mining

Your iPhone may contain gold linked to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.  A new report from Amazon Watch and the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples (APIB) published Monday reveals that the gold used by major tech and car companies including Apple, Tesla, Samsung, Microsoft, Intel, Sony, Volkswagen, Ford and General Motors could have been […]

While more than 70 percent of deforestation worldwide is linked to agriculture, this isn’t the only threat faced by the world’s tropical forests. Another threat is industrial mining, and this could grow in significance as demand for rare-earth minerals rises due to the clean energy transition.  That’s why a team of researchers published the first-ever […]

A UN agency has granted permission for a Canadian-based company to test out deep-sea mining.  The Metals Company (TMC) announced on September 7 that the International Seabed Authority (ISA) had given its subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources Inc (NORI) the go-ahead to gather 3,600 tonnes of polymetallic nodules from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, beginning […]

Human activity has degraded as much as 40 percent of the world’s land, impacting half of the people on Earth and putting about half of global gross domestic product at risk. That’s the stark finding of the Global Land Outlook 2, a new report from the UN’s Council to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). With more than […]

The Honduras government is banning new permits for open-pit mining projects due to their negative environmental impact, including pollution and deforestation. However, it is unclear when the ban officially takes effect. “The approval of extractive exploitation permits is canceled for being harmful, threatening natural resources, public health and limiting access to water as a human […]

By Julia Conley A vote overwhelmingly in favor of placing a moratorium on deep-sea mineral mining at a global biodiversity summit this week has put urgent pressure on the International Seabed Authority to strictly regulate the practice. The vast majority of governments, NGOs, and civil society groups voted in favor of the moratorium at the […]

By Jessica Corbett Conservationists, local tribes, and commercial fishers celebrated on Thursday the Biden administration’s move to permanently protect Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed from the proposed Pebble Mine and similarly destructive projects. “Placing a massive mine at the headwaters of the world’s greatest, most productive wild sockeye salmon fishery has been a terrible idea from […]

Do we really need to put ocean ecosystems at risk in order to transition to a renewable-energy economy? Proponents of deep-sea mining claim that the as-yet-untested practice is the best means of supplying minerals like cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, vanadium and indium used in electric vehicles, storage batteries and other green technologies. But a new […]