Dear friends,

With the COP26 talks coming up, we have created educational materials for teachers and held an educational event for young people. Follow-up films to this event are on our website. We are working within the COP26 Coalition on a number of events during the talks and will be hosting Indonesian activist Siti Maimunah, who spoke during our preparatory educational event. Another LMN mailing very soon will contain information on the events we are helping organise or are supporting.

We attended the 14 October AGM of the world’s largest mining company, BHP. It held a sparsely-attended in-person meeting in Westminster this year, and used the fact to avoid answering the many questions submitted in writing in advance. Like so many mining companies, BHP is trying to greenwash its decades of profiting from mining coal by increasing mining of minerals for the low-carbon transition. Expansion of mining for this transition threatens further massive damage to ecosystems, violation of indigenous land rights, loss of livelihoods and disruption to community life. We have held two online events recently, one in September and the other the day before the BHP AGM, in which representatives of communities in Latin America and the USA affected by the company’s activities spoke about their experiences. Please participate in our email campaign demanding the company clean up its act.

The report by the Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into Rio Tinto’s destruction of the Juukan Gorge Aboriginal site notes that BHP, along with Rio Tinto and other mining companies, have benefited from laws which allow them to violate Aboriginal land rights, and calls for changes to the law to prevent this happening. The report has been welcomed by Aboriginal leaders and there is an online campaign calling for legislation to protect cultural heritage. Meanwhile, Rio Tinto is assuring communities in Serbia that they have nothing to fear from its Jadar lithium project and saying that the ‘green’ transition will require more than sixty lithium mines of a similar size. If I were responsible for granting or withholding permission for it to mine in Serbia, I would be worried that the company seems to find it so difficult being fully open about its operations in Madagascar or Mongolia. Many congratulations to our friend Theonila Matbob in Bougainville, who has just won an award for her work to hold Rio Tinto to account for its legacy at the Panguna copper mine.

The Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE) and Publish What You Pay have produced a report sharply critical of Anglo American’s iron ore operations at Minas Rio in Brazil. We have been working in support of communities affected by those operations for the past few years.

In addition to positioning itself as the saviour of the world from the climate catastrophe that it has helped prepare, the mining industry keeps telling us that it creates jobs. But it is working hard to get rid of as many of those as it can, in the name of health and safety. Automation and the use of artificial intelligence can reduce the need for human workers. Indeed, they conjure up a nightmare vision of the future, where a wholly automated mining industry run by artificial intelligence mines more and more minerals to reproduce the ruling ultra-intelligent artificial entities which will not need clean air or clean water or a lower-than-two-degree global temperature rise, and can bid a cold farewell to all the inconvenient carbon-based life-forms that get in the way of the rise of the machine.

Back in the present, the forces of the past continue their work too, with coal enjoying a post-COVID renaissance. A new report from Coal Action Network shows why we must move away from using coal in steel production and not only in electricity production. Coal mining company Adani is in conflict with indigenous communities in Australia and India. It is insured through Lloyd’s of London and is planning to sponsor the London Science Museum’s Energy Revolution Gallery in 2023. If you are able, please attend the protest in London this Friday, 29 October, at 9am, and send Lloyd’s a message in advance.

Uranium is also enjoying something of a renaissance. Some people think it can help us avoid climate catastrophe. It can’t.

In fact, what we need is neither coal, nor uranium, nor ‘green’ extractivism, but a justly distributed reduction in consumption, as War on Want’s Material Transition report made clear, along with the earlier LMN-War on Want report, A Just(ice) Transition is a Post-Extractivist Transition. Both are available on the Reports page of our website. Key to such a change is the dismantling of corporate power, as Corporate Watch’s new Wreckers of the Earth report points out.

So, we have a lot to do!

All the best,

Richard Solly, Co-ordinator, London Mining Network.

In this mailout

Take action

BHP: Stop the Greenwash

Lloyd’s of London – Climate Justice Memorial

Your message for Lloyd’s of London

Demand a just energy transition for all!

A Cultural Heritage Act the works for Traditional Owners!

