Soamahamanina is a municipality located in Miarinarivo District in the Itasy Region, 70 kms from Antananarivo, the Madagascar capital. Most of the inhabitants have demonstrated since several months along the National Road 1 against a gold extraction project by a Chinese company. But the environmental permit - the last step before the operating permit according to the law - has been granted and the company came with his numerous Chinese employees, vans and heavy equipments. On the 20th of (...)

In recent years mining companies have become actively engaged in promoting ‘biodiversity offsetting’ as a way of ‘greening’ the mining sector. Biodiversity offsets are effectively a promise to make up for destroying biodiversity in one location by protecting biodiversity said to be at risk of being said to be at risk elsewhere. In practice, this gives companies a licence to continue with environmentally destructive operations. (...)
The Rio Tinto QMM biodiversity offset project in the Anosy (...)