With over one hundred million electric vehicle (EV) batteries expected to be nearing retirement by the early 2030s, governments around the world have an urgent window of opportunity to decide: will these batteries become the backbone of a rapid, equitable, just energy transition — or risk becoming part of a next wave of e-waste landing in the Global South?

A new frontier for battery policy: intelligently sequencing second-life before recycling

Second-life policy that can extend a used EV battery’s life by 10 or more years is one of the most promising and least mature frontiers in the global battery landscape. Around the world, EV deployment is accelerating, but the policies governing what happens to those batteries at end-of-life lag behind. 

In most regions, when policies go beyond transport electrification, the focus remains narrowly on recycling — a promise to recover metals to feed the next generation of production. While recycling is an important step in material recovery, adopting only this single-track approach risks prematurely shredding batteries that still hold 70–80% of their capacity, discarding not only valuable materials, but also the embedded emissions that went into their manufacture.

What is more, recycling technologies for EV batteries are still maturing; many technical and economic challenges must be overcome to achieve advertised recovery rates at scale, and to minimize air, water and toxicity hazards for the environment, workers and frontline communities. 

Supporting second-life use does not mean abandoning recycling targets; it means sequencing them intelligently. Policies should require a “next best use” assessment in line with the zero waste hierarchy: first, consider reuse; then repurposing; and recycling only when no higher-value option remains. 

Repurposing viable EV batteries — for a “second life” — as stationary storage to capture the intermittent energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines can extend the batteries’ useful life by 10 or more years. This in turn reduces demand for new materials and batteries, provides greater greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings than directly going to recycling, and supports delivering affordable renewable energy to communities who may otherwise be priced out of the clean-energy transition.

To unlock that second life potential, we need coherent, enabling policies that value repurposing of viable batteries before premature recycling.

China is likely the only country today with a dedicated second-life policy. Though even there, an extensive informal recycling and waste sector competing for used batteries risks complicating implementation of official state policy. In the EU, the Batteries Regulation is one of the few policies that attempts to cover all stages of the battery life cycle — from design to repurposing, battery passports and recycling. While this comprehensive scope is laudable, the EU Batteries Regulation also took years to develop, and practical mechanisms for its implementation are still emerging.

Elsewhere, most discussion on national frameworks often falls back on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) rules typically written for waste management, not for repurposing. This mismatch stifles entrepreneurship. For example, small-scale start up repurposing firms can face onerous fire-safety certifications dependent on access to proprietary Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) data, as is the case in the US.

Other barriers to repurposing include restrictive waste classifications, and limited access to battery data. The result is a policy vacuum where profit and privileged OEM contracts — rather than sustainability goals centering people and the environment — tend to determine a battery’s fate.

Why second-life matters for the Global South

The Global North’s unregulated battery waste has implications for the Global South. While transportation cost and logistics hinder effective end-of-life collection and waste management, used EVs and end-of-life batteries retain significant monetary value. This drives exports to the Global South where less expensive labor and weak regulations lead to risky repairs, informal disposal, pollution, and high safety risks and environmental harms.

Many EV batteries are functionally non-repairable due to proprietary parts and a lack of access to information, turning them into hazardous waste. This worsens risks of waste colonialism and presents a lost opportunity for furthering a just and equitable transition. Weak enforcement of transboundary waste rules allows shipments of low-quality used batteries under the guise of “reusable goods,” while countries with limited regulatory capacity shoulder the safety and environmental risks.

At the same time, these same regions stand to benefit from distributed energy storage powered by repurposed batteries — providing backup for health centers, schools, and community microgrids using stored energy from solar panels and wind turbines. Enabling  the expansion of viable distributed energy storage systems powered by repurposed batteries requires robust collection and transportation logistics, strong safeguards for traceable exports, and local refurbishing capacity grounded in equity principles.

Binding bilateral and multilateral agreements could ensure strong accountability for exported batteries, while local downstream supply chain actors (such as importers, distributors, producers and others) — responsible for safe collection, assessment, and eventual disposal by “return to sender” — can keep both responsibility and economic opportunity closer to home.

The data barrier

Assessing a used EV battery’s viability for repurposing depends in large part on access to battery data, including its specifications, its chemistry, structural configuration, state of health, and history of use. Yet today, OEMs tightly guard access to this data, even when it’s essential for safe disassembly, remanufacturing, repurposing, recycling and battery end-of-life. 

