 |
| PERU: Human Rights Commission May Examine Violations at La Oroya, Peru
Earthjustice Legal Fund and CIEL
March 21st, 2007
Public health and environmental organizations from throughout the Western Hemisphere today announced the filing of a petition with the human rights division of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. The petition accuses the Peruvian government of doing little to halt contamination from a metallurgical complex that is impacting the lives and health of the citizens of La Oroya, Peru. |
| ARGENTINA: Famatina Says NO to Barrick Gold
by David Modersbach, Mines and Communities
March 20th, 2007
In the Argentine province of La Rioja, an astonishing series of events have lead to the ouster of a corrupt pro-mining provincial governor and the apparent withdrawal of gold mining giant Barrick Gold from operations on the Famatina range. Who was responsible for these events? A small group of dedicated neighbors who are fighting tooth and nail to save their mountain range from open-pit mining exploitation. |
| US: Chevron Faces More Scrutiny in Ecuador over Pollution
by Emad Mekay , IPS News
March 15th, 2007
Leaders of indigenous communities in Ecuador are pressing their government to investigate senior executives from U.S. oil giant Chevron for an alleged environmental fraud scheme in the mid-1990s related to a long-running six-billion dollar class action suit in the South American nation. |
| US: Chevron gets part of suit dismissed
by Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times
March 15th, 2007
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a racketeering charge against Chevron Corp. brought by Nigerian villagers who believe the oil giant condoned human rights abuses carried out by the West African nation's militia. |
| US: Chevron wins partial dismissal in Nigeria case
Herald Tribune
March 14th, 2007
A federal judge in California threw out a racketeering claim against Chevron Corp. filed by Nigerians who claimed the oil company conspired with the military and police to gun down demonstrators protesting their operations in the African nation. |
| US: Exxon unveils 20 projects for next three years
by Sheila McNulty, Financial Times
March 7th, 2007
ExxonMobil, the world's biggest listed oil company, said on Wednesday the company will start more than 20 new global projects in the next three years that should add 1m oil equivalent barrels per day to Exxon's base volumes. |
| HONDURAS: Protests Mount Against Mining Giant
by Stephen Leahy, Mines & Communities
February 24th, 2007
Dangerous levels of lead and arsenic have been found in the blood of Honduran villagers living downstream from a controversial gold and silver mine owned by Canada's Goldcorp Inc., the world's third largest gold mining firm. |
| CONGO: All that glitters...
by Jean-Roger Kaseki, Guardian (UK)
February 13th, 2007
Decades of gold mining should have given Congo a ticket to prosperity. Instead, it is trapped in a cycle of violence and poverty. |
| CHILE: Chile's divisive mountain of gold
by Luisa Baldini, BBC News
January 2nd, 2007
Tons of gold-bearing ore need to be excavated to produce a single ounce of bullion. Once the rock has been pulverised, cyanide is used in a leaching process to extract gold and silver. |
| US: Md. coal mining's toxic legacy
by Tom Pelton, Baltimore Sun
December 8th, 2006
In the woods at the fringe of this Western Maryland town, a mountain of waste 50 feet high is slouching into a creek that's tinted an eerie orange. The "gob pile" is refuse from a long-abandoned coal mine. And the stream into which it's eroding, Winebrenner Run, is devoid of life - one of the state's worst cases of sulfuric acid pollution from mines. |
| GHANA: Ghana's gold inflicts heavy price
by James Haselip, People and the Planet
December 6th, 2006
Gold mining is Ghana�s most valuable export industry: in 2005, US$1.4 billion worth of gold was shipped from the country, dwarfing the value of its other major foreign currency earners - timber and cocoa. However, very little of the gold revenues stay in the country while damage to the physical environment by both large and small-scale mining is inflicting an incalculable cost to the economy with vast tracts of farming land permanently ruined, forests destroyed and water resources diverted and polluted. |
| MALAWI: Bingu misled on uranium mining—civil society
by Juliet Chimwaga, The Nation (Malawi)
November 21st, 2006
Civil society organisations accused government Monday of misleading President Bingu wa Mutharika and the nation in its dealings with Paladin Africa Limited, saying the latter are not coming out clearly on the negative impact the multi-billion kwacha uranium mining project at Kayelekera in Karonga will have on people’s lives. |
| WORLD: Controlling the Corporate Mercenaries
by Nick Dearden, War on Want, Zmag
November 7th, 2006
While Iraq represents bloodshed and death on a massive scale to most people, to Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) it has brought a boom time, boosting the revenues of British-based PMSCs alone from £320 million in 2003 to more than £1.8 billion in 2004. In the same year income for the industry worldwide reached $100 billion. |
| PERU: Achuar win oil victory in Peru
by Lisa Garrigues , Indian Country Today
November 6th, 2006
On Oct. 24, after a 14-day occupation, representatives of the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes Rio (FECONACO), which includes the Quichua and Urarinas people, reached an agreement with PlusPetrol and the Peruvian government. The agreement gave them 98 percent of their demands. |
| PHILIPPINES: Once-idyllic island center of debate on mining
by Cyrain Cabuenas, Inquirer (PHIL)
October 19th, 2006
For many years, Manicani has served as a haven for people who wanted to commune with nature or check out World War II artifacts.