Events

Join the Climate Justice Movement at COP26

People’s Summit For Climate Justice, 7-10 November

Making Participatory Democracy a Reality: Building a Movement – 22 November

Reports, recordings and resources

New Education Material: COP26 Lesson Materials

Making Connections: Young People and Communities on the Frontlines of Climate Justice

‘Wreckers of the Earth’: 300 London-based companies destroying the planet

Coal in Steel: problems and solutions

Polluted Pensions? Clearing the air around UK pensions and fossil fuels

Polluters and Plunderers – The Roots of Africa’s Crises

Right to Say No

I believe that we will win – Imaginings: a world without extractivism

News

1) The BHP AGM and related news and events

2) Rio Tinto in the news

3) Brazil: Anglo American iron ore mine would be causing water shortages, health problems and disaster anxiety in low-income Afro-descendant communities, says report

4) Glencore opens talks with Chad over debt restructuring

5) Coal, climate change and communities (in Australia, Colombia and India)

6) Uranium: why nuclear power is no fix for climate change

7) European Green Deal: Report shows fundamental flaws on financing

8) ‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe

9) UK and EU must not abet the theft of indigenous territory in Brazil

10) Railway connecting mine to a new port in Brazil may impact local communities

11) US plan would block Minnesota copper-nickel mine

12) The struggle against mining in Amadibaland

13) They killed Stan Swamy

14) What automation, AI, AR, robotics mean for the future of work in mining

15) Analysis of the Third Draft of the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights

Take action

BHP: Stop the Greenwash

With the COP26 Climate Talks around the corner, and climate crises already affecting millions of people, it’s time for companies like BHP to stop hiding behind empty promises and greenwash and to take responsibility for the damage they do. Send an email to BHP.

Lloyd’s of London – Climate Justice Memorial

Come and join our London climate memorial on #DefundClimateChaos Global day of action. As people globally face the consequences of the climate crisis, we will come together to demand care and repair at Lloyd’s of London insurance companies. Join us to bring to life the memories of every person harmed by the injustices of the climate crisis.

Your message for Lloyd’s of London

As part of Coal Action Network’s climate justice memorial at Lloyd’s of London on the 29th October, we will create a climate justice testimony – delivering messages from people across the world.

Demand a just energy transition for all!

The UK government claims to be a climate leader with plans to mobilise huge investments in ‘clean energy.’ However, their dirty secret is that they are still backing new fossil fuel projects and their vision for the transition to renewables is rooted in exploitation, extraction and injustice. Email UK COP26 president Alok Sharma demanding a just energy transition.

A Cultural Heritage Act the works for Traditional Owners!

Sign the petition to legislate protection of cultural heritage that works for Aboriginal people in Australia.

Events

Join the Climate Justice Movement at COP26

This November, world leaders will meet in Glasgow at the global climate talks to discuss our future. We’re getting organised to bring climate justice to COP26. Find out more here.

People’s Summit For Climate Justice, 7-10 November

While world leaders meet to discuss our future at COP26, we’ll be building power for system change together. Bringing together the climate justice movement to discuss, learn and strategise for system change. Join in online from anywhere in the world, or in-person in Glasgow. Find out more here.

Making Participatory Democracy a Reality: Building a Movement

22 November Online seminar organised by People’s Land Policy

Speakers: Thiago Ávila, one of the founders of the Movimento do Bem Vivir and London Mining Network’s education coordinator Kerima Mohideen. Sign up here to attend.

Reports, recordings and resources

New Education Material: COP26 Lesson Materials

On this PowerPoint presentation, you will find resources for a 3 lesson sequence about COP 26 in Glasgow. It is publicly available to all teachers and educators working with children and young people across Key Stages 3-5, and higher or further education settings. The central activity is a Mock COP, including 10 different stakeholders who will be present at (or excluded from) the international climate summit.

Making Connections: Young People and Communities on the Frontlines of Climate Justice

This online event was organised specifically for schools and universities, youth organisations, youth climate activists and so on. We heard about the work of Jaga Rimba, an Indonesian youth organisation, from one of its members in conversation with Mai from Indonesian environmental organisation JATAM. An LMN student volunteer was also in conversation with a colleague from Dhaatri in India, an environmental organisation which works with women and children, particularly from Indigenous communities.

