The extraction and processing of natural resources now accounts for more than 90 percent of global biodiversity loss and water stress impacts, and approximately half of global greenhouse gas emissions, a flagship UN report concludes.

The Global Resources Outlook report, released on Tuesday at the United Nations Environmental Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, provides a global analysis of the world’s natural resource use and management.

The report depicts a story of relentless growth and increasingly severe trade-offs for human well-being and environmental health.

Resource inequity

Izabella Teixeira, co-chair of the International Resources Panel and an author of the report, said: “Over the last 50 years, material extraction and consumption has tripled. This is not surprising knowing that the global population has doubled and global GDP has grown fourfold since then.”

“What is reason for concern, however, is how the benefits of that resource use have been distributed,” Teixeira adds.

While consumption is growing in upper-middle income countries such as Brazil, India and China, high-income countries continue to outsource resource intensive production, exporting the negative external impact that come with resource extraction to middle- and low-income countries.

The world’s poorest countries, on the other hand, have rarely seen any growth in material consumption, even though they have the highest need for higher material living circumstances.

Janez Potocnik, co-chair of the International Resources Panel and an author of the report, said: “We are not saying that developing countries are not allowed to grow and increase consumption. Low income countries would benefit a lot from an increase in their resource use. This report outlines the need for a more comprehensive and careful approach, instead of rampant one-dimensional growth.

“Even a country like China, known for its incredible economic growth, is now having to come to terms with the fact that it needs to take sustainability into account if it wants to ensure its future.”

Fossil fuels

The use of coal, petroleum and natural gas increased from 6 billion tonnes a year in 1970 to 15 billion tonnes a year in 2017.

A huge increase in capacity for the generation of global fossil fuel electricity has increased access to affordable energy for many in recent years, but has come at high environmental and health costs and has locked the world in environmentally harmful technologies, the UN report states.

Based on current trends, greenhouse gas emissions are projected to further increase by 43 percent by 2060. To attain the sustainable development goals, however, greenhouse gas emissions would have to decrease by 90 percent.

Similarly, global pasture lands would have to decrease by 30 percent, intensive agricultural land would have to decrease by 9 percent and forests would need to increase by 11 percent by 2060 for the world to reach sustainability.

Potocnik explained: “The only way towards a sustainable future is by accounting for the negative impacts of extraction and consumption on the environment and our well-being.

“The environmental and health trade-offs from rapid growth and increased resource consumption are usually not accounted for in a country’s GDP. If they had [been accounted for], the last few decades of global GDP growth would have been minimal.”

This Author

Arthur Wyns is a biologist and science journalist who writes about climate change, environment, health and migration. He tweets from @ArthurWyns. 

Image: Gerry Machen, Flickr. 

If you ask someone to describe the deep sea, the response is often a depressing description of a barren landscape devoid of life; one of such crushing pressure and eternal darkness that the chance of life surviving here seems only possible in stories of science fiction.

So, it would probably surprise you to hear that there are rich, deep-sea ecosystems under threat from an emerging ocean industry… and virtually no-one knows about it.

Amber Cobley is speaking at Exploring the Deep at Edinburgh Science Festival, taking place at the National Museum of Scotland on Saturday 6 April. Tickets and more information is available here. 

Within the next decade, the deep-sea mining industry plans to send 300-tonne vehicles to harvest tens of thousands km2 of deep seafloor for minerals considered vital to the future of green technology. But these hard mineral resources are also home to fragile and diverse ecosystems, some new to science and some yet to be found. 

Mineral Resources 

Currently in its exploration phase, deep-sea mining is targeting three different types of mineral resources on the deep-ocean floor: potato-sized manganese nodules, also known as polymetallic nodules, that carpet vast areas of abyssal plains; cobalt crusts, also known as ferromanganese crusts, that form on the slopes of some undersea mountains; and seafloor massive sulfides, that form at undersea hot springs called hydrothermal vents.  

Of these, nodules and seafloor massive sulfides are likely to be exploited first.

Many believe it was John Mero’s book The Mineral Resources of the Sea that began the deep-sea gold rush in the early 1960s.

