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(thread) on #EnvConflictDay @londonmining launched our #MartialMining report on the links between global extractivism and warfare - and London's role as a capital of organised violence through the mining industry and arms trade https://londonminingnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Martial-Mining.pdf /1
amidst global health, economic, climate and ecological crises causing untold devastation, we know states around the world are spending over $1.9 trillion a year on war, almost $5bn a day. @DefenceHQ alone is procuring a new generation of military hardware worth up to £350bn /2
if we include other institutions of warfare against working class, poor, racialised and/or colonised communities--including policing, borders, detention centres and prisons--this number is of course a vast underestimate /3
but #MartialMining's essential argument is that militarism is more than a death-making diversion of funds from the health of people and the planet towards warfare. it is an essential ingredient fuelling the climate & ecological crises: from mines to military bases to war-zones /4
maybe most strikingly, the US military is the world’s single largest polluter, with over 800 military bases around the globe. the UK’s military-industrial sector also has a carbon footprint more than 60 countries, like Madagascar and Zambia, at least 11m tonnes a year /5
#MartialMining relocates the trade & use of weapons to the bottom of global production chains where vast amounts of resources are extracted to assemble more technologies of war and destruction, leaving billions of tonnes of waste in rivers, soils & communities around the world /6
these military weapons and explosives return back cyclically to violently rupture ecosystems and habitats, and displace human (and non-human) communities who depend on the land for survival and sustenance - these are also acts of warfare, and #ecocide is a method of genocide /7
let’s meet some of the biggest mining companies who make war possible: @AngloAmerican, @bhp, @Glencore & @RioTinto -if you look at their annual reports and marketing, you're more likely to see wind turbines & electric vehicles than aircrafts dropping bombs or nuclear submarines/8
these companies downplay the role their minerals play in the global arms trade. they prefer to portray themselves as progressive technological institutions spreading ‘modern life’ and ‘progress’ around the world, and increasingly as essential to a ‘low carbon' global economy /9
but none of them accumulated ££billions in capital and global networks of mines overnight. they emerged through the colonial, racial and ecological violence that cooled then lit the planet on fire in the first place. they are the arsonists, not the firefighters /10
. @bhp was founded in Broken Hill in 1885 to mine silver, lead & zinc on grounds of 500+ frontier massacres across the Australian continent by settlers. it expanded into an industrial giant through global warfare by leading Australia’s production of weapons & aircraft in WW2 /11
. @AngloAmerican controlled ½ of private industry in South Africa by the end of apartheid. the mineworkers’ union estimates 46,000 people died in SA’s gold mines over the 20th century. Anglo (& @glencore) are products of this white supremacist colonial resource extraction /12
in 1873 a syndicate of Deutsche Bank and Matheson & Co (London-based trading house smuggling opium, tea + cotton from Hong Kong & Calcutta) bought the @RioTinto copper mines in Spain. its pioneering chairman Auckland Geddes was part of Britain's military establishment /13
. @RioTinto became integral to british militarism by leading a cartel to develop the UK's nuclear arsenal. occupied by apartheid S/Africa and operated by RT, Rössing uranium mine in Namibia supplied up to 25% of global production in 70s while extraction was prohibited by UN /14
today, @EnvJustice maps at least 83 conflicts surrounding the legacies or ongoing destruction of these companies' extractive operations. the report profiles just five of these frontlines in the climate emergency, & 18 of the critical minerals used in military technologies /15
1. over ½ of world’s cobalt is in the DRC, & @Glencore is the largest supplier of a metal with skyrocketing demand for batteries in smartphones & electric vehicles, but also fighter aircraft & missiles. Guildford's @CobaltInstitut represents 70% mined cobalt worldwide /16
the plunder of Congo’s vast wealth of natural resources extends from Leopold’s holocaust, Lumumba’s assassination and the deadliest conflict since WW2, to ongoing evictions, displacements, private militia and security force violence, child labour, & industrial pollution /17
the @BritishArmy provides training to Malawian and Zambian battalions before their deployment to UN peacekeeping operations in the DRC. MONUSCO is mandated to establish trading centres for coltan and gold, train ‘mining police’ and ‘extend state authority into mining sites’ /18
