Mining affected communities speak out against the UK Government’s new Critical Minerals Strategy

We wish to express our views on the UK’s critical materials strategy policy, which promotes the intensive extraction of minerals such as copper, lithium, rare earths, etc., in countries in the global South. We strongly reject this strategy as it perpetuates environmental and social damage and subordinates the well-being of our communities to corporate and state interests in the global North.

We believe that the recent announcement and development of the British strategy for critical materials, presented as part of the technological and energy transition, deepens a model of unlimited growth that is unsustainable and devastating for territories such as Chile. With regards to mining company Anglo American, this specifically affects areas such as Lo Barnechea, Colina, Lampa, Tiltil, Los Andes, Catemu, Valparaíso, Limache, Olmué, El Melón, Puchuncavi, Putaendo and the Aconcagua basin (areas of influence).                                      

Far from prioritising environmental justice and local sovereignty, this policy enables companies such as Anglo American (with British capital) to extract water, pollute, fragment the planet’s unique ecosystems, violate rights and degrade the health of those of us who live in the global South.

Companies such as Anglo American pose a multifaceted threat to ecosystems and local communities, especially in Lo Barnechea, the Metropolitan Region, Valparaíso and the Aconcagua basin.

Between 2023 and 2025, Anglo American has received at least five fines for unauthorised water extraction from the Riecillos estuary (Aconcagua), even during periods of water scarcity decreed by the General Water Directorate (DGA in Spanish) and with rivers depleted. This has impacted human consumption and sanitation in thousands of communities downstream as well as local agriculture, and caused irreparable ecological losses. These violations come in addition to previous sanctions for failing to register water withdrawals, failing to transmit data, and operating without legal rights to underground wells. Intervening in flows is aggravating the water and climate crisis in a country that is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The DGA has even referred this case to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to investigate whether an environmental crime has been committed in relation to water.

Unauthorised works, such as intervening in watercourses and altering the ecosystem of protected areas (e.g. Cordillera El Melón), further damage local biodiversity.

In 2024 and 2025, the Superintendency of the Environment (SMA in Spanish) has brought charges against and imposed fines amounting to millions on Anglo American for severe violations in the Los Bronces and El Soldado projects, including serious deficiencies in contaminated water management, uncontrolled acid drainage and failure to protect vulnerable wildlife.

The mine owner faces a penalty of more than $17 billion for non-compliance at Los Bronces alone.

These violations demonstrate a recurring failure to comply with Chilean environmental regulations, with direct consequences for the quality of life, health, and safety of communities.

Reports from the National Institute of Human Rights and local communities confirm the violation of fundamental human rights through environmental pollution, threats to health from respiratory diseases (the second leading cause of death in Lo Barnechea), destruction of ecosystems, and social risks derived from excessive extractivism.

The operating model of Anglo American and other companies of its kind perpetuates inequality, giving only crumbs to communities after destroying their environment and undermining local activities, while the company reaps huge profits. It leaves us with permanent environmental liabilities such as the gigantic tailings that continue to pollute the environment and communities for decades.

Chile is highly vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures and scarce rainfall demand maximum responsibility, not permissiveness, in the use of resources.

Yet, foreign companies such as Anglo American have a network of tentacles in state agencies. They lobby, finance municipal programmes, co-opt leadership and simulate corporate social responsibility in order to appear to be sustainable companies, while their practices contradict this rhetoric.

They infiltrate communities and institutions, minimising resistance through donations or superficial actions, while advancing environmental destruction and restricting effective community participation.

The infinite growth sought by countries in the global North, including the United Kingdom, is unsustainable and is fuelling the climate crisis. The extraction of raw materials from less developed territories perpetuates poverty, pollution and social fragmentation in countries in the South, such as Chile.

The boom in critical minerals (such as copper and lithium) for the ‘green transition’ does not solve the root of the environmental problem: even renewable solutions implicate serious ecosystem issues without a responsible, technological and truly sustainable model that is geared towards reducing consumption and ensuring the well-being of all regions.

Developed countries improve their conditions, while exploited countries pay the price of social, economic and environmental conflict, depriving them of processes centred on well-being and local development, and perpetuating colonial and extractive relationships.

As communities, organisations and movements, we demand that governments and companies in the global North, and in particular the United Kingdom and companies such as Anglo American, cease aggressive extractive practices, respect environmental and human rights legislation without restriction, provide redress for the damage caused and establish truly just technological transition strategies that prioritise consumption reduction, ecosystem restoration and social sovereignty. The lives, social cohesion and dignity of the peoples of the global South, in this case Chile, cannot continue to be sacrificed for the illusion of progress in the global North. The United Kingdom cannot bet on an active policy to secure critical minerals without addressing the ethical and ecological challenge of ensuring that its political strategy on this issue does not deepen colonial extractivism and global inequality.