Mero proclaimed that “once these nodules are being mined, the minerals industry would be faced with the very interesting situation of working deposits that grow faster than they can be mined” – a utopian, sustainable industry that seemed too good to be true.   

These possible riches of the deep were so tempting that deep-sea mining was added to the agenda of the UN General Assembly for discussion in 1967.

Abyssal plains

Fast-forward to today, and we know manganese nodules actually take 10,000 to 1 million years to grow, gradually accreting many layers of polymetallic oxides from surrounding waters and everything from volcanic debris and prehistoric shark teeth forming their core. 

“Fields” of these nodules cover huge areas of some abyssal plains around the world, covering ~6 million km2in the North East Pacific alone.  The nodules are rich minerals of economic interest such as Nickel, Copper, Cobalt, Lithium and Rare Earth Elements, a group of elements vital for green technology, such as neodymium magnets for wind turbines and hybrid cars.

In contrast to the nodules that carpet large areas of abyssal plains, the seafloor massive sulphides that form at hydrothermal vents occur in very small patches, typically along undersea volcanic rifts.  Cold seawater percolates into oceanic crust at these rifts, where it becomes heated geothermally and leaches minerals from surrounding rocks.

These hot fluids burst out of the crust, precipitating minerals to form the seafloor deposits. These can be formed subsurface, or on the seafloor where the “chimneys” of hydrothermal vents tower up to 30m tall, all enriched in minerals such as Iron, Zinc, Copper, Lead, Gold and Silver.

Potential impacts

Despite proving that nodules do not grow back soon after they are mined, some industry experts now think the higher mineral concentrations of deep-sea deposits could mean a smaller impact footprint than land-based methods.

But many scientists and conservation groups caution that at this moment in time, there is simply not enough known about life in our deep-oceans for the industry to begin mining safely.  

Without the basic understanding of the species that make up these ecosystems and how they function, we cannot assess any potential impacts deep-sea mining may have that could cause serious, irreversible harm to our marine environment. 

Both resource types provide hard surfaces for many species to attach to and create biodiversity hotspots filled with organisms often new to science. However, low food availability, cold temperatures, and low disturbance levels at nodule fields means these communities are predicted to be ill-adapted to cope with mining impacts. Scientists predict any recovery post-mining to be at decadal, if not centurial time scales.

Experts anticipate responses of vent populations to mining impacts to be different to those at nodules, as their ecosystems experience disturbance when the venting fluids supporting them “turn on and off”. However this disturbance occurs at time scales varying from tens to thousands of years, depending on vent location.  

Complex ecosystems

Caution is therefore advised towards these complex ecosystems until we have a better understanding of their processes, with many scientists and conservation groups calling for a ban on mining active “switched on” vents altogether.

The variation between ecosystems at different resource types means management of environmental impacts must be based on scientific understanding of each of the three resource types individually. This triples the workload for the International Seabed Authority, the UN regulator of deep-sea mining on the international seabed, on which the majority of these mineral resources are located.  

Although previously criticised for a lack of transparency and inclusivity during this process, a recent step-change by the International Seabed Authority leaves some stakeholders more optimistic and hopeful for an increased and continued focus on regulation underpinned by scientific evidence.  Without that evidence, many are still concerned that we risk ending up in a situation where we aim for a green economy to protect one environment, whist causing avoidable harm to our deep oceans.

The ISA says it will have finished writing regulations allowing for the commercial exploitation of all deep-sea minerals by 2020, after which mining could begin.  

The race is now on to feed knowledge of these unique and fragile ecosystems into environmental safeguarding of this industry, to ensure that deep-sea mining is governed by environmental regulations that avoid mistakes of generations past in other habitats.

This Author

Amber Cobley is a postgraduate research student within Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton at the University of Southampton. She is speaking at Exploring the Deep at Edinburgh Science Festival, taking place at the National Museum of Scotland on Saturday 6 April. Tickets and more information is available here. 

Image: Venting fumeroles just from the crown of Godzilla hydrothermal vent. Ocean Networks Canada, Flickr. 

Single-use plastic pollution is ubiquitous and tangible – we can see it on our beaches, roadsides and waterways, and it’s even in the seafood we eat and the tap water we drink.

