Tag Archives: sustainability

Apr 15 2026
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PRESS RELEASE: New investigation exposes ArcelorMittal’s toxic coal chain, from Moatize to Dunkirk

Image: Éric Delfosse with Emidio Josine / Disclose

Maputo / Paris, 15th April 2026 — An investigation published today by Disclose and Socialter lays bare the human and environmental costs of ArcelorMittal’s dependence on coal extracted in Moatize, in Tete province, central Mozambique. This coal is then shipped to ArcellorMittal’s Dunkirk plant, the single most polluting factory in France, although it received millions of euros of public funds, especially targeted to produce “green steel”.

Air saturated with toxic particles, cracked homes, poisoned farmland, contaminated water, and destroyed livelihoods: the residents of Moatize are paying with their health and their futures for steel produced thousands of kilometres away — while the transnational corporation makes billions in profits.

Air monitoring conducted by Justiça Ambiental JA! between September and October 2024 recorded fine particle concentrations of up to 340 μg/m³ in Moatize, which is seven times the WHO recommended threshold. Zinc levels were nearly 20 times higher than safety limits in neighbouring South Africa. Vanadium and manganese, both known carcinogens, exceeded safe thresholds by 12 and 7 times respectively. As local residents, affected communities and civil society organisations like JA! have repeatedly denounced, the families of Moatize are suffocating under coal dust.

The contamination reaches far beyond the air. Scientists have found dangerous concentrations of metals including copper and selenium in water sources around Moatize. Farmland is coated in coal dust. Explosions from the mine crack the walls of nearby homes. In January 2026, a red-hot rock projectile tore through a family’s house while a mother and daughter were inside.

Women and children, as always, pay the highest price. Isabel Graça Correia, 43, is one of many who has been suffering with tuberculosis — a disease strongly linked to coal dust exposure. She was forced to terminate a pregnancy and has been unable to conceive since.

ArcelorMittal: profits, public money, and an architecture of corporate impunity

The coal extracted by Vulcan Minerals, a subsidiary of Indian conglomerate Jindal Steel and ArcelorMittal’s direct supplier, is shipped from Mozambique’s port of Nacala to ArcelorMittal’s Dunkirk plant in France. ArcelorMittal is the world’s second largest steel producer, headquartered in Luxembourg and controlled by the billionaire Mittal family, with operations in over 60 countries — and its Dunkirk plant is the single most polluting factory in France, producing 12 million tonnes of CO₂ per year.

According to Disclose’s investigation, this same corporation has received at least €244 million in French public funds since 2021, pledged to reduce its environmental footprint through the production of “green steel”, then scaled back its green transition plans. The two electric ovens promised by 2027 became one, now delayed to 2029.

When confronted with the findings of this investigation, ArcelorMittal claimed that “no material risk, no warning signal and no unfavourable observation” had been identified in its supply chain assessment. This is an insult to every person living in Moatize.

Under the French law on the duty of vigilance, ArcelorMittal is legally required to prevent serious harm to human health and the environment throughout its own activities and those of the entities in its supply chain. The evidence of pollution in both Moatize and Dunkirk points out to failure to comply with those legal obligations, while the company is making huge financial profits. Last year’s profits amounted to 3.15bn USD.

“This investigation confirms what communities in Moatize have been shouting for years. ArcelorMittal’s coal supply chain is a textbook case of colonial extractivism: a marginalized community in one of the world’s poorest countries bears the toxic burden of production, while a transnational company headquartered in Europe collects the profits — backed by hundreds of millions in European public subsidies. It is not an accident, it is an architecture, and the corporation responsible calls it ‘no risk’. JA! Stands with these communities and will continue supporting their struggle until there is justice.” – Erika Mendes, Justiça Ambiental JA!

“This toxic coal supply chain, from Moatize in Mozambique to Dunkirk in France, is not an isolated failure. It is the designed outcome of a global economic model that extracts wealth from communities in the Global South to fuel industrial production in the Global North, shielded by legal loopholes, weak enforcement of existing laws, and the active support of governments and financial institutions. It is unacceptable to see the same patterns repeating over decades, with communities paying the price while transnational corporations make profits and even benefit from public money that would be urgently needed for a true and just energy transition.”– Juliette Renaud,  Friends of the Earth France.

Our demands

Justiça Ambiental and Friends of the Earth France call on:

  • the French government to condition all public subsidies on verifiable respect of human rights and the environment in all the supply chain; 
  • the Mozambican government to immediately halt coal extraction operations in Moatize until an independent, community-informed assessment of the full human, environmental and health costs has been conducted and made public; to implement urgent measures to monitor, control and reduce pollution levels; to provide immediate public health responses to affected communities and ensure that they have access to justice, remedy and reparations;
  • all governments,  to actively support and engage on the ongoing negotiations for a strong and effective UN Binding Treaty on transnational corporations and human rights, which must establish enforceable obligations and effective access to justice and remedies for affected communities like those in Moatize.