Rosanna Caldana and Claudio Rojas – Movimiento No Más Anglo and Corporación Camino a Farellones, Chile

Nickel mining in Indonesia involves human rights violations and environmental damage. The UK Government’s Critical Minerals Strategy threatens to fuel land dispossession, seizure of indigenous territory, and labor exploitation by increasing demand for nickel. Nickel is located in one of the last tropical forests that exists, home to endemic biodiversity, and among the richest biodiversity coastal areas in the world. Instead of expanding nickel production the world needs to reduce the need for mining and implement high environmental and human rights standards as mandatory requirements.

Pius Ginting – Coordinator of Action for Ecology and People Emancipation, Indonesia

Read more: Clean Cars, Dirty Nickel – Action for Ecology and People Emancipation

The UK Critical Minerals Strategy is geared to increase demand for minerals and, consequently, renewed mining on the African continent. It will fuel social and environmental injustices across global supply chains. Africa, by and large, has not made any substantial development in the last mineral booms; the culture of extraction has mainly benefited the industrialised countries in the North. The issue of climate catastrophe cannot be viewed narrowly as a national interest issue; it is a global problem which requires adherence to global strategies and agreements. We from Africa are also perceived by many strategies of this nature as mere suppliers of raw materials; this strategic approach needs to fundamentally shift.

Eric Mokuoa – Bench Marks Foundation, South Africa

Far from addressing global emergencies, the ongoing energy transition responds to a diagnosis made by the Global North. In particular, the European bloc has proposed its transition as a solution to three interconnected factors: its structural dependence on fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal; its gradual loss of energy sovereignty; and its high energy consumption,which fuels its carbon dioxide emissions.

From this perspective, their energy transition is presented as a technological shift towards renewable sources and electromobility, which, while promising to decarbonise their economies, implies a growing demand for “critical” minerals such as copper, lithium and nickel, along with a list of at least 32 essential raw materials to guarantee their energy, technological and military security.

This energy transition, under the umbrella of “fair”, does not imply a critical review of the prevailing models of production and consumption. On the contrary, it seeks to maintain them, but disguised under a “green technological reconfiguration”.

In Peru, according to our Muqui Agenda 2024, however, the diagnosis is radically different. It is not a question of replacing fossil fuels to sustain consumption levels, but of dismantling an economy that is structurally subordinate to the role of raw material supplier. Our historical dependence on mining, hydrocarbons and agribusiness is having increasingly severe impacts:

• More than 2.4 million hectares of Amazonian forest deforested between 2001 and 2019
• At least 180 tonnes of mercury dumped annually in Madre de Dios by illegal mining
• Around 10 million people exposed to heavy metals42 contaminated watersheds
• 6,128 mining environmental liabilities
• Systematic criminalisation of social protesth
• Hundreds of people killed in socio-environmental conflicts.

Added to this are new expressions of violence linked to illegal economies, such as the murders that occur repeatedly in La Libertad, Arequipa, Madre de Dios and other regions related to informal and illegal gold mining.

Far from representing a path to “development,” this extractive model deepens inequality, pollution, violence, and territorial dispossession. Therefore, what Peru urgently needs is not an “energy transition”, but a post-extractivist transition that challenges the model of accumulation and production based on extractivism and its different forms.

Jaime Borda – Red Muqui, Peru

Read more: El llamado de la Red Muqui para ir más allá del extractivismo y la transición energética en el Perú

The push for ramped up extractivism that the Critical Minerals Strategy represents will have disastrous consequences for the communities and ecologies in the North of Ireland. 

Here, 25% of the land has been concessioned for mineral prospecting, in stark contrast to figures that show only 7.7% of Scotland, 6.4% of Wales and 0.2% of England are covered by licences. Colonial dynamics still govern resource extraction in the North of Ireland, from the Crown Estates owning precious metals here to the structure of our economy and our extractive peace. 

Our government is extremely facilitative to the mining industry, actively inviting in companies, offering tax exemptions, and lax environmental regulations, to the extent Associate Professor at Utah Valley University Dr Steven Emerman, admitted in the Spotlight BBC documentary on the Sperrins that the Northern Ireland Environment Agency was the ‘worst’ agency he had come across in the forty countries he has worked in.

Protectors in the Sperrins have been on the frontlines of the struggle against extractivism for more than 10 years, during this time they have faced repression that is part of the “mining playbook” in the form of criminalisation, death threats, divide and conquer techniques, harassment, assaults, selective policing and surveillance. We don’t want to see more communities being sacrificed and subjected to this.  

The Gold Mining company seeking to mine the Sperrins is now relying on narratives of green transitions and including “critical minerals” in their plans. We call out these greenwashing attempts by industry and ask who are these minerals critical for? Evidence shows it’s not the green transition but often militarism driving demand.