Today, there are endless creative initiatives to help limit plastic pollution, from grassroots beach cleans to campaigns for plastic-free supermarket aisles. The momentum sky-rocketed when the final episode of BBC One’s Blue Planet II, which highlighted global plastic pollution for just six minutes, was watched by 11.91 million people – the highest ever recorded ratings for any Nature programme.

The latest issue of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine is out now!

In 2018, ‘single-use’ was named Word of the Year by Collins Dictionary while ‘plastic’ was Oxford Dictionaries’ Children’s Word of the Year.

Bigger picture

Once hailed as a wonder material, plastic is the biggest threat to our planet – or so some press coverage would like us to believe. As a result, it is arguably the most engaging environmental catastrophe of our time. But are people seeing the bigger picture?

The current wave of interest in plastic pollution shares many factors with the alarming discovery of the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica in the mid-1980s and the subsequent successful engagement of industry, governments and consumers.

This protective layer has significantly recovered since the phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) 30 years ago, after the groundbreaking Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was agreed by leading industrial nations in 1987.

George Marshall, founder of Climate Outreach and author of Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, said: “There was an obvious cause and effect – it was possible to reduce our usage of CFCs found in aerosols and refrigerants, and manufacturers could stop producing these nasty chemicals in the first place.”

Marshall studies how people engage psychologically with climate change. He explains: “That was a very well-constructed problem for us to deal with – it was still complex to understand but more manageable than climate change and similar to single-use plastics in that people could visualise and make sense of it.

 “[Climate change is] really an economic and social problem with moral and political complexities – it’s about human rights and armed conflict and so many things. Plastic is in that environmental category, and more deservedly so, but the danger is that people feel they have ticked that environmental box by redu­cing plastic pollution.”

Immediate impact 

All the things that make the plastics issue strong make garnering action against climate change weak, according to Marshall.

Plastic is something that we hold in our hands, it’s here and now, the impact is immediate, and we can all make direct behavioural changes to reduce that.

Marshall argues: “With climate change, there is no direct immediate connection. The notion that something you do now will affect something else in some complex way in the future is vague and that’s the big problem.”

The plastic backlash has worked well because it has a really good line-up of the qualities that motivate people: “We have got a trusted communicator, Sir David Attenborough, who played a key role in kicking this off, it’s tangible, you can mobilise your own community to help pick up plastic and reduce waste, and it feels like you can do good.”

Internal justifications 

Marshall explains that there are three fundamental reasons why it is hard to get people’s attention on climate change: “Firstly, people have a very limited ‘pool of worry’, so if a problem captures our attention, that displaces something else because we only have a certain mental capacity to worry about issues.

“Secondly, we display ‘single-action bias’ – this is the tendency to take on one single activity with the belief that we have resolved something bigger.” Psychologists hypothesise that this has evolved so that that we don’t worry too much, but face up to problems, solve them, and then move on.

The third and final danger is ‘moral licence’: “In order to maintain your sense of being a good person, you adopt an activity that you consider to be good and then use that as an internal justification for something that is not good. This subconscious offsetting is very common, and recycling behaviour is a classic example.”

We need to tip the balance of public awareness in issues like palm oil and ocean acidification and be smart in the way we tell the story so that people can relate to it, says Nick Clark, environment correspondent and anchor for Al Jazeera: “The question is how we set about covering this story to engage a public fatigued and confused by the climate change ‘debate’ that’s been drummed up by those who want to obfuscate the story.”

Rapid revolution

Clark continues: “It’s essential we cover the first world too, not only Bangladesh and the Pacific islands. Just look at the California wildfires, Florida floods and coastal erosion, the hurricanes blowing in. How will that affect us all?”

Guy Singh-Watson, founder of Riverford Organic Farmers, said: “We are on the brink of environmental catastrophe, and the most important thing is that nothing distract us from climate change – plastic in the oceans is a tragedy, but not on the same scale as climate change. 

“People might feel they have done their bit by reducing plastic, and we are intrinsically lazy, so the changes we are prepared to make must really matter.”

But that’s not to say Singh-Watson has lost all hope. “We keep using stuff and throwing it away – that’s the mentality we need to fundamentally change, and now there seems to be significant im­petus behind it.”

He believes that change can be fast, especially when big business gets behind it. “Just as the transition from horses to cars took just 10 years in 1900s America, today there’s a rapid revolution happening with electric cars because the car industry has got behind it.”

Plastic pollution has a powerful narrative that has the potential to open the gateway to real public understanding of fossil fuels and encourage us to switch from the ‘take-make-dispose’ linear model to a more sustainable, circular economy that inspires us to consider our overall carbon footprint and look at the bigger, global picture.

This Author 

Anna Turns is a freelance journalist and founder of Plastic Clever Salcombe, a Kids Against Plastic campaign. This article first appeared in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine.

Wood fuel seems to be having a hard time of it lately. The arguments used to be so simple – wood is a green, sustainable product, right?  Well, maybe.  

The discussions around carbon and particulates suddenly make this debate so much more complicated, and are in danger of turning us off wood for good.

Take the news that 47 UK towns and cities are at or exceeding WHO standards for air pollution.  This has catapulted air quality up the political agenda, and stimulated a Government Clean Air Strategy published in January that has singled out wood fuel as one of the main contributors to particulate pollution.  Or Sadiq Khan’s suggestions that wood burning stoves should be banned altogether, causing uproar amongst those with a newly installed burner.    

Air pollution

So is wood fuel really the enemy?  It’s enough to induce a guilty conscience as you slip another log on the burner this winter or, worse still, to abandon your stove and crank up the central heating instead.  

Now, I’m not suggesting that air pollution isn’t important – it’s the UK’s top environmental risk to human health – nor am I saying that burning solid fuels isn’t part of the problem, but I think it’s time we re-claimed the case for burning wood.

Part of the problem with the recent reports is that they lump together all domestic solid fuels and all types of appliances, showing how they cause around 38 percent of emissions – higher even than industry and transport.  

But amongst all the headlines, I think we’ve lost sight of two simple messages – firstly, that all wood is not the same, and secondly, that the way that you burn it can make all the difference.  So much so that I believe if we burn the right wood in the right way we can actually improve both our carbon footprint and our air quality.    

Unlike solid fossil fuels, wood fuel should be a carbon neutral resource; the C02 released on burning is matched by the amount absorbed when it is growing.  But carbon can also be emitted through processing and transport of wood fuel, clocking up wood miles just like food miles.  

Renewable sources

Wood fuel should also be renewable, but if there isn’t a cycle of tree re-planting or natural regeneration, or if woodlands are not thinned sustainably, that simply won’t be the case.  

Well-managed woodlands will ensure that healthy trees remain long into the future, with carbon locked up in the mature trees, soils and vegetation, and further C02 taken up as young trees grow. This means that the woodland cycle is not just renewable and carbon neutral, but can result in a net carbon benefit.  

That brings us on to burning.  The reports have highlighted that burning green or ‘wet’ wood can emit twice as much particulate matter as seasoned or ‘dry’ wood.  Drying in a kiln or seasoning wood to air dry naturally reduces the moisture content to less than 20 percent, meaning that wood will burn more efficiently and can be classed as ‘ready to burn’.

Wood should also be kept in a well-covered, ventilated store to make sure that it doesn’t re-absorb moisture.  

And then there’s the wood burning appliances themselves.  Open fires can emit nearly ten times as much pollution as the latest range of ‘eco-design ready’ wood burning stoves, so called because they already meet the stringent air quality regulations due to come into force in 2022. Promoting the shift to wood burners and increasing efficiency can drive new, clean technology and the growth of a responsible wood fuel industry.   

Local communities

These discussions are being played out in the National Forest, where we are supporting the expansion of community wood fuel groups.  

Volunteers are out managing woodlands across the autumn and winter season, and at the same time enhancing their own health and wellbeing, increasing their skills and having fun.  At the end of the sessions they take a boot full of logs home to season and burn.  

