Undermining Progress: Human Rights and the Low-Carbon Transition

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

Panama’s Copper Crisis: What a $20B Lawsuit Says About Investor Power

A Canadian mining giant is using a $20 billion lawsuit to pressure Panama into reopening a controversial copper mine. The case exposes how international investment agreements can undermine democracy, and why experts are calling for fairer investment frameworks worldwide.

Andrew Kaminsky

April 13

ENVIRONMENT

The Blockchain Solution for the World’s Most Problematic Minerals

Minerals pass through countless hands before reaching manufacturers, making it nearly impossible to trace the ethics of their origins. In Rwanda, one tin smelter turned to blockchain to bring transparency and trust to its supply chain.

Andrew Kaminsky

November 7, 2025

JUSTICE + EQUALITY

Is It Really a Just Transition If We Don’t Talk About Supporting Artisanal Miners?

Nearly 45 million people worldwide mine minerals by hand, often without legal recognition or protections. Formalizing artisanal and small-scale mining could secure supply chains while providing workers with safety standards, financial support and legal recognition.

Andrew Kaminsky

October 6, 2025

ENERGY

How to Regulate an Unregulated Area: The Deep-Sea Mining Challenge

As interest in deep-sea mining heats up, international lawmakers are struggling to decide how to regulate international waters. Creative solutions that ensure equitable benefit sharing are on the table.

Andrew Kaminsky

September 11, 2025

ENVIRONMENT

Is Deep-Sea Mining As Harmful As Mining On Land?

The deep sea holds metals necessary for the clean energy transition, but at what environmental cost?

Andrew Kaminsky

August 18, 2025

ENVIRONMENT

The Cook Islands’ Dilemma: To Mine or Not to Mine

While companies, countries, regulators, and researchers quarrel over whether and how to pursue a global deep-sea mining industry, the Cook Islands is slowly marching towards becoming the first place in the world to do it.

Andrew Kaminsky

July 8, 2025

ENVIRONMENT

Is Responsible Deep-Sea Mining Possible? Experts Say Maybe

Deep-sea mining could help meet the surging demand for clean energy minerals with fewer social harms. But without a true understanding of the environmental impacts and a lack of global regulations, the path ahead is in uncharted waters.

Andrew Kaminsky

June 9, 2025

ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIES

How Dark Matter and Hydropower Saved Mining Communities From Collapse

When a mine closes, people, towns and even countries lose a significant source of revenue. With an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines in the United States alone, repurposing mining sites helps support the surrounding community and mitigate negative impacts.

Andrew Kaminsky

February 24, 2025

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

Zero Waste Mining: Creating Opportunities From a Billion-Ton Problem

Mines produce an enormous amount of waste, some of which is highly toxic. But researchers and mine waste management companies say zero waste mining could become a reality, and it would be in the best economic interests of mining companies.

Andrew Kaminsky

December 10, 2024

ENERGY

Small Changes, Big Impact: These Lithium Battery Innovations Can Transform Lives

Companies and researchers around the world are finding new ways to improve the internal composition of lithium-ion batteries to create better-performing, more sustainable and lower-cost alternatives.

Andrew Kaminsky

November 22, 2024

JUSTICE + EQUALITY

Will the World Bank's New Policy Reduce the Environmental and Social Harms of Clean Energy?

The World Bank recently released its long-awaited Approach to Responsible Exit policy. It's designed to ensure risks to communities are managed responsibly when it exits a project investment. Will it be effective?

Andrew Kaminsky

November 18, 2024

ENERGY

Lithium is Good, But What Are Some Better Battery Alternatives?

Lithium-ion batteries are the current standard, but there's room for improvement. In the newest installment of our responsible mining series, Andrew Kaminsky explores the benefits of alternative batteries and the environmental and social implications of extracting minerals to scale their production. <br />

Andrew Kaminsky

November 7, 2024

ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIES

How Co-Ownership Built a Strong Relationship Between an Indigenous Community and a Mining Company

Co-ownership could be a responsible mining solution to ensure communities can actually influence company decisions that affect them. Right now, it's very rare. But a partnership between the Tahltan Central Government and Skeena Resources shows it's possible.

Andrew Kaminsky

October 8, 2024

ENVIRONMENT

From the Petri Dish to the Mine: These Microbes Dissolve Minerals

Mining companies are using microbes break up low-grade ores and release the desired metal. It's called biomining, and it can reduce the environmental and social impacts of the process.

Andrew Kaminsky

September 9, 2024

ENERGY

These Plants Are Made of Metal, And They Might Be the Fix the Clean Energy Transition Needs

Scientists discovered a group of plants that accumulate significant amounts of critical minerals like nickel from the soil around them. Now, they're exploring mining plants, a process called phytomining, to help supply the minerals needed to power the clean energy transition.

Andrew Kaminsky

September 3, 2024

ECONOMY

Closing the Loopholes Mining Giants Use to Avoid Taxes

To avoid paying higher tax rates, multinational mining companies use strategies like shifting profits from the country of extraction to a low-tax country, doing an injustice to the countries and communities relying on that tax revenue. Several organizations are working to close these loopholes.

Andrew Kaminsky

July 8, 2024

JUSTICE + EQUALITY

Mining Companies are Suing Governments, and It's Compromising Environmental and Human Rights Laws

Did you know companies can sue countries for enacting social and environmental protections that impact their projects? It's called an investor-state dispute settlement, and some say the mechanism is necessary to mobilize private investment. Human rights and environmental organizations disagree.

Andrew Kaminsky

May 2, 2024

JUSTICE + EQUALITY

Empowering Indigenous Voices Might be the Key to a Successful Green Energy Transition

With 54 percent of transition mineral projects located on or near Indigenous peoples’ lands, getting free, prior, and informed consent from Indigenous communities for mining project development is one way to ensure they are not neglected as the green energy transition marches forward.

Andrew Kaminsky

February 26, 2024

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

What Happened in Panama? How Transparency Measures Can Fight Corruption in Mining

In November, thousands of Panamanians took the streets to protest a copper mining contract. Their story is one of many unfolding around the world, in which corporate and government corruption make way for mining projects that harm the public good. Measures like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative can help.

Andrew Kaminsky

January 8, 2024

ECONOMY

The Role of Development Banks in Mining Projects, and How Communities Can Hold Them Accountable

Development banks can offer an avenue for communities impacted by mining projects to seek justice. We take a closer look as part of "Undermining Progress," a solutions journalism series focused on human rights and environmental concerns tied to mining for the low-carbon energy transition.

Andrew Kaminsky

December 4, 2023

JUSTICE + EQUALITY

The Energy Transition is Hiding a Human Rights Problem: Due Diligence ‘Takes the Cover Off’

While the mining industry still has a long way to go, human rights due diligence requires an intimate examination of supply chains and pushes the needle toward better and more just practices as the energy transition accelerates.

Andrew Kaminsky

October 23, 2023

JUSTICE + EQUALITY

Hidden Costs: The Impacts of Net-Zero on Human Rights and the Environment

Renewable energy technologies require specific minerals like cobalt, copper and lithium, but mining these minerals has been linked to human rights abuses in some parts of the world.

Andrew Kaminsky

October 13, 2023