These days, Siman has no glowing account of Manicani. "The island's balding mountains and depleted marine resources no longer hold any promise," he said. |
| US: Critics attack Myanmar’s ‘blood gem’ auctions
by Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, Agence France Presse
October 18th, 2006
With up to 90 percent of the world’s rubies and many other precious gems mined in Myanmar, chances are that a vast proportion of the stones glinting in the windows of high-end jewelers worldwide originate in the military-ruled nation. |
| INDIA: 80,000 coal belt families face evacuation
Statesman News Service
October 10th, 2006
As many as 80,000 families living near the Jharia mine in Dhanbad coal belt face relocation. Officials say the coalfield area is, in effect, sitting on a “giant fireball deep inside the earth,” after they discovered at least six underground leaks of toxic fumes. Experts fear massive underground explosions followed by subsidence occuring at any moment. |
| PERU: Leaching Out the Water with the Gold
by Milagros Salazar, Inter Press Service (IPS)
September 20th, 2006
The conflict that brought operations at Yanacocha, Latin America's largest gold mine, to a halt just a month after President Alan García took office in Peru was merely the latest illustration of the tensions between mining companies and local communities in the northern province of Cajamarca. |
| US: Farmers Fear Coal Mining Will Sink Land
by Bob Secter, Chicago Tribune
September 17th, 2006
Two mining companies want to dig for coal under nearly half of Montgomery County. They plan to use a nontraditional but highly efficient process called "longwall" mining that will cause flat-as-a-dime land to sag like a burst souffle. |
| AFRICA: War, Murder, Rape... All for Your Cell
by Stan Cox, Alternet
September 14th, 2006
Cassiterite, or tin oxide, is the most important source of the metallic element tin, and the DRC is home to fully one-third of the world's reserves. Some cassiterite miners work on sites operated directly by the country's military or other armed groups. Working in the same area are "artisanal" miners who are theoretically independent, like prospectors in America's Old West. But the cassiterite they extract is heavily taxed by the soldiers -- when it's not just stolen outright. |
| US: Walking with purpose
by Edward Marshall, The Journal
September 5th, 2006
After 32 days and 380 miles of walking, Ed Wiley, a concerned grandfather of a Marsh Fork Elementary School student and grass roots activist, stopped in Shepherdstown Monday to speak with residents on his way to Washington where he hopes to meet with federal lawmakers.
Wiley is on a mission to ensure the safety of the children in Sundial, W.Va., where their elementary school sits next to a coal preparation plant and just 400 yards downstream from a dam holding back over two billion gallons of toxic sludge. |
| CHAD: Chad Orders 2 Oil Companies to Leave
by Madjiasra Nako , The Associated Press
August 27th, 2006
Chad's president on Saturday ordered oil companies Chevron Corp. and Petronas to leave the country, saying neither has paid taxes and his country will take responsibility for the oil fields they have overseen. |
| INDONESIA: Newmont Exec to Defend Himself in Court
by Robin McDowell, Associated Press
August 25th, 2006
An American gold-mining executive was preparing Friday to defend himself in court for the first time against charges his company dumped millions of tons of mercury and arsenic-laced waste into an Indonesian bay, sickening villagers. |
| PERU: ‘Voluntary Payment' Instead of Taxes for Mining Firms
by Milagros Salazar, Inter Press Service (IPS)
August 25th, 2006
Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo told Congress that private mining companies operating in Peru would make a "voluntary payment" of 757.5 million dollars over the next five years, to go towards fighting poverty. However, they will not pay the tax on windfall profits that new President Alan García had promised in his campaign. |
| PERU: Beggar on a Throne of Gold
by Milagros Salazar, Inter Press Service (IPS)
August 23rd, 2006
Mining companies operating in Peru are seeing increasing millions in profits as a result of the surge in international prices for metals, but few are contributing what is needed to alleviate the poverty of the people living in mining areas. |
| INDIA: Tribal activists carry Indian mining protest to London
by Marianne Barriaux, The Guardian
August 3rd, 2006
Vedanta Resources faced a wave of protest at yesterday's annual meeting as activists travelled to London from the Orissa region of India to challenge the mining group's chairman Anil Agarwal on his company's human and environmental rights record in the country. |
| WORLD: Requiem for the WTO
by Gustavo Capdevila , Inter Press News Service (IPS)
August 2nd, 2006
Civil society activists, who early on foretold the inevitable collapse of the Doha Round, are now predicting the beginning of the end for the World Trade Organisation (WTO) itself, which sponsored the failed negotiations. |
| INDIA: Investors fly in to tap Orissa's mineral riches
by Khozem Merchant, Financial Times
July 28th, 2006
Ratan Tata will soon become the latest of a series of top industrialists to land his private jet at Bhubaneshwar, the dusty capital of Orissa, whose vast deposits of high quality coal, iron ore and bauxite have made the eastern state the hottest investment destination in India. |
| UK: Water companies head polluters' league
by Charlotte Moore and agencies, Guardian Unlimited
July 26th, 2006
The Environment Agency said it was "disappointed" with the amount of pollution caused by water companies last year, as Thames Water topped the league table of worst polluters in England and Wales. |
| UK: SFO to investigate Southern Water
by Hans Kundnani, The Guardian
July 19th, 2006
The Serious Fraud Office today announced an investigation into whether Southern Water deliberately misled the water regulator, Ofwat, about its failure to meet customer service standards. |
| DRC: Minerals Flow Abroad, Misery Remains
by Emad Mekay, Inter Press News Service
July 5th, 2006
International companies and local elites in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are pocketing revenues from copper and cobalt production instead of sharing it with local communities or spending it to reduce poverty, a watchdog group charged Wednesday. |
| CANADA: Corporate SLAPP
by Kim Petersen, The Dominion Paper
June 22nd, 2006
The Ontario-based mineral company Platinex has slapped the Ojibwa of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (Big Trout Lake) First Nation (KIFN) with a $10-billion damage suit for refusing the company permission to drill on territory the KIFN says is its own. |
| AUSTRALIA: Mt Isa Lead Risk For Children
by Michelle Wiese Bockmann, The Australian
June 21st, 2006
Children in the Queensland mining capital of Mount Isa have been put at risk by fallout from the city's copper and lead smelters because the state Government has failed to routinely test for lead poisoning. |
| CANADA: Miners, retailers to certify ethical production of metal
by Kelly Patterson, The Ottawa Citizen
June 14th, 2006
Some of the biggest mining companies in the world, including Newmont Mining Corp., BHP Billiton and Canada's Falconbridge Inc., as well as retail giants ranging from Wal-Mart to Tiffany & Co., met in Vancouver recently to consider creating a seal of approval for sustainably produced metals. |
| CONGO: Congo's Child Miner Shame
by Orla Guerin, BBC News
June 12th, 2006
To commemorate World Day Against Child Labour, BBC News has spent a day with child miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who work for about one dollar per day. At Ruashi mine, in the Eastern province of Katanga, almost 800 children dig for copper and cobalt. |
| US: Bottlers, States and the Public Slug It Out in Water War
by David Fahrenthold, Washingtom Post
June 12th, 2006
In a series of lawsuits and statehouse debates that reached critical mass in the past year, activists and lawmakers have questioned whether bottling companies have become too greedy about the water they take from the ground, and -- in some cases -- what gives them the right to take it at all. |
| CANADA: Sudden Wealth's High Price
by Doug Struck, The Washington Post
June 9th, 2006
Huge mines here turning tarry sand into cash for Canada and oil for the United States are taking an unexpectedly high environmental toll, sucking water from rivers and natural gas from wells and producing large amounts of gases linked to global warming.
