[posted by Adam Vaughan on The Guardian, 24th July 2018]   Shale gas firm Cuadrilla has been given the green light by the government to start fracking at a well in Lancashire, after the energy minister issued the first fracking permit since a new regulatory regime was introduced. Fracking is expected to begin in late August or early September at the Preston New Road site, between Blackpool and Preston, which has been the focus of...

[posted on Global Witness, July 24th, 2018]   Global Witness today reveals that at least 207 land and environmental defenders were killed last year – indigenous leaders, community activists and environmentalists murdered trying to protect their homes and communities from mining, agribusiness and other destructive industries. Severe limits on the data available mean the global total is probably much higher. Murder is the most...

The United Nations Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with respect to Human Rights (OEIGWG) was established on 26 June 2014 by the UN Human Rights Council. Its mandate is to “elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises”. On...

[posted by Ucilia Wang on Climate Liability News, June 19th, 2018] The three Colorado communities that filed a climate liability lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy have added a conspiracy allegation to the complaint, which describes attempts by the two companies to deceive the public about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate. The amendment came two months after the city and county of Boulder, along with the County of...

[posted on The Conversation, June 4th, 2018]   Environmental justice activism is to this age what the workers’ movement was for the industrial age – one of the most influential social movements of its time. Yet, despite its consistent progress since the 1970s, environmental justice protests seem to get lost in the morass of information on broader environmental issues. In contrast, labour conflicts, including strikes and...

[posted by J Sam Daniel Stalin on NDTV, May 28th, 2018] In the village of 2,000, around 60 people have cancer and they blame the smelter, even though the state government has not carried out any specific study to identify the cause for cancer in high numbers among residents around the plant. In a village called Silverpuram in Tamil Nadu, 31-year-old Ram Lakshmi’s husband Murugan died of intestinal cancer three years ago....