Energy, Mining & Utilities

Tendele Coal opened the Somkhele coal mine in 2007 in the uMkhanyakude district of the South African province of Kwa-Zulu Natal. The mine activities have contributed to water scarcity, water contamination, destruction of the local landscape and noise pollution. In addition the company has failed to properly relocate local people despite promises to do so. Read More

Ever since London-based Brazil Iron acquired mining rights in Chapada Diamantina, Piatã, Bahia, in 2011, two Quilombola communities home to 150 families, have been dealing with explosions, water contamination and damage to their crops. Quilombolas are descendents of escaped enslaved Afro-Brazilians that live in Quilombo settlements. Now the company wants to expand operations from 600,000 tons of ore per year to 10 million tons a year. Read More

Tribal women from Andhra Pradesh, India, are standing up against a mining company, Sri Lakshmi Narasimha Granites, aiming to destroy their only livelihood: cashew trees which they have been cultivating for years. Read More

Over 1,000 scientists from 25 different countries staged protests during the week of April 4-9 following the release of the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). The protesters, who call themselves the Scientist Rebellion, sought to "highlight the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis." Read More

Pascoe Sabido, a campaigner with Corporate Europe Observatory,* speaks by video with CorpWatch about the annual meeting of the countries that have ratified the United Nations Climate Change Convention that is currently taking place in Glasgow, Scotland. Read More

Roberto David Castillo, former CEO of Desarrollos Energéticos Sociedad Anónima (DESA) in the Honduras, has been convicted of the murder of Berta Cáceres, an activist who was fighting the Agua Zarca dam on the territory of the indigenous Lenca people, five years after she was killed in March 2016. Read More

A storm is brewing over the coal mines and power plants operated by Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE) in Poland – notably over the Turów complex in Lower Silesia, close to the border of the Czech republic and Germany, as well as over the Bełchatów complex in the Łódź region. Read More

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suspended a partnership with GeoPark, a Chilean oil drilling company, barely a week after signing the agreement, handing an important victory to the Siona indigenous community who oppose the company's prospecting for oil on their lands along the Putumayo river in southern Colombia. Read More

South African prosecutors seized luxury property and vehicles worth some 1.4 billion South African rand ($96.8 million) in early May from contractors and former officials at Eskom, South Africa's state-owned power utility, as they ramped up criminal proceedings over alleged corruption in construction orders for the Kusile Power Station. Read More

Fortescue Metals Group, an iron ore mining company based in Perth, Western Australia, withheld $1.9 million in royalty payments from the Wintawari Guruma aboriginal peoples after the indigenous community asked the company to provide details of extraction plans on their traditional lands that contain many sacred cultural sites. Read More