Indigenous Dayak communities in East Kalimantan, Indonesia are displaced by the mining company Kelian Equatorial Mining (PT KEM) which had gained concessions for gold mining there. The company is jointly owned and operated by Rio Tinto with 90% ownership and the...
Rio Tinto acquires a 30% interest in the Minera Escondida copper mine, located in Chile’s Atacama Desert where it has severely depleted local water resources. Escondida is the world’s largest copper-producing mine and is managed by BHP Billiton. In 2020, an...
Uranium production starts at Rio Tinto’s Rössing mine in Namibia. Throughout the 1970s, Rio Tinto produces a quarter of global uranium. Having signed two contracts with the UK Atomic Energy Authority in 1968 for 7,500 tonnes of processed uranium, the company leads a...
Operations officially start at the Ertzberg copper and gold mine in West Papua. Waste from the mine is dumped directly into the Ajkwa River, causing damage all the way down to the sea and along the coast. This continues into the present with around 200,000 tonnes of...
Operations start at the Panguna copper-gold mine in Bougainville, an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The mine is operated by Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL), a subsidiary of Conzinc Riotinto Australia, one of the precursors of what is now Rio Tinto. The...
