The Church of England and one of Britain’s leading charities have been revealed as shareholders in a London-based company behind a controversial aluminium mine in India which campaigners allege will wreak environmental destruction. Vedanta Resources, a FTSE 100 company whose majority shareholder is the Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, won permission last month for its subsidiary Sterlite Industries to begin work on an open cast mine for bauxite, the raw form of aluminium, in a remote corner of the densely wooded Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa state, eastern India.
See http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/church-accused-of-unethical-investment-in-aluminium-mine-1719999.html
For a video on community resistance to Vedanta in India, see
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0o1PhmTjEQ
Vedanta has also come under heavy criticism for its activities in Armenia and Zambia.
See
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=9287 http://www.counterpunch.org/servant05292009.html
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=8492
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=8279