 

Introduced in 1977, the Act prohibits US individuals and companies — or those with a US connection such as a secondary listing — from bribing foreign public officials for commercial gain. It has long been seen as a vital weapon in the global fight against corporate malfeasance and state corruption. 

As The Atlantic recently noted, the trashing of the Act was a case of Trump saying “the corrupt part out loud”.

Trump is in effect giving the green light to bribery on the grounds that the Act put American companies at a disadvantage — without realising, it seems, that it has been applied to non-US companies that happened to have secondary listings in the US. 

Against this backdrop, when it comes to things like costly standards and regulations for tailings dams in poor, graft-prone countries, what could possibly go wrong? 

The consequences of undermining efforts to curb corruption go beyond lining pockets and providing unfair commercial access to predatory companies. It can literally result in environmental disasters that kill people.

This is deeply troubling because the world needs more mines, and lots of them, which in turn means more tailings facilities.

The worldwide decarbonisation push to phase out fossil fuels in a bid to arrest the literal burning of our planet cannot be achieved without metals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, PGMs and a wide range of others.

And, trust me, chemists are mixing and matching the elements on the periodic table to find new green applications for metals and minerals.

This is a reminder that mining can be a force for good in the world — the energy transition hinges on the sector. 

Of course, many mining companies and not just International Council on Mining and Metals members will strive to build and maintain tailings facilities that will not collapse. Among other things, the costs of such an incident to a company can be mammoth. 

But there is a scramble at the moment for green metals, and it would be a sad irony if that leads to more environmental catastrophes. DM