Press Contacts:

Erika Mendes, Justiça Ambiental JA! / erikasmendes@gmail.com 

Marion Cubizolles, Friends of the Earth France / marion.cubizolles@amisdelaterre.org ; +33 6 86 41 53 43

Read here the full investigation by Disclose and Socialter: https://disclose.ngo/en/article/arcelormittal-causes-environmental-and-health-disaster-in-mozambique

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Sep 21 2024
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Activism, african corruption, artivism

September 21st : International Day of Struggle Against Tree Monocultures

Today, September 21, 2024, is the International Day of Struggle Against Tree Monocultures! On this day, we publicly denounce, once again, the numerous and serious impacts of industrial plantations on the lives of rural communities, including their livelihoods and the ecosystems on which they directly depend on.

Year after year we bring reports and complaints from affected communities… year after year we demonstrate how evident the negative impacts are on the lives of the vast majority of those affected, and that the “better life” promised by companies such as Portucel and Green Resources as well as by our Government, only served as a discourse to deceive communities into giving up their lands! The “empty” discourse of “development” that encouraged the land grabbing of community lands to make way for plantations was forgotten at that moment, all that remains is the memory and the hurt of the countless peasant families deliberately deceived! Some still believe that companies will fulfill the promises made, will build schools, bridges, hospitals and that they will eventually have jobs that will change their lives. Some don’t even realize that all these promises are actually the responsibilities of the Mozambican Government, and that these are the same promises made in all electoral campaigns, and little or nothing actually happens!

The denunciations, appeals and complaints from affected communities and social organizations and movements have been largely ignored year after year by the various State institutions responsible for looking after the interests of the People! 

This year, we celebrate this day in a very different context from the previous ones, in the middle of the Election Campaign! It was exactly to escape this context that we held our International Meeting Against Monoculture Plantations, in celebration of the International Day of Struggle Against Monoculture Plantations, on the 22nd and 23rd of August.

The meeting took place in the Province of Manica, and was attended by members of communities directly affected by plantations from the companies Portucel, Green Resources and Mozambique Holdings, from the Provinces of Manica, Zambézia and Nampula, as well as members of Quilombola communities in Brazil also affected by plantations. The objective of the meeting was to promote exchanges between communities affected by industrial Plantations and to carry out visits to some affected communities, to understand their impacts on site. We didn’t see any development, we didn’t see any improvement in the living conditions, we saw eucalyptus plantations, which enrich foreign businessmen, where before we saw farms to feed the people.

At this meeting, organized in partnership by Justiça Ambiental, the World Rainforest Movement, Missão Tabita and AJOCME, we once again listened and felt the enormous negative impact that these plantations have on the lives of communities! Testimony after testimony we heard how they were deceived, how they regret having believed, we see the feelings of despair and anguish in the face of the new reality.

“Everything the company has done to date does not compensate for what we lost by giving up our land” – Affected by Portucel Moçambique plantations, Zambézia Province

“The company arrived with many promises, school, hospital, but nothing happened and now we can’t even produce well in the lowlands, because these trees are drying up our water” – Affected by Portucel Mozambique plantations, Manica Province. 

“We were deceived because we didn’t know anything, they arrived with many promises, we accepted because we believed we would have a better life, they promised to fix the roads, school and hospital. Not even paying compensation for our land, others received little and others saw nothing. Now our struggle is really big, to recover our lands for agriculture, because we are peasants, that’s all we do” – Affected by Green Resources plantations, Nampula Province.

We urge the Government of Mozambique to reject all false solutions to climate change and for the people’s well-being, such as carbon credit projects, and invest effort and resources in supporting peasant agriculture, for a diversified and quality food production through agroecology in order to ensure food sovereignty; We urge the Government to promote and facilitate community-based initiatives to generate income and conserve our natural resources and important ecosystems! We also urge the Government to carry out, as a matter of urgency, a serious and impartial assessment of the social, environmental and economic impacts of the industrial plantations that it has promoted so much and continues to promote, as this will clearly demonstrate that these plantation model does not work.

Continuing to allow and promote false solutions will worsen the lack of political will and financing to implement real, decentralized solutions based on the needs, interests and will of the people.

Plantations are not forests! Plantations take away land, resources and ways of life…

We stand in solidarity, today and always, with all peoples and communities that resist the usurpation of their territories and ways of life!

The struggle goes on!

For rights, For justice, For a better world for everyone!

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