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| ARGENTINA: Kolla Indians Fight to Protect Their Land
by Marcela Valente, Inter Press News Service (IPS)
June 8th, 2006
"We are here to take care of the land, because we depend on it for a living," said Andrés Sajama, cacique (chief) of Queta, a Kolla indigenous community in the northwestern Argentine province of Jujuy. "We don't want to block mining projects, but we won't allow them to take away what little we have left," he told IPS. |
| ARGENTINA: Another War Over Water
by Marcela Valente, Inter Press Service News Agency
June 7th, 2006
Fed up with poor water quality, rate hikes and a lack of investment in expanding infrastructure, residents, union members and environmentalists in the Argentine province of Córdoba have forced a multinational corporation to withdraw from the business, and are now demanding that the state play a part in a new public water company. |
| US: Critics Wary of Development Plans for Utah Land
by Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times
June 6th, 2006
The proposed Washington County Growth and Conservation Act would sell up to 40 square miles of federal land and use the proceeds to finance a multimillion-dollar water pipeline and other local projects. Utah Republican Sen.
Robert F. Bennett and Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson are expected to introduce the bill in coming weeks. Waiting in the wings are nearly a dozen similar bills for counties in Utah, Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico where population pressure is fueling the demand for more developable land. |
| US: New Hampshire Town Bans Corporate Water Withdrawals
by Kat Bundy, Susquehanna
June 1st, 2006
Across the country, corporations are privatizing the commons -- water -- so they can sell it. Now one town is fighting back in a powerful new way: Barnstead, New Hampshire, has become the first municipality in the U.S. to adopt a binding local law that bans certain corporations from withdrawing water within the town. To protect their local law, Barnstead residents have also voted to strip corporations of their claims to constitutional rights and powers. This is not your father's old "regulatory" approach. |
| VENEZUELA: For Venezuela, a Treasure in Oil Sludge
by Juan Forero, The New York Times
June 1st, 2006
This great, largely untapped treasure is pitting a leftist government aiming to use oil revenue for social programs against multinational corporations like Chevron, which were invited here a decade ago to develop the Orinoco Belt, a 54-square-mile area some 120 miles south of here. |
| LIBERIA: Firestone in Liberia Rubber Row
by Caspar Leighton, BBC
May 31st, 2006
Rubber manufacturer Firestone has been accused of buying rubber from plantations illegally occupied by ex-combatants from Liberia's civil war.
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| CANADA: Platinum Mine Sparks Lawsuits
Canadian Press
May 29th, 2006
The development of a potentially rare and lucrative platinum mine near a reserve in Northern Ontario has prompted a First Nation to sue the provincial government while it faces a $10 billion lawsuit from a Canadian exploration company. |
| US: Senate Considers Bill on Mine Safety
by John Holusha, The New York Times
May 16th, 2006
Legislation that would increase the supplies of oxygen available to miners trapped by explosions, rock falls or other disasters, among other measures, was introduced in the Senate today by two senators from both parties. |
| AFRICA: Anger rises in oil-rich Chad as funds don't aid the poor
by Raymond Thibodeaux, The Boston Globe
April 30th, 2006
Three years after Chad began exporting its oil with assistance from the World Bank, few people outside the capital have access to electricity, running water, paved roads, and health clinics. Public schools are nonexistent. Life expectancy is 46 years for men, and only slightly longer for women. |
| UK: Eight arrests after goldmine raid
by Paul Carter, The Daily Telegraph
April 16th, 2006
FIFTY environmental activists have stormed and occupied an open cut goldmine in Western New South Wales, halting mining operations, and causing the arrest of eight protesters, police and the activists said today. |
| PHILIPPINES: Missing, despising Marcopper
by Gerald Gene R. Querubin, Philippine Daily Inquirer
April 6th, 2006
WHEN Marinduque Copper Mining Corp. (Marcopper) stopped its operation in 1997, the municipality of Santa Cruz in Marinduque came to a standstill. Almost 2,500 employees were left jobless, businesses suffered from low sales; some even had to close shop. |
| NIGERIA: Government Investigation Indicts Shell over Toxic Waste
by Yemie Adeoye, Vanguard (Lagos)
April 4th, 2006
THE Ministerial investigation committee into alleged dumping of toxic waste by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) at Igbeku and Ejekimoni communities of Sapele local government area of Delta State has come up with recommendations for the company to remove and treat in situ the "alleged buried waste" to acceptable statutory levels. |
| SOUTH AMERICA: Creating a Network Against Biopiracy
by Mario Osava, Inter Press Service News Agency
March 27th, 2006
Two patents granted in the United States between 2000 and 2002 and another for which an application has been filed have put "maca", a high altitude Andean plant that is used by indigenous people in Peru, at the centre of a new battle against biopiracy, which involves the construction of an international network against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge. |
| ARGENTINA: Suez Packs Its Bags and Won't Be Back
by María Amparo Lasso, Inter Press Service
March 27th, 2006
The French water company Suez, the favorite villain of anti-privatisation activists, has entered the final stretch of its withdrawal from Argentina and Bolivia, where it has been packing for quite a while. And it could be a long time before it returns to Latin America. |
| US: Toxic sites' cleanup at risk
by Les Blumenthal, The Sacramento Bee
March 27th, 2006
Grupo Mexico S.A. de C.V. could find itself at the center of the bankruptcy reorganization of Asarco, a century-old American mining and smelting company whose liabilities include the environmental cleanup of 94 Superfund sites in 21 states. Depending on what happens in the bankruptcy reorganization, U.S. taxpayers ultimately could be responsible for the tab. |
| US: Vague Law and Hard Lobbying Add Up to Billions for Big Oil
by Edmund L. Andrews, The New York Times
March 27th, 2006
Last month, the Bush administration confirmed that it expected the government to waive about $7 billion in royalties over the next five years, even though the industry incentive was expressly conceived of for times when energy prices were low. And that number could quadruple to more than $28 billion if a lawsuit filed last week challenging one of the program's remaining restrictions proves successful. |