Without transparency, emergency crews, dismantlers, repurposers, and recyclers are left blindfolded — disassembling packs at high cost and risk to personal health and safety. GAIA members in the Philippines have seen first-hand how this lack of access to battery data can lead to grave risks in informal settings.  

Embedding repurposing into battery waste policy

Without deliberate policy intervention, the risk is high that most retired EV batteries will flow into closed-loop recycling systems controlled by a few large corporations, and feed waste colonialism. If national and multi-lateral policies continue to lag, we risk turning a cornerstone of the clean-energy transition into a new form of extractive waste trade.

But if policymakers and automakers act now — aligning design, data, and governance — second-life batteries can become an important connective tissue between transport electrification and energy access, between climate mitigation and social justice. By embedding reuse and repurposing into the core of battery policy and design, governments and industry can help deliver on electrification that doesn’t end with the first charge.

*This blog was originally published on the GAIA website.

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Nestled in the beautiful mountains of Guinea, West Africa is Simandou, the world’s largest untapped high-grade iron ore deposit, coveted by mining companies for decades. Simandou project developers including Winning Consortium Simandou (WCS) and Australian mining giant Rio Tinto – both backed by China’s largest steel maker, Baowu – are moving ahead quickly under intense pressure from the ruling military junta in Guinea to develop and start construction for the continent’s largest combined mining and infrastructure project. While the Simandou project is said to hold great promise of economic growth for this impoverished country under its third military regime, many significant human and environmental rights impacts have been documented since development started. In my work with The 11th Hour Project’s Human Rights program, we support several organizations to hold the government and project developers accountable and to demand compliance with their human and environmental rights obligations.

As part of this advocacy work, last month I accompanied a group of local community leaders impacted by the Simandou project corridor and staff from the NGO Action Mines Guinée on a learning exchange to Brazil. We visited Brazil’s key mining areas of Minas Gerais in the Southeast to learn about the devastating tailings dams failures and community organizing. We then headed north to Pará and Maranhão in the Amazon to participate in a regional meeting of communities impacted by mining. We witnessed first-hand the impacts of the Carajás railway corridor and its open-pit iron ore mines in beautiful protected areas, a massive rail line carrying ore and commodities and the epic challenges of resettling impacted villages.

1. Demanding accountability of Simandou project developers for their human rights impacts

Although the project only broke ground in early 2021, national and international organizations have already documented the devastating harms of the Simandou project at this early stage of its development on local communities’ precious water resources, biodiverse forests, agricultural lands and food security. Groups are also denouncing risks the project poses for the climate. With support from Action Mines Guinée, local monitoring committees in Simandou are documenting the wide gap between rhetoric and action by WCS and Rio Tinto when it comes to respect for community rights with unremediated damage to water resources, fisheries, agricultural lands, cracks in houses from blasting, dust and air pollution and more. These reports read like a “déjà vu” for one of the project developers WCS in Guinea: a bauxite mining project that was hastily developed in Boké — the country’s current mining epicenter — leaving widespread unremediated harms on local communities’ water, agricultural lands and livelihoods, as documented extensively in a 2018 Human Rights Watch report and a 2023 Natural Justice community audit.

Despite promises of local employment benefits from the Simandou construction projects, these opportunities have yet to materialize for the surrounding communities. Local protests demanding fair and equitable access to these jobs have been met with swift and violent repression by the military government. Most recently, on July 17, 2024 security forces used tear gas and live ammunition to quell demonstrations in Beyla, leaving three people dead and many more severely wounded, followed by arrests.

2. Learning from local communities in Brazil about iron ore mining impacts and community organizing

High risks of mine waste (tailings) dams failures

Mining is effectively an exercise in creating and managing the mountains of overburden and waste (also called tailings) that must be moved to reach the high-value minerals or metals. In 2015, the massive collapse of tailings dams at the Samarco iron mine in Mariana, owned by Vale and BHP Billiton, killed 19 people. We walked through the ghost town of Bento Rodrigues, hearing from victims about the continued impunity of the company and resettlement benefits that have still failed to materialize.

We also visited Brumadinho where in 2019, the collapse of the tailings dam at Vale’s mine claimed 272 lives, predominantly workers, and dumped nearly 10 million cubic meters of toxic mine tailings polluting the riverways and spreading devastation over a large territory. We listened to community members as they described their struggle to rebuild their lives with meager remedies from the companies.

