London-listed mining companies
Coal mining and use
member group, and a grassroots campaigning organisation. CAN works to end open-cast coal mining and burning coal for electricity in the UK. They do this by working in solidarity with communities affected by open-cast coal mining and pollution, both in the UK and internationally towards a just end to coal now. Dark Materials: the consequences of clinging to coal: a report for the Mines and Communities network. CoalSwarm is a useful website for information on coal: an on-line collaborative information clearinghouse on U.S. and international coal mines, plants, companies, politics, impacts, and alternatives. End Coal provides a resource for local communities, activists, students and researchers who would like to learn more about why coal is not the solution to the world’s energy needs and how we can work to stop the expansion of coal and promote better alternatives for meeting energy needs. No Opencast Coal is the website of the Loose Anti-Opencast Network (LAON) in the UK, providing news about anti-opencast struggles and UK government policy on coal. Energy alternatives
Adivasi resistance to mining and militarisation in India
(Note: the tables in the report contain distressing images.)
In June 2024, London Mining Network worked in collaboration with three Indian diaspora organisations (International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India, India Justice Project and Foundation The London Story) and the Forum Against Corporatization and Militarization (FACAM), a Delhi-based platform of Indian civil society organisations with presence on the ground, to submit a report for the fourth review of India’s performance in fulfilling its obligations to the United Nations’ International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This report focuses on ICCPR violations taking place in the southern region of Chhattisgarh commonly known as Bastar Division, comprising the seven districts of Bastar, Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Sukma, Kondagaon and Kanker, between 2021 and 2024. These violations range from extrajudicial killings to torture and arbitrary arrests under sedition and anti-terrorism laws. The report notes that these violations have been ongoing for nearly two decades but have significantly worsened since 2016, including five reported episodes of aerial warfare in the Bijapur and Sukma districts between 2021 and 2024. The detailed analysis also provides evidence of lack of legal remedies for extrajudicial killings including denial of due process and fair trial, sexual violence against women, forced displacement of Adivasis, intimidation and harassment of journalists and repression of the right to freedom of assembly.
In February 2023, a group of concerned Indian citizens, including Professor Nandini Sundar, whose book ‘The Burning Forest’ on Bastar was discussed in LMN’s Resist Mining book club in January 2024, came together in February 2023 to investigate the reasons behind the growth of large-scale protests by Adivasi communities across the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh against the proliferation of security camps and laying of wide roads on their lands. The teams found that an absence of land records and surveys is enabling the administration to appropriate cultivated lands for mining projects, without the free, prior informed consent of the people as constitutionally mandated by the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 (PESA Act) and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA), laws specifically passed to safeguard the land rights of Adivasi people in central and eastern India. The team also found a lack of accountability among the administration for massive deforestation, lack of recognition of forest rights of the Adivasi people, severe repression of the opposition by villagers to the take-over of their ancestral lands, increase in surveillance at militarized police camp checkpoints, making everyday life difficult for villagers, slow provision, if any, of welfare measures in comparison to the speed with which the police camps and roads are being built, the network and scale of which are clear indications of government’s priorities and intent. That is these are meant for the state and corporates to access and exploit the lands on which the communities reside. The report concludes that there is an urgent need for respect for law by the state and corporates with implementation of PESA 1996 and FRA 2006 provisions in letter and spirit for the Adivasis to be able to live as equal citizens and benefit from the development in whose names their human rights are being violated.
- Under The Surface: Human Rights and Environmental Implications of the Proposed Sijimali Bauxite Mine in Odisha, Human Rights Lawyering Clinic, Bangalore, April 2024
An Indigenous Adivasi people’s movement is ongoing against the proposed Sijimali bauxite mine (M/S Vedanta Ltd) in Rayagada and Kalahandi districts of Odisha. These districts are both Fifth Scheduled Areas and home to a rich biodiverse environment, which has been severely strained n recent decades due to mining activity carried out with flagrant disregard of the human rights of local Adivasi communities and key principles of environmental governance. The report provides an helpful overview of the extensive international and domestic normative and legal frameworks, including the instruments for safeguarding the human, fundamental and constitutional rights of local Adivasi communities, and the due processes that underpin the governance and approval of large mining projects in India. (This review is also helpful when considering mining projects in other Fifth Schedule Areas of India as well.) The main part of the report focuses the claimed and potential human and environmental impacts of the proposed Sijimali bauxite mine. These include the violation of human and fundamental rights of Adivasis, their right to autonomy and FPIC, that are even preceding the establishment of the mine. It notes that these violations are linked to the continued colonial perception of the dominant elite of the Adivasis as backward peoples Regarding the environment, the report highlights the potential long-term harms, including “permanent loss of endangered and vulnerable biodiversity in the region” (p.12). The report’s recommendations include the need to ensure that the right to autonomy and FPIC of the Adivasi peoples’ are upheld by those administering, governing and carrying out mining operations on the lands of the Indigenous peoples. The research conducted for this report was part of a 6-month clinical workshop on human rights lawyering held in 2023–2024 that “emerges from the rich traditions of lawyering as part of various human rights movements in India, particularly from the 1980s onwards, which seek to mobilize legal redress and representation in cases of human rights violations within a frequently hostile legal system” (p.3).