| WORLD: Foreign Corporations Backing Off
by Diego Cevallos, Inter Press Service News Agency
March 16th, 2006
Water rights groups say transnational corporations are increasingly sinking their teeth into Latin America's water services, but studies by the United Nations and other experts point to the contrary: these companies are backing off, and may not come back any time soon. |
| INDONESIA: U.S. Aid to Corrupt TNI Risks More Rights Abuses
by Lisa Misol, The Jakarta Post
March 14th, 2006
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Jakarta follows the Bush Administration's controversial decision to reestablish full relations with the Indonesian Military (TNI). That move opens the door to renewed U.S. assistance, but pumping aid to an unreformed Indonesian military would serve only to encourage further rights abuses and undermine civilian governance. |
| WORLD: Cleaning Up Its Reputation
by Rebecca Bream, Financial Times
March 6th, 2006
The mining industry has a worldwide image problem. In developing and developed countries alike, the public tends to regard mines as dirty, dangerous and disruptive — and those who stand to profit from them as greedy despoilers. |
| PERU: Substandard Peruvian Gas Pipeline Blamed for Spills
Environmental News Service
March 2nd, 2006
A pipeline crossing the Peruvian Amazon has spilled natural gas liquids four times since it opened 15 months ago because it was shoddily built by unqualified welders using corroded pipes left from other jobs, according to a new technical report by the nonprofit environmental consultancy E-Tech International based in San Diego. |
| NIGERIA: Shell told to pay $1.5 bln damages
Reuters
February 24th, 2006
A Nigerian court said on Friday Royal Dutch Shell should pay $1.5 billion (861 billion pounds) in damages for pollution in oil-producing Bayelsa state, the latest instalment in a long-running case. |
| BOLIVIA: Bolivia Indicts Shady Oil Transnat
Prensa Latina
February 20th, 2006
Bolivia´s President Evo Morales is analyzing Monday with specialized officials the current situation of Andina Co., controlled by Spanish transnational Repsol which is accused of illegally trafficking petroleum. |
| BULGARIA: Bulgarians Protest Use of Cyanide Leaching
by Michael Werbowski, World Press
February 5th, 2006
The cyanide "leakage" that killed tons of fish in the Czech river Labe (Elbe) recently has re-focused public attention throughout central and Eastern Europe to the environmental and human dangers associated with this toxic chemical, especially when it spills into a nearby river or tributary. |
| PHILIPPINES: No new mining permits
by Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. , Blanche S. Rivera, Philippine Daily Inquirer
February 4th, 2006
PRESIDENT Macapagal-Arroyo has offered to suspend the issuance of new mining permits to try to appease Roman Catholic bishops strongly opposed to the country's new Mining Act, a top Malacanang official said yesterday. |
| GHANA: World Bank unit OKs Newmont Ghana mine investment
by Lesley Wroughton, Reuters
February 1st, 2006
The International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private-sector lending arm, on Tuesday approved $125 million in loans for gold major Newmont Mining Corp.'s Ahafo project in Ghana, but not all countries on the IFC's 24-member board agreed it was a good move. |
| INDONESIA: A Widow Who Won't Let Indonesia Forget
by Raymond Bonner and Jane Perlez, The New York Times
January 26th, 2006
In more than six hours of questioning by Indonesian police investigators, Patsy Spier described how attackers fired into the convoy carrying her, her husband and eight other Americans up a mountain road inside the concession of Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining company. Then she repeated her pitch for justice. |
| BOLIVIA: Bolivia’s Morales rejects US domination
by Hal Weitzman, The Financial Times
January 22nd, 2006
Evo Morales was sworn in on Sunday as Bolivia’s first indigenous president in a historic and emotional ceremony that set the tone for his new government, promising to move much the profits of Bolivia's natural resources to the people of Bolivia. |
| MADAGASCAR: Gold Rush Attracts Foreign Interest
by Tim Cocks, Port Louis L'Express
January 17th, 2006
Though largely unexplored, mining experts think the Indian Ocean island has big untapped deposits of gold, platinum, sapphires, rubies, diamonds and emeralds. Each year, thousands leave their villages to dig for gold and precious stones in a country where three quarters of the 17 million-strong population live on less than a dollar a day. An increasing number of international mineral exploration companies are also setting up operations on the world's fourth largest island. |
| US: Fines in mining deaths cut back
by Thomas Frank, USA Today
January 10th, 2006
The nation's coal mines have been required to pay only a fraction of the federal fines imposed after deadly accidents since 1999, a USA TODAY analysis shows. |
| INDONESIA: Recklessness in Indonesia
The New York Times
January 9th, 2006
Freeport-McMoRan, an American company that operates a giant open-pit copper and gold mine in Papua, is a major contributor to Indonesia's economy. The company is also one of Indonesia's most reckless polluters and a source of hard cash -- cash the company concedes is protection money -- for the Indonesian military, which has one of the worst human rights records anywhere. |
| US: Moving Mountains
by Erik Reece, Orion Magazine
January 9th, 2006
It is the people of Appalachia who pay the highest price for the rest of the country's cheap energy—through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks. |
| US: Safety Violations Have Piled Up at Coal Mine
by Joby Warrick, Washington Post
January 4th, 2006
Time and again over the past four years, federal mining inspectors documented the same litany of problems at central West Virginia's Sago Mine: mine roofs that tended to collapse without warning. Faulty or inadequate tunnel supports. A dangerous buildup of flammable coal dust. |
| NIGERIA: Blood Flows With Oil in Poor Villages
by Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times
January 1st, 2006
For months a pitched battle has been fought between communities that claim authority over this village and the right to control what lies beneath its watery ground: a potentially vast field of crude oil that has caught the attention of a major energy company. |
| RUSSIA: In Russia, Pollution Is Good for Business
by Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times
December 28th, 2005
One of the paradoxes of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change is that companies in Russia and other Eastern European countries, which are among the world's largest producers of greenhouse gases, are poised to earn hundreds of millions of dollars through trading their rights to release carbon dioxide into the air.