We were also inspired by the prevailing women’s leadership in communities and within the social movement Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB). We were especially moved by their successful campaign to make urgent aid payments directly to women, rather than to men “on behalf of women and children’. This resulted not only in far greater food security and socio-economic stability in disaster-affected communities, but this ad hoc initiative was formalized as public policy. Aid payments must now be made to individuals directly instead of only to the head of household.

Little information is available today in the public domain about tailings management in the Simandou project, and we left Minas Gerais with many questions for the project developers: questions about the type of mining technology to be used, to the particular type of wet or dry mine waste management, and disclosure of the tailings dam break studies. For example, in the thousands of pages in the WCS environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) that our partners went to great lengths to obtain and comb through, only about three pages vaguely address tailings management without the requisite detail that global industry standards now require in the wake of the Mariana and Brumadinho dam failures. Our partners continue to comb through the Rio Tinto ESIAs that only recently, have become partially available to them. None of the Simandou ESIAs from WCS and Rio Tinto are available to the general public (whether in electronic format, on a website, or otherwise), and for those that have been obtained by local NGOs, key annexes are often not attached and not provided when requested.

Social movements, organizing and popular education

In the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, we were hosted by MAB to visit two sites that have experienced devastating tailings dam failures. We learned about MAB’s decentralized and non-hierarchical organizing strategies from the local to the national level and back down to the local, built on shared values and philosophy.

“A única luta que se perde, é aquela que se abandona.” (“The only fight you lose is the one you abandon.”) – Carlos Marighella, MST

From Minas Gerais, we flew to the northern Amazonian state of Pará, where we were hosted by the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) and Justiça nos Trilhos (JnT) to take part in the 13th annual Regional Meeting of People Affected by Mining in the Carajás Corridor, in Portuguese: Encontro Regional das Atingidas e dos Atingidos pela Mineração (ERAM). This meeting demonstrated the power of collective organizing bringing together around a hundred participants from various communities, including farmers, Afro-descendants and indigenous communities, with academics, youth and LGBTQ leaders, fisherfolk organizations, networks and social movements. Participants spoke of the violence of capitalism on lands, communities and women, and discussed collective strategies of popular education, resistance, no-go zones, the value of women’s leadership and the decades-long nature of the struggle.

During the ERAM, we visited one of the encampments central to the broad push for rural agricultural land reform led by Latin America’s largest social movement, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). An exceptional moment was the mística ceremony welcoming us to the country’s largest encampment, “Terra e Liberdade” with 7,000 families most in a situation of extreme poverty squatting since November 20, 2023 (Black Awareness Day) in a rural, exceptionally rich territory in Pará with mining activities about 30 km away in all directions. The poems, songs and ceremony celebrating land, tools, seeds, education and children shared a powerful message of solidarity and a positive collective vision for a better future by those who have been brutalized and harmed by the prevailing capitalist-industrial complex.

National forests, multi-use railroads and energy infrastructure benefiting corporate elite, not ordinary people

On our last day in Pará, we visited Vale’s iron ore mining pits operating deep in the Carajás National Forest. The operation has expropriated indigenous communities such as the Xikrin with little to no remediation. Today the company closely controls access to the National Forest and requires approved visitors to have a guide accompanying them in order to limit their movements. The visit demonstrated how, yet again, corporate interests prevail over environmental and biodiversity protection, and the lives and well-being of traditional and indigenous communities.

In neighboring Maranhão state, we saw the railroads used to transport ore and commodities such as soy from the interior to the deepwater port at São Luís. Said to be “multi-use”, the railroad transports ore and commodities every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, and has passenger trains only three times per week. Communities living along the rail corridor endure constant loud noise from the trains passing, the vibrations affecting their bodies and homes, and safety risks for people and animals crossing the tracks. Finally, the energy infrastructure powering the steel industry includes blast furnaces, power plants and cement plants primarily benefits industry, leaving households to pay some of the highest prices for electricity in the country.

On the last days, we visited the community of Piquiá de Baixo, located in the shadow of the steel industry, which has made the air and water quality toxic for humans there. The community has been demanding resettlement and twenty years later, the families have yet to receive the keys to their new homes at the resettlement site at Piquiá de Conquista.

3. Onward with positive inspiration and solidarity

Our last day in São Paulo was spent filming exit interviews capturing the rich and deep lessons learned by the Guinea participants.

We heard positive and inspiring lessons on women’s leadership and economic empowerment, on decentralized collective organizing at many levels and centered on a shared set of values, made possible with popular education and community listening tools. And we heard warnings of the many broken promises of mining companies and elite capture of benefits, the dizzying cumulative negative impacts from rail, mining, energy and infrastructure projects, most especially the irreversible impacts of disasters such as tailings dam failures, destruction of national forests and biodiversity, traditional villages and indigenous cultural sites.

Filmmaker Tom Laffay accompanied us on the tour. We are working on a short documentary highlighting key lessons to share with communities and civil society in Guinea for broader uptake.

This learning exchange was made possible by funding from and facilitation by The 11th Hour Project. I’m grateful to SAGE Fund who introduced us to their local partners in Brazil, providing contacts with allied host organizations that made these exceptional experiences possible. Our duo of French-Portuguese interpreters made communication possible, and we all appreciated the infinite patience of our fixer to make sure everyone was comfortable. We also extend our thanks to the many others who provided us with advice on planning this exchange, including American Jewish World Service (AJWS), Ford Foundation, Earthworks, Environmental Defender Law Center (EDLC), Instituto Cordilheira and Grupo de Pesquisa e Extensão Política, Economia, Mineração Ambiente e Sociedade (PoEMAS).

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I am thrilled to be joining GAIA to support its members in defining their environmental justice agenda on batteries, a new area of focus for the organization.

The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) is a global network of grassroots and national organizations from 92 countries around the world who are working together on waste and justice. I will be coordinating and ensuring cross-regional research alignment and strategy definition by GAIA members on electric vehicle battery waste, and supporting donor engagement.

This work with GAIA complements my existing work since 2018 with The 11th Hour Project, the grant-making arm of The Schmidt Family Foundation. In that role, I advise The 11th Hour Project’s human rights program on implementing its strategy in Guinea on asserting the human rights of communities impacted by industrial mining, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on access to energy and impacts of the world’s largest proposed hydropower dam project, Grand Inga. 

My work now fittingly spans the full life cycle of addressing the human rights and environmental justice questions on materials to realize a just transition and climate justice: from the devastation wreaked on local communities by extraction of iron ore and bauxite in Guinea, to the unchecked production of toxic batteries with premature obsolescence that will make up the next wave of waste to be dumped in the global South, to the false promise of mega-hydro to deliver access to energy for all in DRC.

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Communities First is an organization working for social and environmental justice, standing with local communities in Sub-Saharan Africa against human rights abuses and practices destroying their lands, environment, and livelihoods. We stand against oppression, violence and brutality in its many forms, whether related to race, sexual orientation, gender or culture.

We condemn policy brutality and violence in the United States in particular, and our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and the countless other people affected by this country’s long history of killing black, brown and indigenous peoples. We support significant dismantling and defunding of the police, and reallocating those resources to a wide range of much-needed community services, whether related to education, social and medical services, etc.

We further condemn all those in power who condone such violence without accountability, whether in the United States, in Belgium, or across the world where human rights, land and environmental defenders are violently repressed. We work to protect constitutional freedoms, and condemn the shutting down of peaceful protest in the United States and across the world.

We commit to the work of pursuing justice and racial equity not only abroad in the course of our technical support, but also importantly at home. Here in Maine, Lien is an active member of the Board of the Portland Food Co-op, where she chairs the Equity Committee. She also volunteers with Welcoming the Stranger, an initiative supporting asylum seekers to settle in Maine.

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The post Tribute to Ousmane Aminata Bangoura, Coordinator of ADREMGUI first appeared on Communities First.

This guide is written for local CSOs, human rights defenders and community rights advocates in Africa and beyond. “Biashara Na Haki” Part 2 focuses on practical tools and steps to identify business and human rights impacts and obtain remedy. The guide encourages a constructive approach to engagement that favours collaborative strategies such as negotiation and joint problem solving, and campaigning where necessary.

The guide is a co-creation by me, Jeroen de Zeeuw, Rose Kimotho and Caitlin Pierce.

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The SAGE Fund – Strengthening Accountability in the Global Economy – is a collaborative foundation seeking to seed innovative approaches to corporate accountability in the global economy. I will be advising and supporting SAGE Fund to assess and engage their existing and potential grantees on identifying and using new tools and strategies, and supporting them with connections to new and existing technical and other partners to help them reach their goals of advancing human rights in today’s globalized economy.

This advisory work with SAGE Fund complements my existing work with The 11th Hour Project, the grant-making arm of the Schmidt Family Foundation, advising the 11th Hour Project’s human rights program on implementing its strategy in Guinea related to industrial mining’s devastating impacts, and  providing key facilitation and technical support for more effective implementation. 

