The livelihood of millions depends on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), especially in Sub-Sarahan Africa. Yet this practice comes at a significant environmental and human cost.
Gold mines, even abandoned ones, are still poisoning thousands of people in South Africa due to high concentrations of heavy metals, radiation and contaminated water.
A century of lead mining in Kabwe, officially abandoned two decades ago, has poisoned millions of people and left the city with deadly concentrations of toxic lead in the soil and water.
Japan is the first country to experiment mining deep-sea hydrothermal vents. These hostile yet unique habitats are rich in life and precious minerals, leading to interest in both researching and mining them.
A Brazilian court suspended the decree issued by President Temer to abolish the RENCA nature reserve in the Amazon forest and open it to mining exploration.
Indian coal giant Adani’s Carmichael project, worth 16.5 billion Australian dollars, in the Galilee basin in Queensland is projected to be the largest mine in Australia and one of the largest in the world. After an international campaign to block it, Gautam Adani, the Indian billionaire founder of the conglomerate of the same name, announced
The Belo Monte hydroelectric complex in Brazil was approved in 2005 even in the absence of the legally required environmental impact assessment and consultations with affected populations. Brazilian prosecutors have ruled the authorisation unconstitutional, multiples times. Yet after over a decade of legal attempts to block it, occupations, strikes and violence, Belo Monte is expected
1,800 villagers living downstream the Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) in the Zambian Copperbelt region are demanding an end to 12 years of pollution near the town of Chingola and KCM’s Nchanga copper mine, which has turned the adjacent Kafue into a river of acid. The villagers are suing Vedanta, a London-based mining group, and its subsidiary KCM in
It’s been nearly four months since the dam disaster has poisoned Brazil, representing the worst environmental catastrophe in the country’s history and one of the world’s harshest. On 5 November, two dams collapsed in Minas Gerais region, South-eastern Brazil, spilling tonnes of toxic mud and killing 19 people. The area has been devastated, in particular the Doce
At least 113 people died in a landslide at the site of a jade mine in the township of Hpakant in the state of Kachin, northern Myanmar on the 21st of November. A 60 metre high mountain of waste collapsed in the middle of the night, burying the 70 huts located at its foot together