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| NEW GUINEA: Below a Mountain of Wealth, a River of Waste
by Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner, with Evelyn Rusli, The New York Times
December 27th, 2005
It is hard to discern the intricate web of political and military ties that have helped shield Freeport-McMoRan from the rising pressures that other gold miners have faced to clean up their practices. Only lightly touched by a scant regulatory regime, and cloaked in the protection of the military, Freeport has managed to maintain a nearly impenetrable redoubt on the easternmost Indonesian province as it taps one of the country's richest assets. |
| INDONESIA: The Cost of Gold: The Hidden Payroll
by Jane Perlez and Raymond Bonner, The New York Times
December 27th, 2005
Months of investigation by The New York Times revealed a level of contacts and financial support to the military not fully disclosed by Freeport, despite years of requests by shareholders concerned about potential violations of American laws and the company's relations with a military whose human rights record is so blighted that the United States severed ties for a dozen years until November.
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| US: $64B diamond industry rocked by fraud
CNN
December 20th, 2005
A scandal has rocked the $64 billion global diamond business and tarnished the credibility of one the industry's biggest players,according to a news report Tuesday. |
| ARGENTINA: The War for Gold in Catamarca
by Darío Aranda, Página 12 Newspaper
December 18th, 2005
Water that is undrinkable. Air that is better left unbreathed. A community impoverished, living above mountains of gold. These are some of the contradictions of Andalgalá, a town of 17,000 inhabitants in Catamarca, Argentina, 240 kilometres from the provincial capital, home for ten years now to the largest gold and copper mine in the country, and one of the largest in the world. |
| LIBERIA: Firestone Sued Over "Slave" Plantation
by Haider Rizvi, OneWorld.net
December 8th, 2005
Firestone, a multinational rubber manufacturing giant known for its automobile tires, has come under fire from human rights and environmental groups for its alleged use of child labor and slave-like working conditions at a plantation in Liberia.
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| INDIA: Health Minister: 'Coke Plant Will Not Be Allowed to Function'
The Hindu
October 25th, 2005
Health Minister K.K. Ramachandran on Monday said the Government "would not allow the bottling plant of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd. at Plachimada to reopen against the will of the people." (Mr. Ramachandran is the first Minister to have visited Plachimada where the local people have been waging an agitation for the last three years demanding the closure of the company for allegedly exploiting the groundwater, leading to shortage of water for drinking and irrigation purposes.) |
| WORLD: The Cost of Gold
by JANE PERLEZ and KIRK JOHNSON, The New York Times
October 24th, 2005
The price of gold is higher than it has been in 17 years - pushing $500 an ounce. But much of the gold left to be mined is microscopic and is being wrung from the earth at enormous environmental cost, often in some of the poorest corners of the world. |
| CANADA: MPs Call for Tougher Rules on Overseas Mines
by Paul Weinberg , Inter Press Service
October 22nd, 2005
A call by members of Canada's parliament for legally binding measures to govern the behaviour of Canadian mining companies around the world, and specifically to investigate the activities of a Calgary-based operation in the Philippines, has been turned down flat by the Canadian government's foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew. |
| ECUADOR: Amazon Indians say Texaco left damage
by Gonzalo Solano, Associated Press
October 20th, 2005
About 50 Cofan Indians, some holding handkerchiefs over their faces to fend off an acrid chemical stench, gathered around two contaminated open pits they say were left behind and never adequately cleaned up by the former Texaco Corp. |
| US: EPA probes alleged mud dumping in Alaska
by Mark Thiessen, The Associated Press
October 18th, 2005
Federal regulators are investigating the alleged dumping of thousands of gallons of tainted mud by a Texas drilling company into the Beaufort Sea on Alaska's northern coast, a spokeswoman for Alaska's environmental protection agency said Tuesday. |
| US: A Quest for Oil Collides With Nature in Alaska
by Felicity Barringer, The New York Times
October 2nd, 2005
The 217,000 acres of windblown water and mottled tundra here on the North Slope of Alaska, separating Teshekpuk Lake from the Beaufort Sea, are home in summer to 50,000 to 90,000 migratory birds. This corner of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve is also thought to be brimming with oil. |
| ROMANIA: An oil fortune bound in red tape
by Terence O'Hara, Washington Post
August 16th, 2005
G. Philip Stephenson does not cut the figure of an Eastern European oil baron, clashing with formerly communist security officials over the legality of his budding empire. |
| US: Newmont on Trial in Indonesia for Pollution
by Jane Perlez, New York Times
August 5th, 2005
The Indonesian government today brought criminal charges of polluting the environment against the American mining company Newmont, and its head of operations here.
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| NIGERIA: Chevron Paid Troops After Alleged Killing
by David R. Baker
August 4th, 2005
Nigerian soldiers guarding Chevron oil rigs billed the company for $109.25 a day after they allegedly attacked two villages in the volatile country, killing four people and setting fire to homes. |
| US: Is Nevada a Toxic Neighbor?
by Jeff DeLong, Reno Gazette-Journal
July 10th, 2005
With concern mounting that Nevada gold mines are belching clouds of toxic mercury downwind to neighboring states, officials are being urged to tighten regulations regarding the dangerous pollutant. |
| BORNEO: Lowland Forests Face Extinction
Reuters
June 8th, 2005
The lowland tropical rain forests in Indonesian Borneo could disappear in five years due to rampant logging and forest fires, endangering the survival of many exotic species, an international conservation group said on Tuesday. |
| US: Clean-Energy Mega-Mall
by Amanda Griscom Little, Grist
May 20th, 2005
The developer of a new mall planned for Upstate New York vows that it will be the closest thing to an "Apollo Project" for renewable energy that America has ever seen -- one that grows the economy, strengthens national security by encouraging energy independence, and protects the environment. |
| US: Shouting Drowns Out Positive Weyerhaeuser Report
by By BILL VIRGIN, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
April 22nd, 2005
The normally staid annual shareholders meeting of Weyerhaeuser Co. was anything but a buttoned-down affair yesterday, with representatives of labor, environmental and Canadian tribal groups shouting at the company's chief executive and demanding an opportunity to present their criticisms of the forest-product company. |
| LATIN AMERICA: New Gold Rush Runs into Opposition
by Mark Stevenson, Associated Press
April 12th, 2005
A surge in world gold prices is attracting U.S. and Canadian companies eager for another crack at the Latin American lodes that once enriched the Old World. But their modern-day methods -- strip mines and cyanide-based refining -- are meeting fierce resistance. |
| PERU: Villagers Seek Justice
by Peter Hecht, San Francisco Chronicle
March 20th, 2005
Unbeknownst to the driver, at least one canister leaked 330 pounds of glittering silver droplets onto the highway, attracting curious residents of the small farming community called Choropampa.