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CONAKRY (March 21, 2019) – A group of civil society organizations in Guinea Conakry today asked the Guinean government to implement radical changes to the text of a proposed policy for relocating and compensating communities affected by major development projects, including hydroelectric dams and mines in a country thought to hold more than half the world’s supply of bauxite.

According to an analysis released today by the civil society group, the proposal developed by the South African consulting firm SRK, with funding from the German Agency for International Cooperation for Development (GIZ), has no grounding in Guinean law and fails to respect the economic and cultural needs of the communities in the path of the development projects. And rather than protecting local people, as envisioned by Guinean political leaders and German funders, the new policy could violate the human rights of more than 100,000 rural Guineans.

“The goal of this policy is to limit the devastating impacts of hydroelectric dams and mining projects in particular,” said Houdy Bah, mayor of the rural commune of Sangarédi. “As written, however, far from leading to fair and equitable compensation, the policy risks exacerbating the tensions and conflicts that are already occurring.” In its current form, according to the civil society analysis, the policy would prevent even GIZ from adhering to its own human rights policy.

Presented today by civil society organizations at a press briefing in Conakry, the analysis reports that the proposed policy is flawed, but it shows as well that that the government has presented the text of the policy on relocation and compensation to only 12 people outside of Conakry – and that in a country of more than 12 million people. The analysis notes that the government did not consult local authorities, elected officials and experts, such as mayors, traditional leaders, rural planners, agricultural engineers, environmental technical staff and sociologists, even though they should be key–not only to establish such a policy, but to implement it. Finally, the analysis charges that local communities, although they are at the heart of this process and will be the first ones impacted by it, have not had the chance to comment on this text and few know it is being developed. 

“Guinean rural communities are essentially dependent on access to land and natural resources for their survival, and therefore must be consulted on decisions affecting their access to these resources, in line with international human rights standards,” explains Mamady Koivogui, from the national NGO Association Mines Sans Pauvreté.

Civil society organizations are requesting a minimum period of six months to allow the Government’s Inter-ministerial Committee to conduct wide consultations in rural areas where the policy will be implemented.

In addition to these consultations, civil society organizations report that the current text of the policy does not respect several human rights. Among other things, it does not prohibit forced evictions of local communities nor does it ensure a last resort to resettlement when it is in the public interest. It also lacks mechanisms to secure the legitimate land rights of local communities, to allow them access to justice, and to ensure free consultation and the sharing of detailed information with communities.

A country rich in mining resources

Guinea’s massive stores of bauxite—an estimated 25 billion tons—and its potential for hydroelectric power, have captured the interest of investors from China, Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation. The country also recently was selected to host the African Center for Mineral Development, which aims to support a strong role for minerals in ensuring the continent’s economic future. 

“The exploitation of bauxite is extremely invasive,” said Mamadou Maladho Diallo, from the NGO Convergence Globale des Luttes pour la Terre et l’Eau–Afrique de l’Ouest. “Land has been laid bare on surfaces of considerable magnitude and at an impressive speed, without any assessment of the long-term impact of these mines on local communities.”

Threats of displacement of thousands of rural villagers to make way for large development projects, particularly mining and hydroelectric dams, are increasing. In 2015, for example, about 380 families were forcibly evicted from their ancestral landsin Kintinian commune to expand an open-pit gold mine controlled by the mining giant, AngloGold Ashanti and supported by Nedbank (South Africa), an International Finance Corporation (IFC) lender. More recently, residents of 13 villages in western Guinea formally filed a complaint with the IFCfor financing the extension of a harmful bauxite mine. The 540 complainants allege that the project seized their land, destroyed their livelihoods and damaged the local environment.

“After years of hesitation, the Guinean government has demonstrated unprecedented political will to regulate the compensation and resettlement of communities affected by development projects,” said the Honorable Saikou Yaya Barry, National Assembly deputy. “But the government will be judged by its actions and not by its intentions. Its commitment to sustainable development will be revealed as a fraud if the government adopts this policy as it is now and fails to align it with the laws of Guinea and the will of its people.”

“The fact that a country like Guinea, with the world’s largest known reserves of bauxite, has no national policy to protect people or the environment is very concerning,” added Saa Pascal Tenguiano, Executive Director of the NGO Centre de Commerce International pour le Développement. “That’s why this process cannot fail. Absolutely all mining countries need such standards. Not just for us, but for everyone. We are here to help the government to do this right.”

