Worldcrunch
An accident in an illegal mine near Kolwezi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has left at least 70 people dead. It is yet another tragedy in a region where hundreds of thousands of people work with no rules or safety measures, extracting the minerals used in our digital devices. It’s the latest chapter of a recurring story of exploitation.
Greenland’s soil is packed with valuable resources, yet many of its people struggle to make ends meet. The world’s highest suicide rates, school dropouts and alcohol abuse are also part of Greenland’s reality. These issues are central to the March 11 general election.
Kinshasa is suing Apple in France and Belgium for “complicity” in the use of rare minerals pillaged by armed groups to build their products. Apple denies the accusations and guarantees traceability, but the case highlights the fragile balance of power in Silicon Valley’s global supply chains.
Updated October 21, 2024 at 11:30 a.m. On this day in 1966, 116 children and 28 adults died as a coal waste heap slid and engulfed a school in Aberfan, South Wales. What was the Aberfan Disaster? The Aberfan disaster occurred when a large colliery spoil tip (coal waste heap) collapsed and slid down a […]
As the host of the next UN climate summit, Azerbaijan is positioning itself as a peacemaker, calling for the end of conflicts that “worsen climate change.” But this stands in stark contrast to the country’s commitment to increase gas and oil production and its record of military aggression against Armenia.
Peru’s President Dina Boluarte is traveling to China to fine tune free trade with this vital, if overbearing, business partner. It will also help her flee the deep and wide popularity among Peruvians.
Located between Marrakech and Casablanca, the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University is trying to replicate the recipes that have made the United States’ Silicon Valley successful, fusing research and business — with special attention given to green energies and food sovereignty.
With men leaving for the front, Ukrainian women have stepped in to fill the void, notably in the coal industry. A reportage from the mines of the Dnipropetrovsk region to see how women are faring in this male-dominated field.
Amid a mounting sense of urgency about the threat of climate change, our smartphones’ human and environmental consequences are back in the spotlight — and so are the solutions to minimize their impact.
On this day in 2010, the Copiapó mining accident in Chile comes to a happy end as all 33 miners arrive at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground. What was the 2010 Copiapó mining accident? The 2010 Copiapó mining accident, also known as the “Chilean mining accident,” was a mining disaster that […]
The government is launching a “major inventory of French mining resources”, to prepare for the relaunch of mining in France of the minerals needed for the ecological transition. A concern for sovereignty in the face of Chinese domination of the sector.
The search for clean energy is essential in an age of alarming climate change. Lithium extraction represents a great opportunity, but the maltreatment of communities affected by this extraction must be considered if we want to interrupt the vicious cycle of wealthy countries exploiting resource-rich countries.
There is a long history of mining in Egypt that goes back thousands of years, but has largely been dormant over the past century. But it’s picking up now, with troubling ramifications.
Canada’s subsoil is among the world’s 10 richest in graphite, lithium and cobalt. Only China can say the same. A report from Quebec, home to North America’s biggest graphite mine project.
Beijing recently placed an export ban to the U.S. of two key metals. The move is a retaliation for U.S. bans of Chinese tech. The question remains of whether the superpowers can compromise before a total tech war breaks out.
In Gdansk, year-long waits for medical care, empty playgrounds and windows dirtied by smog have caused this Polish coastal city’s residents to deem it “Chernobyl”. But Europe’s most coal-dependent country does not plan to stop importing it anytime soon.
Russia owns 60% of Arctic coastline and half of the region’s population. In recent history, NATO has not been overly concerned with the defense of the Arctic region because the U.S. military has been focused on the Middle East. This is all changing since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While Russia is suffering bitter setbacks in the Ukraine war, it is successfully expanding its influence in Africa. With Burkina Faso, Moscow has succeeded in detaching another country from the French sphere of influence. The Kremlin was not only motivated by security policy, but also by digging into the resources available.
As the world moves to renewable energy, demand for lithium has surged. But the race to extract the precious mineral comes with hidden costs for local communities and the environment. So just how green is the energy transition after all?
Green technologies are crucial to reducing carbon emissions, but they require ramping up the need for mining of minerals. And since mineral extraction can cause grave natural destruction, how can we ensure renewables are truly good for the environment?
Illegal mining and deforestation are destroying parts of the Amazon and devastating indigenous people’s lives. As laws and governments fail to protect the environment and vulnerable communities, locals have turned to the imagination of the future generation.
