Mining as Ecocide: The Case of Adani and the Carmichael Mine in Australia

Abstract

Large industrial coal mining projects result in considerable environmental and social harms. Yet these projects and the states and corporations that approve them are rarely referred to as “criminal.” A recent example is the Adani Group’s proposed Carmichael Mine in Queensland, Australia. If built, the Carmichael Mine would produce 40–60 million tons of thermal coal annually, making it one of the largest mines in the world. Once this amount of coal is burned, the Carmichael Mine would have produced 4.7 billion tons of greenhouse gases, effectively destroying the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem and putting future generations at risk because of its contribution to global warming. The Queensland state and Australian federal governments’ approval of the mine has relied on the denial of scientific studies on the resultant environmental harm, including climate change, and accepting the trade-off between ecological degradation and a presumed economic benefit. From the point of view of green criminology, the Australian government’s partnership with Adani can be considered “criminal”—a form of state-corporate crime. Fundamentally, these challenges are based upon the notion of ecocide, which involves the destruction of environments in pursuit of particular sectional interests. This chapter describes the developments surrounding the Carmichael Mine, including the state and corporate collusion involved in the mine’s approval. It argues the project constitutes the crime of ecocide and proposes an international law against ecocide, as a part of the Rome Statute, as a potential solution to prevent future environmental harm through mining.