Environment

ExxonMobil wants to restart oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. It plans to transport the crude oil to inland refineries in Santa Maria and Pentland by truck. Environmentalists fought the proposal citing the history of oil spills from trucks and pipelines in the region. Local government officials and courts recently ruled in their favor. Read More

Residents of Makhasaneni, KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa, are escalating their fight to stop Jindal Africa’s plans to build a $2 billion iron ore mine project that threatens to displace as many as 3,000 people and severely impact the local environment. Read More

Yasuni National Park in the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador, one of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, is home to the Huaorani, Tagaeri and Taromenane Indigenous peoples. It has been exploited for oil by companies like Shell and Petroecuador for over 50 years. In September 2023, after 10 years of activism, the people of Ecuador voted to halt oil drilling forever. Read More

Boipeba, an idyllic island in Bahia state, has some of Brazil’s most beautiful beaches. Mangaba Cultivo de Coco bought up a fifth of the island to turn it into a hotel resort threatening the local traditional community and ecology. Read More

Mining company Telupac Holdings requested a government permit to explore for minerals under the unique Northern Jarrah Forest close to the city of Perth. The area included a monastery belonging to the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. The monks’ campaign to block Telupac’s application was successful when the company withdrew their application in August 2023. Read More

Energy Transition Minerals is demanding that Greenland fork over 76 billion Danish kroner (US$11.15 billion) after the government changed environmental laws that made uranium mining illegal – effectively shutting down a previously approved rare earth and uranium mining project in Kvanefjeld, southern Greenland. Read More

Residents of Dubrovnik, a coastal town in Croatia, have been fighting Razvoj Golf’s proposed €1 billion luxury golf resort since 2010. After the project was annulled by a Croatian court in 2016, the company sued Croatia in a World Bank arbitration tribunal for US$500 million. In May 2023, the tribunal ruled against Razvoj Golf. Read More

Fossil fuel giant BP has provided millions to sponsor the British Museum since 1996. Protests by activists from organizations like Culture Unstained, Extinction Rebellion and Greenpeace has cast this relationship in an unfavorable light. Internal memos uncovered by the media suggest that this sponsorship will not be renewed at the end of 2023. Read More

Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin) operates a 58,000-hectare palm oil plantation around the town of Mbonjo in west Cameroon that it acquired from the government of Cameroon in the year 2000. After two years of negotiations, villagers were given back three hectares of sacred land that contain ancestral graves as well as where they grow traditional medicinal plants. Read More

“The company wants to weaken us, undermine our strength and impoverish our fight, it wants to kill us slowly, leave us starving like it does with the Xingu River and the fish that inhabit the waters of the rivers.”    - November 2022 letter from the council of the traditional peoples of the middle and lower Xingu River. Read More