The Adani Group wants to expand its coal operations by 800%. In Australia, they’re opening up one of the biggest untouched coal reserves on the planet, while expanding coal production in India and beyond. From Indonesia to Australia to India, Adani is under fire for land grabs and disregarding Indigenous rights. Sadly, this is the British Science Museum's new sponsor of the ‘Energy Revolution’ Gallery!
Leaders from indigenous communities in Australia, India and Indonesia, wrote to the museum to warn them that it's agreement with Adani is legitimising its “destructive coal expansion activities” and that “Indigenous communities in all these countries are experiencing land-grabs, repression, the destruction of sacred lands, pollution of air, land and water...”
In support of their letter, people gathered on the doorstep of the museum, with an advertising van playing a video message from the land defenders resisting Adani. Together with other groups, we are demanding the British Science Museum #DropAdani as a sponsor.
We heard leaders from the Hasdeo Forest under threat from Adani’s coal mining for a decade, Adivasi people who marched 300km to save their lands from an Adani coal mine in Chhattisgarh, Borneo on the doorstep of the massive Adani coal mine on Bunyu island, and Wangan and Jagalingou still fighting Adani’s destruction of their sacred territory.
👀 Want to hear their stories? Watch their film.
The man behind this all is Gautam Adani, the billionaire chairman and founder of the Adani Group. With a net worth estimated at US $74 billion, he is considered the second-richest man in India. One of our partners for the action, South Asia Solidarity Group have written about his rise to power and links with Narendra Modi:
"Narendra Modi became Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001 using divisive Hindu nationalist rhetoric and a promise of modernity and development through neoliberal economic planning, working side by side with Gautam Adani and other powerful corporates. This period is marked, inevitably, by the State weakening labour power, fuelling xenophobia, fascism and violence, and exponentially rising inequality."
It’s abundantly clear, there’s no room for expansion of the fossil fuel industry. Over the last year with your support we have managed to convince insurers to no longer underwrite Adani's Australian mega mine. However, Adani is still looking to expand his corporate empire and is in desperate need of private finance. Sponsorship, one of the ways to clean the Adani brand and attract new finance and insurance.
We are an environmental organisation dedicated to ending coal mining and use in the UK for the sake of our collective climate and ecosystems. So you’d think we’d celebrate the claim by Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd that it will finally stop mining coal today at Ffos-y-fran in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. But we’re not. Because the abject failure of Merthyr County Borough Council to stop…
People hailing from Cumbria to London, and everywhere in between, descended on the Mines and Money Conference in London across two days (28th-29th Nov 2023). We demanded that investors stop pouring cash into the mining sector, and instead invest in our collective future. Together with Fossil Free London and other groups, we greeted investors with…
The insurers that have ruled out underwriting the mine are AEGIS Managing Agency, Argenta Syndicate Management, Hannover Re and Talanx. These are the first financial institutions to rule out any involvement with the project, and the win represents a new phase in the campaign to stop the project from going ahead.
Today’s global actions focused specifically on the state-owned China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure), the Export-Import Bank of China (China Exim), and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC). Sinosure is said to be in advanced talks with the Ugandan government about providing credit for the project.
On 18th October dozens of protesters staged a sit-in occupation of the plush City of London offices of ten Lloyd’s of London insurers demanding they rule out insuring the proposed West Cumbria coal mine and East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
Global mining companies are coming to London soon attempting to find investors in their ruinous projects at the Mines and Money Conference (28th to 30th November). Join our protests against it!
01 September 2022: Merthyr (South Wales) Ltd applies for a S.73 time extension to mine coal from Ffos-y-fran, and to accordingly delay and vary restoration works.
06 September 2022: Planning permission ends for coal mining at the Ffos-y-fran site, after 15 years and 3 months of operations.
12 September 2022: first reports to MTCBC have been made by local residents of coaling beyond the end of planning permission.
Over 30 Welsh NGOs and businesses have signed a letter to Welsh Minister Julie James and Deputy Minister Lee Waters, demanding they draw a line in the sand and announce ban on any further coal mines on Welsh soil. The letter was delivered on 11th October 2023.
On 15th September 2023, The Guardian reported that Tata Steel accepted Government funding to avoid closing its steelworks in Port Talbot, South Wales, by decarbonising it instead – but at a loss of up to 3,000 jobs. The UK Government is providing £500 million, and Tata Steel is expected to provide another £725 million…