It’s now got to the stage where they’re even sharing images of wood burners on Facebook.  This is about as local as you can get and highlights the multiple benefits of wood fuel and well-managed woodlands on your doorstep – and that’s before you consider the other things they’re providing, like access for people to enjoy woodland, improved habitats for wildlife or management of water flows.  

This is a success story whichever way you look at it, and surely the sort of thing we should be promoting.  

So, come on, let’s fall in love again with burning wood.  A simple shift from fossil fuels to wood fuel, and open fires to wood burners means that we can also make a huge improvement in air quality. With just five easy steps, we can all breathe more easily and ensure that wood fuel is still part of our energy future.

Five steps

1. Use locally grown wood fuel to reduce CO2 in the distribution and processing
2. Ensure your wood fuel is sustainably harvested so that woodland is maintained as a carbon store and renewable resource – better still, join a volunteer group and harvest it yourself  
3. Dry, season and store your wood properly or buy seasoned timber that is ‘ready to burn’ to halve emissions of particulates during burning
4. Use an efficient wood burner, ideally one that is eco-design ready.  These have increased efficiency and are permitted for use in smoke control areas
5. Service and clean your flue and burner regularly to maintain efficiency 

This Author 

John Everitt is chief executive of the National Forest Company, which is responsible for coordinating the creation and management of the 200 square mile National Forest spanning parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire.

Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in his Spring Statement this week that the government will launch a global and national review into the link between biodiversity and economic growth. This is welcome news.

We urgently need to take action to halt the UK’s biodiversity crash and it is essential that the government incentivises nature-friendly food and farming practices to achieve that.

Recent reports have shown massive declines in wildlife globally with humanity displacing 60 percent of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970 and a steep decline in global insect populations linked to pesticide use threatening all our ecosystems.

Agroecological farming

Despite this, the UK is currently failing on 14 out of 19 global targets on biodiversity and a report by the Natural Capital Committee concluded that only half of our habitats meet minimum quality targets set by Natural England, with bees, butterflies, and farmland birds and bats either continuing to decline or stagnating in numbers.

Many farmers are working hard to support biodiversity, but more robust incentives from Government are needed.

The review Hammond announced is set to determine the most cost-effective and environmentally sustainable interventions that could be taken to protect nature – and agroecological techniques, such as organic and agroforestry, must form part of the solution.

It’s never been clearer that the government should to support this sort of farming, with 50 percent more wildlife on organic farms, while the recent ‘Ten Years for Agroecology’ study showed that agroecological farming can produce enough healthy food for Europe’s growing population, while phasing out pesticides and radically reducing greenhouse gases.

This renewed focus on biodiversity should prompt the Government to ask whether the Agriculture Bill and Environment Bills are up to the task. We’re concerned that there is no explicit support for agroecology within the Agriculture Bill and that soil health and pesticide reduction have not been included in the metrics underpinning the Environment Bill. These must both be remedied.

The environmental issues we face are complex. They cannot simply be reduced to working out the financial value of boosting wildlife. The review into the link between biodiversity and economic growth will be an important contribution if it stimulates government support for nature-friendly farming systems. The cost of doing nothing will be far greater.

The Author

Rob Percival is head of policy (food and health) at the Soil Association.

We face a tsunami of information that fills our news feeds everyday, mostly unfiltered. Facts and fake news are all mixed up on our smartphones, tablets and laptops.

Sometimes this fake news can look very convincing, which can make it difficult to recognise. In our fast-paced world my printed infographic books feed the need for sustainable information.

They are based on scientific papers and reviewed by scientists from all over the world, and are guaranteed to be trustworthy while narrowing down the environmental problems to their very core.

Visualising information 

Infographic books are easy to understand, even without any prior knowledge on the topic. Most of all they are not opinionated, but rather neutral tools for gaining more knowledge and a deeper understanding of the complexity of a chosen topic, for example the state of the oceans. 

My new book The Ocean Book explores the diverse problems our seas are facing today: climate change, loss of biodiversity, overfishing, industrialization and pollution. The information builds one page after the other, creating a complex picture of interactions and a broad overview of the current threads the oceans are facing.

Scientific papers are not on the reading list of most people, they are not written in a way the general public can immerse themselves in. They are the outcome of one or two years of hard data based work and every word, every phrase has a very precise meaning. 