In remote — sometimes unmapped — regions of China, thousands of computers are ‘mining’ bitcoin, the queen of virtual currencies. The country may boast all the right conditions to dominate the cryptocurrency market today, but will its mining boom last?
Mining firms, coca farmers and criminal gangs have brought social degeneration, pollution and extreme violence to one district in western Colombia.
After voting to ban metals mining, residents in the mountainous area west of Bogota are staking their future on farming and tourism.
The pay is good. And much of the work is automated. But life at the isolated Gahcho Kué diamond mine, in northern Canada, isn’t for the faint of heart.
MARINDUQUE — Elisa Hernandez dips her yellow blouse into the Boac River’s rushing water and then slaps it up against the shoreline’s gray stones. The 73-year-old used to earn a living washing her whole community’s laundry this way. “We felt at home in this river … It was so clean, we played in it and we used to catch a lot of fish here too,” she says. But that all changed in March 1996, when a drainage pipe inside a copper mine burst about 20 kilometers upstream. Millions of tons of toxic mine waste, including lead and arsenic, flooded into […]
Small-scale miners on the island of Lombok and elsewhere in Indonesia are playing a dangerous game by using mercury, a toxic heavy metal, to extract gold.
Madagascar supplies 40% of the world sapphires. Pink, yellow, blue or purple, these stones are dug up and sold illegally, with those doing the hardest job earning the least and taking the most risk.
KRUGERSDORP — A group of men are running away on a wasteland adjoining the residential district of Mindalore, in Krugersdorp (25 miles west of Johannesburg). They probably came out of the “Old Jerusalem” mine, opened in 1886, two years after the first nugget was discovered in Johannesburg, the city that gave the world one third […]
CERRO DE PASCO — More than 2,000 children in Peru’s Pasco region have blood lead levels far higher than what the World Health Organization says is a safe range for children, and at least 70 of them are suffering from resulting physical illnesses and disabilities, Lima-based daily El Comercio reports. The culprit is mining, and […]
Ordinary citizens, the media and politicians make so much noise about ideology and petty politics, but quietly carry on in the face of massive mining pollution.
-OpEd- BUENOS AIRES — We live in a society in which our pursuit of exponential economic growth is doing systematic and irreversible harm to the environment, challenging territories and threatening the very cycle of life. Increasing social awareness of such risks explains why debates and decisions today that used to be limited to the technical, […]
Peru, in particular, has had a key role since 1992, when it became the site of China’s first foreign investment. China also likes the fact that Lima puts so few ‘controls’ on commerce.
A Russian settlement in remote Norway has impressive roads, schools and monuments. But not a soul lives in this ice-preserved community, after its residents mysteriously left one day in 1998.
PALAWAN — For 25 years, Filipino lawyer Gerthie Mayo-Anda has tirelessly campaigned for better legal protection of the environment. Often called a forest hero, in the 1990s she established the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) to halt environmental destruction through court. “I thought it was important to establish a public interest environmental law group where my knowledge and skills as a lawyer can be utilized to help the poor and marginalized communities,” she says. Her group has filed dozens of cases against illegal logging, fishing and mining. “For now, the most difficult field is mining and coal because the parties […]
Siberia provided 76% of Russian exports. And taxes on its mined resources account for over half the federal budget. As tension grows at the Ukraine border, some in Siberia want more control.
THE AUSTRALIAN (Australia) Worldcrunch DARWIN – A mining company convicted in a landmark ruling of desecrating an Aboriginal sacred site has apologised after being fined $150,000 for the damage. In the first successful prosecution by a government authority of a mining company for desecration under Australian law, OM Manganese was found to have caused a […]
BUTIHINDA – Here in the northeastern mining region of Burundi, some green is starting to grow again. Having caused rampant deforestation and drought, mining companies are from now on required to plant trees in the areas they exploit. Along the dusty road leading to Kamaramagambo, we can see several rocky slopes that for the first […]
AP, XINHUA (China) Worldcrunch ZHENXIONG – Chinese authorities have offered a rare apology after cremating the remains of 46 victims of last Friday’s deadly landslide, before even consulting with their families. The AP reports that Hu Jianpu, deputy dead of Zhenxiong county in China’s Yunnan province, told state broadcaster CCTV “We did that because we […]
Chinese firms setting up shop on the African continent must do their homework on more than just strictly business conditions.