From poisoned legacies to greenwashing the energy transition: Resisting Anglo American

Watch Lydia from Kabwe and Richard Meeran from Leigh Day speak about the scale and impact of lead pollution from mining in Zambia, in Kabwe and who is responsible:

Decades of lead pollution in Kabwe, melting glaciers in Chile, communities displaced in South Africa and heavy metals in Peru’s rivers. Anglo American is a mining giant whose pursuit of profit at the expense of local communities and nature spans decades and continents.

The company pitches itself as a ‘company of the future’, central to the green transition by providing so-called green hydrogen. But what is its legacy in the communities and areas where it has operated and continues to extract? Today, even as the company carves up valleys in Chile, thousands of children in Zambia – in one of the world’s most polluted towns – are being poisoned by lead contamination from a huge mine that it left more than 50 years ago without cleaning up.

Join guests from Chile, Peru and Zambia to trace a line from Anglo American’s activities in Zambia a century ago, to its impact on communities in Chile and Peru today and its exploitative ‘green transition’ projects in South Africa. Joining us will be community members from:

• Kabwe, in Zambia, to discuss the impacts of lead contamination from Anglo American’s mining activities, especially its devastating impact on children and pregnant women.
• Chile, to highlight the social and environmental impacts of Anglo American’s copper mines and production network in Chile.
• Peru, to expose the impacts of heavy metals pollution on people in Moquegua from Anglo American’s Quellaveco mine.

We will also be joined by an expert speaker on platinum mining and green hydrogen production in South Africa, raising the alarm on Anglo American’s role in dispossessing communities from their lands, supposedly in the name of decarbonisation.

With its roots in South African colonialism and its track record on human rights and environmental destruction, the panel will highlight the urgent need for Anglo American to be held to account by governments and human rights institutions. How are affected communities resisting Anglo America’s destruction of ecosystems, and how can we, in the UK, stand with them in solidarity? How do we fight a corporate led energy transition that replicates centuries of colonial exploitation? How do we deliver a globally just transition that places communities, workers, and nature at its heart?