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| CANADA: Water - Bottles Versus Faucets
by Stephen Leahy, IPS
March 12th, 2005
Four large corporations control much of the world's booming bottled water industry and pose a threat to public water utilities, according to a report by the Canadian non-governmental Polaris Institute. |
| INDIA: Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
by Stan Cox, Counterpunch
February 15th, 2005
In this 50-mile-long stretch of rural India west of Hyderabad, the country's fifth largest city, almost 40 percent of the country's bulk pharmaceuticals are produced (a large proportion of them for export). The progress the the people of Digwal have made in protecting themselves against the industry's wastes puts them in a league of their own. |
| CANADA: Natives' Land Battles Bring a Shift in Economy
by Clifford Krauss , The New York Times
December 9th, 2004
The Haida won a landmark case in November in Canada's Supreme Court obliging British Columbia to consult with them over land use anywhere on their traditional homelands on the Queen Charlotte Islands. The decision is expected to have a sweeping impact on similar Indian claims across Canada.
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| INDONESIA: Report Heightens Pollution Dispute with Newmont Mining
by Jane Perlez, New York Times
November 8th, 2004
A government panel presented a bitterly fought-over report on Monday showing that sediment in the equatorial bay where the world's biggest gold producer, Newmont Mining Corporation, deposited mine waste is polluted with significant levels of arsenic and mercury. But the panel found the water quality met Indonesian standards. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: DeBeers Pleads Guilty to Price-Fixing
by Margaret Webb Pressler, Washington Post
July 14th, 2004
DeBeers SA, the huge diamond company, pleaded guilty yesterday to price fixing and agreed to pay $10 million to settle a 10-year-old indictment, which paves the way for the company to start doing business directly with the American market. |
| World: Lenders Urge World Bank to Reject Oil, Mining Pullout
by Emad Mekay, Inter Press Service News Agency
April 5th, 2004
International investment banks are lobbying the World Bank to rebuff the recommendations of an independent study that urged the global lender to bail out of gas, oil and mining projects. |
| US: A Wave Of Desalination Proposals
by Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
March 14th, 2004
More than 20 projects to make seawater fit for the tap are being considered in the state. Those from private firms stir debate over public's interests. It's purified seawater, stripped of its salts and ready for the tap. MacLaggan's firm, Poseidon Resources |
| US: Nevada Nuke Dump Workers Hurt By Toxic Dust
by Ken Ritter, The Associated Press
March 11th, 2004
A former tunnel worker at the nation's nuclear waste dump in the Nevada desert filed suit Thursday against Energy Department contractors, claiming the companies deliberately exposed employees to toxic dust at the Yucca Mountain project. |
| UK: Coca-Cola Admits Dasani is Tap Water
by Trevor Datson, Reuters
March 4th, 2004
It made for great headlines, but the fact that the UK version of Coca-Cola's Dasani brand bottled water comes out of the London public supply should hardly have come as a surprise. |
| World: WB to Work on Oil, Gas and Mining Projects
Financial Times
February 26th, 2004
The president of the World Bank and his management colleagues will reject several of the crucial recommendations of a review about the extractive industries - oil, gas and mining - they themselves instituted. In particular, they will oppose the idea that the Bank should phase out all oil projects within five years. |
| Indonesia: Tensions in Mining Operations
by Kafil Yamin, Inter Press Service
February 23rd, 2004
The government and Dayak villagers have called in fresh troops as tension intensifies over disputed mining operations on Sebuku, an island of some 3,000 residents in central Indonesia. |
| Iceland: Power Driven
by Susan De Muth, The Guardian
November 29th, 2003
In Iceland, work has already begun on a colossal $1bn dam which, when it opens in 2007, will cover a highland wilderness - and all to drive one US smelter. Environmentalists are furious, but the government appears determined to push through the project, whatever the cost |
| Vanuatu: Reefs at Risk After Disney Film
by David Fickling, Guardian (London)
November 21st, 2003
A booming trade in aquarium fish, sparked by Finding Nemo, the Disney film featuring clownfish, is endangering the wildlife of the Vanuatu archipelago in the South Pacific. Over the past year about 200,000 fish and other marine creatures have been exported from the country, and local tour firms are warning that the reefs will be at risk if the tropical fish trade is not regulated. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: Tribe Wins Rights to Diamond-Rich Land
by Rory Carroll, The Guardian (London)
October 15th, 2003
A South African tribal community robbed of its land in the 19th century yesterday won a court battle to regain land and mineral rights to diamonds that could be worth billions of pounds. |
| Brazil: Battling for the Environment
by Paulo Cabral, BBC Brazilian Service
August 20th, 2003
The virtual disappearance of a waterfall at Brazil's Paulo Afonso gorge - once called "Brazil's Niagara" by Victorian explorer Richard Burton - is perhaps the most visible of a number of changes along the Sao Francisco river made in order to generate hydroelectric power. |
| India: River Plans Spark Furore
by Jyotsna Singh, BBC
August 19th, 2003
India's plans to link major rivers in the region to provide water to arid states are causing a furore among its neighbours and environmentalists. Indian officials insist that the project is at a very early stage and that concerned neighbours will be consulted before the plans are firmed up. |
| Lesotho: Water Troubles Building Resentment
BBC
August 6th, 2003
For the past six years Anna Moepi and her sister have been scratching a living in a village a few kilometres from the capital of Lesotho, Maseru. These woman are one of the many people whos homeland was flooded due to a massive water project that was undertaken in the area. |
| Ghana: Anti-Mining Activists Threatened and Harrassed
by Mike Anane, Environment News Service
July 30th, 2003
The National Coalition of Civil Society Groups Against Mining in Ghana Forest Reserves has condemned what coalition members describe as deliberate and horrific acts of harassment directed at two of their colleagues by Ashanti Goldfields Company Limited, the district chief executive of Adansi West, and a number of the traditional rulers in the Obuasi area. |
| India: Coke Adds Life?
