Royal Dutch Shell launched an extraordinary preemptive legal strike Wednesday against opponents of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, filing suit against more than a dozen environmental organizations likely to challenge its plan for drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer. Read More
An advertisement flooding airwaves across India would have you believe that a company called Vedanta is a creating a product called happiness. But London-based Vedanta Resources has attracted the ire of environmental activists and human rights groups like Amnesty International who have accused the company of exploiting indigenous communities - such as the Dongria Kondhs of Niyamgiri in Odisha - without due process. Read More
Brazil has demanded that 17 Chevron and Transocean executives surrender their passports while they await the outcome of criminal charges brought against them for a spill that took place off the coast of Rio de Janeiro last November. Both companies have been in trouble for similar problems in the past. Read More
The Karoo desert in the Western Cape region of South Africa is threatened by companies like Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, Falcon Oil & Gas and Bundu Oil & Gas that want to frack for natural gas. Read More
Two controversial multinational projects in Orissa, an eastern Indian state, face high level decisions in the next few weeks: a bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri hills planned by Vedanta of the UK and an iron and steel refinery in Jagatsinghpur being developed by POSCO of South Korea. Read More
Grupo Bozovich - Peru's biggest hardwood exporter - has been accused of harvesting illegal timber, in a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency. The Laundering Machine report claims that many of the timber certificates do not represent the actual source of the wood. Read More
WASHINGTON -- The White House and Congress are trumpeting their determination to bring economic opportunity to the people of Africa. But first, a few million sub-Saharan farmers will have to suffer. Read More
Children as young as ten in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, dig for cobalt and copper which they then sell to Switzerland-based Glencore, the world's largest commodities company, according to a new BBC investigation. Read More
An oil spill in northern Russia from a joint venture between Lukoil and Bashneft has damaged fragile reindeer pastures in yet another blow to the indigenous Nenets people. Environmental activists have warned about such disasters for decades but few precautions have been taken by the oil companies. Read More
A shale oil boom in North Dakota is displacing residents from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. Fires light up the sky every night as natural gas is flared off while the ground water has been contaminated with toxic chemicals. Read More
