In addition to forced Uyghur labor in China, poorly managed bauxite mining also creates serious ecological and human rights abuses in communities across the globe.
A recent report from Human Rights Watch identified Indigenous communities in Guinea, Ghana, Malaysia, and Australia who experienced the loss of land, polluted waters, and loss of livelihoods from bauxite mining. In Guinea, it is estimated that over the next twenty years bauxite mining will destroy more than 4,700 square kilometers of natural habitat, an area six times the size of New York City. West Africa has already lost significant critical ecosystem hotspots, and the expansion of bauxite mining in Guinea is driving critically endangered western chimpanzees to the brink, with populations plummeting.