Wreckers of the Earth’: 300 London-based companies destroying the planet

London is home to fossil fuel giants and to many of the worst mining polluters. It is the world’s second-largest financial centre (after New York). It is the key financial marketplace for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and for trading oil, metals, minerals and other “commodities” sucked out of the earth. Lax regulation and tight security make London a money-laundering haven for the world’s tyrants, oligarchs, and billionaires. The legacy of the British empire still lives in the infrastructure and services London offers: insurance markets, law firms, arms dealers, PR agencies, down to prestige shopping and investment property.

Coal in Steel: problems and solutions

New report from Coal Action Network

Polluted Pensions? Clearing the air around UK pensions and fossil fuels

Pensions should safeguard our future – instead they’re gambling it away on fossil fuels. To stop further climate devastation UK pensions can divest from fossil fuels, following funds like Islington and New York. Read the report here.

Polluters and Plunderers – The Roots of Africa’s Crises

Short video from WoMin. “Through beautiful and moving animation, we tell a part of the story that rural, peasant and working-class communities across the African continent have confronted from the start of colonisation to the present day global neo-liberal capitalism. This is a story of lives and livelihoods disrupted and destroyed, of environmental catastrophe caused by unfettered extractives industries, of the violence perpetrated upon Brown and Black people whose lives are consistently devalued, and of the exploitation of women’s labour of care and violence perpetrated on their bodies. But, it is also a story of resistance led by women and communities as they rise to defend people and nature, and put forward a different vision of Africa and their ideas for a different life for its peoples freed from plunderers and polluters.”

Right to Say No

This film shows some of the ways in which rural, peasant and working-class women and communities across Africa resist the theft of Africa’s wealth – land, forests, water bodies and species – and assert their Right to Say NO.

I believe that we will win – Imaginings: a world without extractivism

Online exhibition from Mining Injustice Solidarity Network

News

1) The BHP AGM and related news and events

BHP AGM 2021 – the future is clear: we’re doomed

Full report on BHP’s in-person London AGM on 14 October

Questioning BHP – 2021 AGM

The written questions which we sent in in advance, and which were not addressed at the AGM.

BHP: a better, clearer future?

The day before BHP plc’s London AGM, London Mining Network presented a briefing on BHP’s activities and their impacts on communities and climate across the globe.

The BHP Disaster in Latin America: Experiences of Resistance and Solidarity

As part of the Global Extraction Film Festival 2021, we presented a discussion on the impact BHP have had on communities in Latin America. Bringing together Indigenous community members and international organisers, this event focused on themes of resistance and solidarity.

BHP to expand into “tougher jurisdictions” in search of battery metals

BHP chief executive Mike Henry said the company is ready for a strategic shift out of its geographical, advanced-economies comfort zone into “tougher jurisdictions”, as part of its plans to increase exposure to commodities such as copper and nickel, needed to power the energy transition.

2) Rio Tinto in the news

Serbia: Rio Tinto driving ecological destruction in the Jadar Valley

In the Jadar river valley of western Serbia, communities are taking on metals and mining giant Rio Tinto to stop the construction of a lithium mine that threatens land and livelihoods across the region. Rio Tinto is a British-Australian corporation with joint headquarters in London, UK, and Melbourne, Australia. This article introduces the Jadar Project, the purposes and impacts of lithium mining, and Rio Tinto’s long legacy of destruction around the world.

Rio Tinto says 60 Jadar mines wouldn’t fill looming lithium gap

The world’s second-largest miner, which greenlighted in July the $2.4 billion Jadar lithium project in Serbia, believes the supply gap needs to be addressed “within the next ten years.”

Juukan Gorge inquiry says new laws needed to stop destruction of cultural heritage sites

A parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters has recommended new laws to protect thousands of sacred sites across Australia.

Juukan Gorge recommendations will help protect First Nations’ culture

First Nations Peoples, and our culture and heritage, have been under siege since the colonisation project in Australia began. The destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters by Rio Tinto in May 2020 laid bare the complex and insidious way our right to protect our heritage is systemically undermined by the laws that purport to protect it.

Turquoise Hill stock crushed after Oyu Tolgoi funding gap swells by $1.2 billion

The miner’s disclosure could stoke tensions with the Mongolian government, which has called for more transparency from Rio Tinto and its development vehicle on the problems at Oyu Tolgoi. It comes as financial regulators in the UK and US examine Rio’s disclosures about issues previously announced.