The problem with these kind of papers is that only scientists understand them. That’s a big issue, because a lot of scientific papers actually want to create change and send a message to the general public, for example on the state of our planet, on the climate breakdown or on the threads to ocean wildlife.

That is where infographics come in handy, they have the power to visualize the essence of a scientific paper. No matter how complex it at first seems, a graphic can be eye-opening and easy to understand for everybody.

Knowledge building

One of the most important principles is that less is more. Finding the balance between aesthetics, interpretation and visualization of the data in critical. The selection of data and the creation of easy-to-read icons is a challenge I face every day. 

Modern computer-generated infographics tend to do the opposite: instead of opening your eyes and making a topic simpler to understand, they visualise complexity in an obvious and aesthetic way,  without leaving you with further understanding or revelation. 

I try to go in a different direction with my infographic book series.  I prioritise the selection of topics that suit the flow of information and knowledge-building over aesthetics. Showing the broader picture, zooming in, connecting the dots that lead slowly page after page to a complex picture of the problem. 

My books are simple in every way. They feature one colour plus black, distinctive and repetitive icons and a clear and easy to understand language – anyone can further their understanding and learn something new.

In the best case, these books make people curious to learn more, encourage them to do further research and reading on the topic, or to start putting thoughts into action and caring even more for our planet. 

Starting small 

We all know that everybody has the power to make a bigger change in the world. There are many examples of great people throughout history who have stood up for their beliefs and created grassroots movements. Every little action counts and many small actions will eventually lead to a bigger change.

We can all save the world, the oceans, and the climate by starting to change and simplify our lifestyle. Little by little, day by day – there are many possibilities and ways to become more earth friendly.

Incorporating new habits into daily life can be easy, so long as we don’t lose sight of the overwhelming size of the global problems. Starting small and keeping going, we will inspire others to do the same. 

A really small start can just be having a closer look at an infographic. You never know what that might trigger in your brain and what actions and change you might bring to the world.

This Author

Esther Gonstalla is a German freelance infographic designer and writer of three infographic books: The Atomic Book, The Climate Book and most recently The Ocean Book (Green Books, Cambridge). 

Image: Greg McFall, Wikimedia. 

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.

Vale is the company behind a recent massive mining incident in Brazil. The failure of their Brumadinho tailings dam killed at least 300 people, many of them the company’s own employees and caused enormous environmental damage that has destroyed the river and will affect people in the area for many years.

The international day of action for rivers aims to “celebrate our life-giving waters, and honor all those who have worked hard to ensure that our rivers continue flowing“.

The Vale Ma’ shows that this was anything other than an isolated case. As the Brazilian lead researcher in the project Beatriz Saes said: “Many people in Brazil are saying that it was not an accident. It was a crime.”

Impacts

The ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team at the UAB’s Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) called their map “¡Esto no Vale! Isso não Vale! Vale S.A. operations and socio-environmental conflicts”.

The map currently details 27 socio-environmental conflicts in the world related to Vale S.A.’s mining and infrastructure projects.

The conflicts include mining exploitation and tailings dams, such as those that broke in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) leaving behind hundreds of deaths and irreversibly contaminating rivers and lands.

The map shows that the mining company is responsible for a large array of socio-environmental impacts all over the globe.

Activist scholars

To mark the rivers protection day, the research team wanted to contribute to the global efforts of environmental justice groups to reclaim justice and to stop corporate impunity.

They have urged users to reflect on the wider problems generated by the resource extraction of large mining companies and their political allies.

The map is produced by the EJAtlas research group at the UAB together with Yannick Deniau of the Geocomunes collective (Mexico) and Beatriz Saes (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil).

The data was gathered by activist scholars, independent researchers and local activists and is part of an ongoing mapping process, which documents and publishes new cases of environmental conflict.

This Article

This article was authored by Beatriz Saes, Daniela Del Bene, Sara Mingorría, Yannick Deniau, Raquel Neyra, Max Stoisser, Lucrecia Wagner, Grettel Navas and Nick Meynen and submitted by the ENVJUSTICE – EJAtlas team.