Illegal mining for critical minerals needed for the global renewable energy transition is increasingly driving deforestation in Indigenous lands in the Amazon. In recent years, these illegal miners, who are often self-employed, mobile and working covertly, have expanded their gold mining operations to include cassiterite or “black gold”, a critical mineral essential for the renewable energy transition.
By Tim Palmer, author of Seek Higher Ground: The Natural Solution to Our Urgent Flooding CrisisAs the water rose during the most damaging flood in American history up to that time, I happened to be living at ground-zero of the storm. My house was narrowly spared, but neighbors suffered deepl