Publish What You Pay (Madagascar/UK) and Andrew Lees Trust rejoinder to Rio Tinto’s response to questions

Rio Tinto/QMM’s response to the issues raised has been profoundly unsatisfactory. The significant delays we have experienced waiting for RT/QMM to answer dozens of technical questions and provide documents as requested (since 2018), also to respond in a rigorous way to our community and hydrology studies (2019, 2020, 2021), is inconsistent with its assertions of ensuring transparency and information sharing. Local civil society in Madagascar is being disabled by confusing and protracted exchanges with QMM on data anomalies, and civil society organisations’ time and resources are being wasted by the poor engagement process, which has no structure and fails to deliver clear and meaningful responses to local concerns, and to national/international demands for tangible action.

Panguna campaigner Theonila Matbob wins award over Rio Tinto challenge

Bougainville community leader and MP Theonila Roka Matbob has received the Gwynne Skinner Human Rights Award in recognition of her outstanding work to hold mining giant Rio Tinto to account for the legacy of environmental devastation caused by its former Panguna mine.

Rio Tinto to spend $7.5bn by 2030 to meet Scope 1 and 2 emissions targets

As governments set more ambitious carbon emissions targets and accelerate actions on climate change, Rio Tinto unveiled its long term strategy to decarbonize and strengthen performance.

3) Brazil: Anglo American iron ore mine would be causing water shortages, health problems and disaster anxiety in low-income Afro-descendant communities, says report

The Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE) and the organisation Publish What You Pay launched the report “In Search of Transparency: Ending Opacity in Brazil’s Extractive Sector – An action-research case study of the Minas-Rio iron ore mine”. The document provides an overview of environmental impacts and human rights violations that are allegedly occurring due to the activities of the Minas-Rio iron ore mine, owned by Anglo American, in Minas Gerais, such as water shortages and physical and mental health problems identified in low-income Afro-descendant communities. These communities also demonstrate a constant fear that a tragedy will occur, since there is a dangerous failure in the mine’s tailing dam.

4) Glencore opens talks with Chad over debt restructuring

Chad has said Glencore represents more than 98% of its commercial debt, most of it oil-for-cash deals contracted in 2013 and 2014 when the country could not tap the international debt market or bilateral partners.

5) Coal, climate change and communities (in Australia, Colombia and India)

COP aims to end coal, but the world is still addicted

Never in human history has a ton of coal cost more. Governments and utilities across the globe are willing to pay record sums to literally keep the lights on. That’s the bruising reality that global leaders must face at the high-stakes climate talks in Glasgow this month as hopes fade for a deal to end the world’s reliance on the dirtiest fuel.

Forced displacement of the communities of La Guajira: the consequences of coal mining

In June 2021, the multinational companies BHP and Anglo American announced the sale of their shares to Glencore, leaving the latter as sole owner of the mine in Colombia. The purchase was made for a total of 588 million dollars, which the London-listed Swiss company says it hopes to recuperate in the next two years. These companies make sales amid complete impunity for the grave violations, dispossessions and damage caused by the coal exploitation they have been benefiting from for decades – coal ripped from the entrails of the territory that was Tabaco.

Anglo American to resume mining at Grosvenor by year-end

Anglo American is ramping up work to resume longwall mining at its Grosvenor coal mine in Queensland, Australia, almost 18 months after a methane explosion seriously injured five workers.

Traditional owner holds fears for heritage site at Adani coal mine

A traditional owner has launched an urgent bid to stop Adani from disturbing a significant cultural heritage site containing the highest concentration of artefacts uncovered at Queensland’s Carmichael mine to date.

Chhattisgarh’s Adivasis Are On 300-Km March To Save The Hasdeo Forests, Latest In A Decade-Long Protest Against Coal Mining

In northern Chhattisgarh lies a vast forest. For a decade, its Adivasi communities have battled to preserve the Hasdeo Arand, even though successive governments, regardless of party, have illegally bypassed local village councils to award coal-mining contracts to state companies, all of whom have sub-contracted rights to India’s powerful Adani conglomerate. An environmental activist working with the people explains why Adivasis are marching 300 km to the state capital Raipur.