by Paul Vallely, Jon Clarke and Liz Stuart in Kerala, Independent/UK
July 25th, 2003
Three years ago, the little patch of land in the green, picturesque rolling hills of Palakkad in the Indian state of Kerala yielded 50 sacks of rice and 1,500 coconuts a year. It provided work for dozens of labourers. Then Coca-Cola arrived and built a 40-acre bottling plant next door. |
| Liberia: Civilians Seek Ban on Natural Resources Trade
Environment News Service
July 22nd, 2003
A halt to extraction and trade of Liberian gold, diamonds and timber would help stop the fighting that has killed at least 600 civilians in the capital in the past five days, according to the Environmental Lawyers Association of Liberia and two other nongovernmental organizations. |
| BRAZIL: Land Reforms Promised to Peasant Activists
by Andrew Hay, Reuters
July 3rd, 2003
Brazil promised on Thursday to speed land reforms after landless movement leaders met with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but the pledge did little to halt a wave of occupations by peasant activists. |
| USA: Bottled Water Blues
by Kari Lydersen, AlterNet
June 3rd, 2003
The residents of Mecosta County and the surrounding areas in central Michigan regard water as central to their identity. They fish for trout and watch ospreys and eagles feeding in the streams. They spend warm days by the ponds and small lakes that dot the woodlands. And of course the Great Lakes, which hold a fifth of the world's fresh water, are a constant presence. So when a huge multinational bottled water company decided to move in and start pumping over half a million gallons of water a day out of the springs that feed their lakes and streams, the residents took it personally. |
| USA: Private Firms Belly-flop in the H2O Biz
by Jane Kelly, The Sacramento Bee
April 7th, 2003
Multinational corporations vie for a share of the American water market, and if they are given the opportunity, affordable drinking water may soon be a thing of the past. From Stockton, to Atlanta, to Cochabamba, Bolivia, privatization has proven a risky business with far-reaching consequences. |
| USA: Bechtel to Get Richer in Post-War Iraq
by Aaron Davis and Dana Hull, San Jose Mercury News
March 25th, 2003
Bechtel raised the Bay Bridge and assembled the Hoover Dam. The San Francisco company extinguished the oil well fires in Kuwait and dug tunnels for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Its workers have laid 50,000 miles of pipeline and built 17,000 miles of roadway in 140 countries. |
| BRAZIL: South Could Become Stage for Water Wars
by Mario Osava, Inter Press Service
March 21st, 2003
Developing countries rich in water resources could become scenarios of war similar to what is happening today in Iraq if water continues to be privatized and sold like any other merchandise or "good", warned Leonardo Morelli, the organizer of the Social Water Forum, taking place in Brazil. |
| WORLD: Water Privatization Under Fire
Inter Press News Service
March 10th, 2003
Privatization of water services has had negative consequences in many countries, says the environmental network Friends of the Earth International, which urges global resistance to the commercialization of this essential resource. |
| Ghana: Gold Discovered Beneath Forest Reserves
by Mike Anane, Environment News Service
March 4th, 2003
Dozens of bulldozers and excavators belonging to five multinational mining companies operating in Ghana are poised to tear apart thousands of hectares of forest reserves in the Ashanti, Western and Eastern Regions of the country, if the government gives them approval to haul out what they describe as rich deposits of gold beneath the forests |
| WORLD: The Planet is Running Out of Fresh Water
by Maude Barlow, The Guardian
February 26th, 2003
The private sector was the first to notice: the planet is running out of fresh water at such a rate that soon it will be the most valuable commodity on earth. |
| BRAZIL: Vivendi Moves to Keep Water Company
by Raymond Colitt, Financial Times
February 18th, 2003
Vivendi Environnement will today launch last-ditch negotiations to recover control of a Brazilian water company after a state government said it would take over management from the French utility. |
| US: Privatized Water Deal Collapses in Atlanta
by Douglas Jehl, New York Times
February 10th, 2003
Privatization has hit the water sector, which has remained mostly the bastion of public utilities. Over the last five years, hundreds of American communities, including Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Gary, Ind., have hired private companies to manage their waterworks, serving about one in 20 Americans. |
| UK: De Beers Changes Its Name to Element Six
Canada NewsWire
September 30th, 2002
CO. CLARE, Ireland (September 30) -- From October 1st, 2002, the De Beers Industrial Diamonds group of companies (Debid) including Drukker International, will become Element Six. The new corporate and brand name is derived from the fact that diamond is a form of carbon, and carbon is the sixth element in the periodic table. The companies feel that the choice of this name encompasses their several businesses in an imaginative and differentiating way, reflecting the modern industrial diamond industry. |
| PERU: Women to be Reckoned With
by Barbara J. Fraser, LatinAmericaPress.org
September 24th, 2002
In a remote mining camp, small businesses give women economic security -- and freedom. High on an arid western slope of the Andes, Santa Filomena is nearly invisible from a distance. The cluster of straw-mat shacks is barely distinguishable from the surrounding hills. There is no water or greenery, and until recently, there was not even an electric light. But for nearly 15 years, the village has attracted settlers from as far away as Piura, in the north, as well as the local department of Ayacucho. |
| NIGERIA: Women Stick to Oil Demands
by D'Arcy Doran, Associated Press
July 13th, 2002
Oil company executives thumped the table and even offered concessions, but the women who took over a giant oil terminal and trapped hundreds of workers inside did not budge Saturday in their demands for jobs for their sons and electricity for their homes. |
| AFRICA: Controversy Continues to Dog Major World Bank Projects
by Jim Cason, AllAfrica.com
April 25th, 2002
The World Bank president's June meeting could do worse than to consider Uganda's Bujagali Dam project and Tanzania's Bulyanhulu Gold Mine. The two large-scale projects are being supported by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (Miga), as part of a broad strategy to increase economic growth and alleviate poverty. |
| BRAZIL: Peasants Take Over Ranches of the Rich
EFE News Service
March 26th, 2002
Some 300 members of Brazil's Landless Peasants' Movement (MST) took over an estate belonging to an associate of the country's president in the state of Sao Paulo Monday, organization spokesmen said. |
| US: Mine Workers Chief Arrested at Massey Energy Protest
Environment News Service
March 15th, 2002
United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts was one of 11 people arrested Thursday at the site of a huge coal sludge spill as they demonstrated against the environmental performance of Massey Energy. |
| ECUADOR: Amazon Indians Appeal Texaco Case Ruling
by Gail Appleson, Reuters
March 11th, 2002