Analysis is available at:

https://communitiesfirst.net/analysis-of-guinea-resettlement-reference-document_201903/

Annex to the analysis, including a technical note and proposed law is available (in French only) at:

https://communitiesfirst.net/note-technique-du-collectif-reinstallation-guinee_201903/

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(March 8, 2019 – Conakry) – Residents of 13 villages in western Guinea have filed a formal complaint against the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector arm, for funding the expansion of a harmful bauxite mine. The 540 complainants allege that the IFC-financed project, Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée, has grabbed their land, destroyed their livelihoods and damaged the local environment.

The complaint, filed with the IFC’s independent watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, details violations of the IFC’s environmental and social Performance Standards and international law. Most of the world’s development banks have established such grievance mechanisms to monitor compliance with their environmental and social policies and address complaints from impacted communities.

The complainants are seeking full and fair redress for the harms they have suffered, along with protection from future violations. They have asked the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman to facilitate mediations with the IFC and Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée to address their grievances.

“The lands on which we and our ancestors have lived and farmed for centuries have been almost totally consumed by CBG,” said Mamadou Lamarana Bah, one of the complainants.  “With no more land, no more forests, no more water, how are we going to survive?

The villagers have lost agricultural land, which has led to a significant decline in their incomes and quality of life, and access to their water resources, which have been polluted, among other harmful impacts. The situation is especially perilous for the residents of Hamdallaye village, who have been told by the company that they will be imminently resettled, without their consent, in a former mining area that was not properly rehabilitated.

The complainants are being represented by two Guinean organizations, Centre du Commerce International pour le Developpement (CECIDE) and Association pour le développement rural et l’entraide mutuelle en Guinée (ADREMGUI), and the U.S. human rights organization Inclusive Development International.

The impoverished nation of Guinea is home to the world’s largest bauxite reserves. Mining companies have flooded the country in recent years, despite serious social and environmental concerns raised by Human Rights Watch and others. Bauxite mined by Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée is processed into aluminum that is used by major consumer brands to make cars, beverage cans and technology. Yet few Guineans benefit from such projects.

“International mining companies have been making a fortune off of Guinea’s rich mineral resources, while the communities impacted by mining have quite literally been left in the dust,” said Mathilde Chiffert, West Africa Legal Coordinator for Inclusive Development International.  “It’s high time for local communities to get a fair share of the benefits from mineral extraction.”

Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée is a joint venture between the Guinean government; the U.S. aluminum corporation Alcoa; the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto; and the Guernsey-registered Dadco. In 2016, the IFC provided a $200 million loan to expand the venture’s mining operations, with the U.S. government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation providing an additional $150 million.

A further $473 million came from a syndicate of commercial banks: France’s Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Natixis; the German affiliate of ING bank, ING-DiBa; and two Guinean banks, Société Générale de Banques en Guinée and Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l’Industrie de la Guinée, a member of the BNP Paribas group.

The German government guaranteed a portion of the financing through its Untied Loan Guarantees program.

Since it began operations in 1973, Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée has mined large areas of land in the area surrounding the town of Sangaredi, located in the lush Boké region. For years, the joint venture has denied the land rights of local communities, creating immense frustration among the population.

“We look forward to engaging in an equitable dialogue process with CBG, facilitated by an independent mediator to resolve the long-standing grievances of the complainants,” said Tenguiano Pascal, Executive Director of CECIDE.

The complaint is available at:

In English: https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CBG_CAO-Request-for-Mediation_FINAL-EN.pdf

In French: https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CBG_CAO_Request-for-Mediation_FINAL-FRE.pdf

For further reading, see:

“What Do We Get Out of It?” The Human Rights Impact of Bauxite Mining in Guinea, Human Rights Watch, October 2018

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I recently returned from joining the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (ELAW) for their 2018 Annual International Meeting and the African Public Interest Environmental and Human Rights Law conference in Arusha, Tanzania. The meetings brought together more than 100 people, and were co-hosted by Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team (LEAT) and the Association for Law and Advocacy for Pastoralists (ALAPA).

This was a wonderful way to meet ELAW’s grassroots advocates from 42 countries, especially those from the African continent, including Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Swaziland, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The environmental issues these defenders address range from land grabs, to extractive industries, climate change and more. Beyond ELAW partners, the Goldman Environmental Prize brought truly inspiring Prize winners from across Africa to participate as well.

I’ve recently started work as a francophone attorney with ELAW on a consultant basis, and had the pleasure of meeting my ELAW team members from the US and DRC.

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