Why the people of India’s Hasdeo forests are marching 300 km against Adani coal mines

When the coal mine was dug, the jungle and the fields were destroyed forever. The routine of taking cattle for grazing stopped, and the hills and waterfalls sunk into a hole in the ground.’

Adani: the coal giant courting the UK

London’s Science Museum has announced a brand new fossil fuel sponsor: Adani is going to be sponsoring its ‘Energy Revolution’ Gallery from 2023. But who is Adani and why is it suddenly interested in sponsoring a UK museum?

6) Uranium: why nuclear power is no fix for climate change

Nuclear Power and Climate Change: Can Small Modular Reactors Deliver?

80 minute recording of panel discussion held Oct. 6, 2021 on nuclear energy and small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), with a focus on their status in Canada, and the climate vulnerability of nuclear plants.

Four takeaways from the 2021 World Nuclear Industry Status Report

Although there are 23 fewer nuclear reactors in the world today than at the 2002 peak of 438, the past year saw a small uptick in the number of reactors operating worldwide and a corresponding increase in the global fleet’s net operating capacity.

Low-carbon” misses the point

Arguments favouring nuclear power as a climate “solution” are fundamentally misframed.

Primer on climate security

The dangers of militarising the climate crisis

Things fall apart

The UK nuclear military complex is on the front-line of climate breakdown – and not in a good way.

7) European Green Deal: Report shows fundamental flaws on financing

The European Green Deal (EGD) has been called by the Commission’s President Von der Leyen the “man on the moon moment” for the European Union. Yet, a new report by Counter Balance shows fundamental flaws on the financing pillar of the EGD that make it unlikely to properly contribute to addressing the key – and intertwined – challenges of our times, from the need for a fair and just recovery, to tackling the health, social, climate and environmental emergencies.

8) ‘Green growth’ doesn’t exist – less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe

It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic activity without destroying the environment

9) UK and EU must not abet the theft of indigenous territory in Brazil

Brazil’s indigenous people are anxiously awaiting a supreme court judgement on our land rights. Proposed new laws in the EU and UK will profoundly affect us too

10) Railway connecting mine to a new port in Brazil may impact local communities

Construction of the FIOL railway line linking a deep-water port in Bahia state to the BR-153 highway in Tocantins state is fully underway following a successful bid by the region’s largest iron ore miner.

11) US plan would block Minnesota copper-nickel mine

The U.S. Forest Service has proposed a 20-year ban on mining in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters region, a step that would block Antofagasta Plc’s Twin Metals copper and nickel mine project.

12) The struggle against mining in Amadibaland

We have worked for years in support of Amadiba communities affected by mining proposals on South Africa’s Wild Coast. There was a UK connection through investment in MRC. Conflict continues over the project.

Sparks fly at meeting with rural community over proposed N2 Wild Coast toll road

Plans to better link KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape via a toll road along the N2 that runs through the Wild Coast continue to sow division among the community of a rural Amadiba village. The provincial government says it is consulting, but others believe it is not making an effort to hear all of those affected.

Sanral consultants chased again during Xolobeni local election indaba

On Tuesday 19 October when Sanral knew that the whole coast had a community indaba in Xolobeni, other Sanral consultants arrived to Sigidi. People gathered and the work stopped.

13) They killed Stan Swamy

An 84-year old Jesuit priest, dedicated his life to working with indigenous people in India accused of ‘terrorist’ activities and imprisoned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in the fabricated Bhima Koregaon case. The elderly activist with Parkinson’s disease was denied a sipper cup for a month and repeatedly refused bail. Stan contracted Covid-19 in prison and passed away on 5 July 2021. This is a very short video in honour of Stan and other imprisoned social justice activists in India.

14) What automation, AI, AR, robotics mean for the future of work in mining

Technological advancements like automation, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and robotics taking place in parallel with the growing attention to environmental, social and governance issues are the factors that will likely have the biggest impact on mine workers and the mining industry in the coming years.

15) Analysis of the Third Draft of the UN Treaty on Business and Human Rights

A study by Prof. Dr. Markus Krajewski, Professor of Public and International Law at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) published by CIDSE.