Rainforest Indians of Ecuador and Peru urged a U.S. appeals court on Monday to reinstate nine-year-old litigation against Texaco, alleging that toxic dumping devastated their environment and exposed residents to cancer-causing pollutants. |
| INDIA: Novelist Roy is Grassroots Hero
by Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian (UK)
March 7th, 2002
When Arundhati Roy woke up at 5.30am this morning in Tihar prison, New Delhi, it must have struck her that reality was proving stranger than any fiction. Over the past week terrible communal violence in India has claimed hundreds of lives while the forces of law and order stood by. This has now been juxtaposed with the spectacle of a diminutive, softly spoken novelist being sent to one of the country's most notorious prisons to uphold what the supreme court called the ''glory of the law'' because she dared to criticize it. |
| INDONESIA: Man Shot at Australian Gold Mine
Environment News Service
January 23rd, 2002
An Indonesian man was shot by security police at an Australian gold mine in Indonesian Borneo. The gold mine is located in a remote area of Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, inhabited mainly by indigenous Dayak people. |
| Ghana: Cyanide Spill Worst Disaster Ever in West African Nation
by Mike Anane, Environment News Service
October 24th, 2001
Villages in the Wassa West District of Ghana's western region have been hit by the spillage of thousands of cubic metres of mine wastewater contaminated with cyanide and heavy metals. The cyanide-laced waste contaminated the River Asuman on October 16 when a tailings dam ruptured at a mine operation owned by the South African company, Goldfields Ltd. |
| Peru: Mining Companies Invade Andean Cloud Forests
Environment News Service
August 17th, 2001
The recent discovery of gold deposits in northwestern Peru has split the population between those who support proposed mineral extraction and those who fear it will cause irreparable ecological damage to human health, agriculture and endangered species. |
| FIJI: Japanese Mine Wants to Dump 100,000 Tons of Waste Daily
Drillbits and Tailings (Project Underground)
June 30th, 2001
Japanese mining magnate Nittetsu-Nippon has set its sights on the copper-rich hills of Fiji, endangering the ecologically fragile Waisoi Valley and the Coral Coast. Because the ore contains such low-grade (only .5%) copper, the proposed Namosi mine would be among the biggest producers of crushed rock among copper mines worldwide. |
| Indonesia: International Ban on Dumping Mine Waste Urged
Environment News Service
May 2nd, 2001
An international conference here on the dumping of mine waste at sea, known as submarine tailings disposal, concluded Monday with a declaration which calls for an international ban on the practice. |
| Africa: U.S. Covert Action Exposed
by Eric Ture Muhammad, Final Call
April 25th, 2001
Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) led the voices of castigation that claimed the U.S. Government, the UN, private militias and western economic interests possessed complete knowledge of pending civil unrest in Africa and fed the fray between African nations. Their aim was to use war, disease, hunger and poverty as covers while continuing the centuries-old practice of rape and exploitation of the continent's human and mineral resources, testimonies charged. |
| US: 2001 Goldman Prize Winners Fight Greed
Environment News Service
April 23rd, 2001
The Goldman Environmental Prize for North America goes this year to Akre and Wilson. Winners in five other geographic areas are honored too with the world's largest prize for environmental activists. |
| Turkey: Anti-Mining Activist Jailed
by Jon Gorvett, Environment News Service
March 30th, 2001
The leader of one of Turkey's longest running environmental campaigns was jailed for a year and a half this week under the country's tough anti-protest laws written by the Turkish military. |
| ECUADOR: Nationwide Protests End with Triumph by Indians
by Kintto Lucas, Inter Press Service
February 7th, 2001
The nationwide protests or ''uprising'' by Ecuador's indigenous people that has brought much of this Andean nation to a standstill over the past two weeks ended Wednesday with the signing of a pact with President Gustavo Noboa, who agreed to lower the price of gasoline, one of the demonstrators' main demands. |
| TURKEY: Court Bans Cyanide Gold Process Near Ancient Town
by Jon Gorvett, Environment News Service
January 16th, 2001
Despite an order from the country's Supreme Court backing up environmentalists, the pressure is mounting this week for the reopening of a controversial mine in one of Turkey's most visited tourist areas. |
| World: Enviromentalists Call for Mining Standards
by Danielle Knight, Inter Press Service
October 25th, 2000
Following January's cyanide spill in Romania and new reports on mining disasters from China, environmentalists are calling for governments worldwide to adopt international mining standards. |
| PERU: Mercury from Gold Mine Dumped in Transit
Environment News Service
June 16th, 2000
Eight people have been hospitalized including a woman in critical condition following a mercury spill near the Minera Yanacocha mine, 600 kilometers (375 miles) north of Lima, Peru. |
| SRI LANKA: Massive Protest Against US Mining Project
Inter Press Service
March 30th, 2000
Scientists, trade unionists and priests joined farmers from a northeast Sri Lanka village on Thursday in a massive protest in the capital against government plans to hand over phosphate mines to a US-based transnational company (TNC). |
| ZAMBIA: Environmentalists Caution New Mine Investors
The Times of Zambia (Lusaka)
March 6th, 2000
A non-governmental organisation has cautioned the new mine investors not to willfully pollute the environment despite a bill which indemnifies them from litigation against environmental degradation. Citizens for a better environment, a Kitwe based NGO, warned that should the new mines violate the rights of the people to a clean environment, they would face the wrath of the public. |
| US: Vermiculite Products Could Expose Consumers to Asbestos
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
February 15th, 2000
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether products made from vermiculite could expose consumers to asbestos. Preliminary test results on common household products indicate that a particularly lethal form of asbestos fibers contaminates some attic insulation, but researchers do not yet know whether normal use of these products could endanger consumers. |
| US: Asbestos Tainted Ore Affected Thousands, Suit Charges
by Cat Lazaroff, Environment News Service
February 1st, 2000
A class action lawsuit filed Monday seeks cleanup and medical monitoring funds to help more than 26,000 people exposed to asbestos from contaminated vermiculite ore. The suit alleges that decades of unsafe mining operations in Libby, Montana have led to illness and death for thousands of mineworkers, processing plant employees, and Libby residents. |
| The Mexican Version of Pulpwood Plantations
by Alejandro Villamar, World Rainforest Movement Bulletin
August 1st, 1998
In response to pressure from the maquiladora industry, the Mexican government is now paving the way for the large-scale pulpwood plantations in order to provide industry with raw material to produce cheap pulp and paper. |
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