TSF-Mining 2023 Action Agenda

1. Continue the global campaign of Right to Say No, representing an alliance amongst affected communities, organized labour, forest and fishing-dependent communities, peasant and indigenous communities as well as women’s, LGBTQI+ and youth movements, and other like-minded organizations determining their own development path and rejecting the violent imposition of extractive projects, by:

a. Collectively mobilise and empower grassroots communities, including women front-line defenders, to resist extractivist projects in their communities, defend their land and livelihoods and assert their rights. This includes building joint strategies through open dialogue and discussion.

b. Develop collective strategies to respond and resist corporate tactics to intimidate and pressure communities, counteract state repression and pressure governments to uphold laws and mechanisms to protect human rights and the environment.

c. Strengthen regional and global solidarity to elevate the voices of communities affected by extractivism in the Right to Say No, including through social media, online resources, and sharing success stories. This includes counteracting the coercive narratives pushed forward by corporate interests around false solutions to the climate crisis, such as certification, green economy, and mining.

2. Identify and share alternatives and solutions, including highlighting positive stories of how communities mobilise to work together in solidarity with each other in defending their territories, and promoting communities’ development visions (see Item 5).

1. Map out our joint struggles specifically over transition minerals – including by geography, by commodity type of impact and supply chain connectivity – to exchange knowledge and assess how we can better support each other. Based on this mapping to consider developing a joint campaign with a limited number of shared goals. This mapping, and any subsequent actions, would ideally include:

a. Reducing production and manufactured consumption and the circular society.

b. Identifying the need for capacity building in affected communities, including promoting direct funding to affected communities.

c. Identifying the links between the renewable energy transition and increased threats against local communities, environmental advocates, and human rights defenders.

d. Documenting and sharing examples of joint organising between labour. movements and communities in relation to just transition, including facilitating further discussions in different local, national and regional contexts.

e. Identifying specific corporate targets and supply chains, linking to organised labour.

f. Identifying the role of unjust trade agreements and extractivist economic frameworks.

g. Considering how to advocate with climate related actors and events, including the UNFCCC.

h. Developing strategies for complaints and legal cases, and considerations.

2.  Jointly explore narratives and counter-narratives on the Just Transition, transition minerals, and the trade and supply-chain nexus. This would include:

a. Key unified narratives, but with local flexibility

b. Notions of the ‘Blue Economy’ and ‘green growth’

c. Colonial traps that reinforce “mining for development” or “more mining to solve the climate crisis” in pursuit of securing supply chain, free trade, and economic growth

3.  Emphasise feminist just transition in all conversations related to climate solutions.

1. Hold governments, corporations, private and public financiers and multilateral institutions accountable for environmental harms and violations against nature’s right to existence through the whole supply chain:

a. Reject certification mechanisms on “responsible mining” that justify the expansion of extractivism.

b. Unite communities to build transnational struggles linking where companies are based and where violations occur.

c. Support the negotiations for the UN Legally Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights.

2. Hold governments, corporations, private and public financiers and multilateral institutions accountable for human rights violations against defenders opposing mining and other extractive industries through the whole supply chain:

a.  Identify, give visibility and actual protection to defenders who are being criminalized by building public awareness, pressure, and solidarity and if possible cross-national legal support.

b. Oppose existing and emerging government policies that target and/or criminalize defenders, or provide support for big business in mining and extractive industries.

c. Collectively address the specific threats and attacks toward women human rights defenders such as counter narrative against feminist and queer movement, sexual violence, discrimination, character assassination and oral defamation, as well as physical and mental health issues as the result of excessive stress and exhaustion of multiple burden in the family and community.

d. Implement and ensure upholding genuine and inclusive FPIC processes throughout the life-cycle of the project.

e. Demand and leverage the power and influence of investors to mitigate, minimize, and address reprisals.

f. Unite communities to build transnational struggles linking where companies are based and where violations occur.

3. Promote transparency and education on state and corporate cooperation throughout the whole supply chain:

a.  Spread counter narratives exposing the use of “public interest” narratives to further corporate and private interests, including for energy transition minerals.

b. Promote the right to say no over strategies used to co-opt communities, weaken resistance, and greenwash capitalism, such as consultation, certification, and environmental impact assessments.

c. Expose the collaboration between government and private armed groups that threaten and harm communities who are resisting.

4. Expose and build collective strategies to dismantle the architecture of corporate impunity and the corporate capture of the state through trade and investment policies, and international financial institutions and sovereign debt:

a.  Reject the financial structure of unbearable intergenerational debt owed by the Global South to the Global North through the World Bank, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions.

5. Expose the links between extractive industries and the military- industrial complex and support campaigns against heightening militarization around the world

1. Support grassroots and national initiatives around developing and expanding protection mechanisms for defenders opposing mining and other extractive industries:

a.  Establish and/or expand networks supporting environmental and human rights defenders working against mining and other extractive industries.

b. Connect cultural resistance by documenting histories and stories through different art forms (e.g. songs, poems, dances, and drawings).

2. Promote and explore the concept of rights of nature as a means of defending human and more-than-human nature against mining and extractive industries.

3. Promote ecofeminism as an analytical tool throughout issues related to extractivism by:

a.  Generating safe spaces for women to share their experiences and perspectives.

b. Maintaining balanced representation across region, gender, and background.

4. Support agroecology and ecological activities and food sovereignty (e.g. building local seed banks and seed exchange)

5. Promote and explore the well-being economy (e.g. local cooperatives), degrowth, circular society, and the solidarity economy as alternatives to extractivism.

1. Launch globally coordinated, locally-driven actions in line with an International Month / Days of Action against Mining and Extractive Industries:

a.  Propose a theme every year that local, national, and regional groups can associate with for their respective actions

2. Create regional, national and local gatherings in between global gatherings to solidify collective strategy and coordination from the bottom-up

a.  Ensure that affected communities are able to represent themselves at these gatherings and discussions.

b.  Scale up women’s and youth voices and experiences resisting against extractivism at local, national and international platforms.