Environment

Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin) operates a 58,000-hectare palm oil plantation around the town of Mbonjo in west Cameroon that it acquired from the government of Cameroon in the year 2000. After two years of negotiations, villagers were given back three hectares of sacred land that contain ancestral graves as well as where they grow traditional medicinal plants. Read More

“The company wants to weaken us, undermine our strength and impoverish our fight, it wants to kill us slowly, leave us starving like it does with the Xingu River and the fish that inhabit the waters of the rivers.”    - November 2022 letter from the council of the traditional peoples of the middle and lower Xingu River. Read More

Environmental groups Forest Ethics (now named Stand.Earth) and Greenpeace were sued by logging company Resolute Forestry Products for criticizing the impact of the company’s boreal forest logging on dwindling woodland caribou herds. A California judge tossed out the C$100 million lawsuit after a seven-year court battle. Read More

Fossil fuel giant British Petroleum (BP) was given the green light by Mauritania and Senegal for the proposed Greater Tortue Ahmeyim (GTA) offshore gas drilling project in the North Atlantic Ocean. Scientists who reviewed the company’s impact assessment of the project complained that it was inaccurate. After four years of lobbying, the company finally agreed to redo the assessment. Read More

Palm oil and timber giant Korindo sued Mighty Earth and Rettet den Regenwald, environmental groups based in Washington DC and Hamburg, Germany, respectively, for publicly criticizing the companies’ deforestation of West Papua, Indonesia. When the court indicated that it would rule in favor of the NGOs this past February, Korindo agreed to drop the lawsuit. Read More

Traditional Māori owners are fighting to force Norske Skog to clean up the toxic mess left behind by the six decade old Tasman paper and pulp mill on the Rotorua lake on the North Island of New Zealand that closed for good in 2021. Read More

‘Rabbit Farm Resistance’ and ‘Shut Down T&S Rabbits’ successfully campaigned to shut down T&S Rabbit Nurseries farms in Rutland and East Bridgford in the UK in August 2022, by publicizing the living conditions for the rabbits, as well as how the company used a loophole to get around a 22-year old ban on breeding rabbits for their fur. Read More

A vast tree planting project in the Batéké plateau of the Republic of the Congo, near the border with Gabon, funded by fossil fuel company TotalEnergies to offset company greenhouse gas emissions, has displaced local communities from using their traditional lands. Read More

In the 1920s the city of Los Angeles produced a quarter of the world’s oil supply. A century later, the city council voted 12-0 to ban new oil and gas extraction and shut down existing operations, dealing a major defeat to companies like Freeport McMoRan which still operate dozens of wells inside the city. Read More

Protests against Adani's plans to build a deep water port in the Indian state of Kerala reached a climax after a four month blockade by local fisherfolk who are concerned that the project will cause coastal erosion and destroy their livelihoods. Read More