The Heart of Our Earth

Documentary film about artistic responses to Brazil's worst environmental crimes: the Brumadinho disaster and Mariana tailings dam collapses, for which megamining company, Vale, is responsible.

A mining engineer with more than 40 years in the industry challenges the ESG frameworks used by mining companies to greenwash their activities

A Twitter campaign smearing the reputation of environmental activists in Honduras is a coordinated effort to protect mining interests.

The Heart of Our Earth: Community resistance to mining in Latin America tells the story of the unprecedented expansion of the mining industry across Latin America since the 1990s, and the massive social and environmental upheaval this has involved.

If humanity is to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, it is essential that we decarbonize our economies. This will depend upon the widespread rollout of technologies which are enormously metal- and mineral-intensive. But mining is not without its social and environmental impacts, nor is it free of responsibility for the climate emergency.

'The Government is responsible for these two murders, and Xiomara Castro must provide an explanation,’ declared ERIC-SJ researcher Joaquín Mejía Rivera, in the wake of the killing of two environmental defenders in Guapinol.

Five water defenders from Santa Marta, Cabañas, El Salvador have been arrested in connection with the 1989 murder of a woman in their community. However, their active membership of an organisation opposed to mining and strong signs that the government wants to subvert the country's mining ban suggest another motive for their persecution

Chinese companies are behind rapid expansion of gold mining in the Mayaya region of Bolivia, and are invading the Madidi National Park. Bolivian journalist and LAB correspondent Sergio Mendoza travelled by canoe down the Beni and Quendeque rivers, witnessing how the illegal mining activity is hidden by Bolivian mining cooperatives and supported or permitted by the government.

LAB's environmental defenders series is expanded with new articles on Guatemala and Mexico. Worrying news about oppression in Nicaragua. Sobering lessons for the left from the first round of Brazil's elections.

Director Marcos Colón has made a remarkable film about the Amazon, charting how in three countries, Brazil, Peru and Colombia, 'modernity' means exploitation and destruction. He interviews indigenous leaders with a very different vision.