Le lobby d’Anglo American pour l’énergie polluante et ses fausses solutions pour le climat

This report by Friends of the Earth International, the Corporate Europe Observatory, and the Transnational Institute examines how the mining company Anglo American uses its influence over governments and the UNFCCC to promote 'false solutions' to the climate crisis while continuing the extraction of polluting energy sources, specifically focusing on the El Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia.

• Anglo American and its partners operate the El Cerrejón open-pit coal mine in La Guajira, Colombia, which has caused severe social and environmental destruction. The mine consumes 17 million litres of water per day, while local residents in Alta Guajira consume an average of only 0.7 litres per day. This has led to water pollution, respiratory and intestinal illnesses, and the displacement of indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and peasant communities by the national army.
• The report characterizes Anglo American's Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and 'green' projects as 'greenwashing' designed to hide socio-ecological conflicts. These include biodiversity offsets that ignore the uniqueness of destroyed areas and the provision of public services like schools and health clinics to fill state absences, which the report claims are used to prove the mine does no harm while ignoring mining-related respiratory and ocular diseases.
• Anglo American utilizes a complex network of business associations and lobby groups to influence climate policy. These include EUROMINES, which lobbies the EU for the use of shale gas and the Emissions Trading System (ETS); the International Council for Mining and Metals (ICMM), which promotes Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS); and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), which opposes mandatory environmental and social standards.
• The company has secured privileged access to the UNFCCC, notably during COP17 in Durban, where it had 17 delegates and co-organized events with the South African government. The report claims this access allows the company to push for 'false solutions'—such as carbon markets, CCS, and REDD—which allow companies to continue polluting while appearing 'green'.
• The report highlights the 'financialization of nature,' where environmental goods like carbon and biodiversity are turned into financial products. This allows companies to use 'offsets' to avoid changing their behavior, effectively receiving permission to pollute by replacing destroyed biodiversity elsewhere.
• To counter corporate power, the authors propose several measures: removing the privileged access of polluting companies to national and international officials, establishing a 'firewall' between UNFCCC personnel and lobbyists, ending public subsidies for polluting energy, and adopting a UN treaty on transnational corporations and human rights.

APA

Ortiz, L., Sabido, P., Tansey, R., Forero, L. F., Urrea, D., & Shaw, S. (2014). Le lobby d’Anglo American pour l’énergie polluante et ses fausses solutions pour le climat. Friends of the Earth International. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/19-foei-corporate-capture-report-fr-lr.pdf

Chicago

Ortiz, Lucía, Pascoe Sabido, Rachel Tansey, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Danilo Urrea, and Sara Shaw. Le lobby d’Anglo American pour l’énergie polluante et ses fausses solutions pour le climat. Friends of the Earth International, 2014. https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/19-foei-corporate-capture-report-fr-lr.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ortiz |first1=Lucía |last2=Sabido |first2=Pascoe |last3=Tansey |first3=Rachel |last4=Forero |first4=Lyda Fernanda |last5=Urrea |first5=Danilo |last6=Shaw |first6=Sara |title=Le lobby d’Anglo American pour l’énergie polluante et ses fausses solutions pour le climat |publisher=Friends of the Earth International |date=November 2014 |url=https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/19-foei-corporate-capture-report-fr-lr.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ortiz2014lobby, author = {Ortiz, Lucía and Sabido, Pascoe and Tansey, Rachel and Forero, Lyda Fernanda and Urrea, Danilo and Shaw, Sara}, title = {{Le lobby d’Anglo American pour l’énergie polluante et ses fausses solutions pour le climat}}, institution = {Friends of the Earth International}, year = {2014}, month = nov, url = {https://www.foei.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/19-foei-corporate-capture-report-fr-lr.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }