Home > Adani’s engineers GHD stay silent on coal mine work

Adani’s engineers GHD stay silent on coal mine work

15 July 2019

Alpha coal mine test pit
The Alpha test coal pit above was the first in the Galilee Basin. GHD is working on the engineering design for Adani’s nearby Carmichael coal mine project. Credit: Andrew Quilty

15 July 2019

The engineering consultancy managing the design of Adani’s Carmichael coal mine is refusing to comment publicly or meet with #StopAdani alliance groups, as protests grow over its involvement in the disastrous project.

Australia-based multinational GHD has a history of working with Adani on Carmichael. It developed the project’s Environmental Impact Statement and a report that inflated potential jobs figures, which were later discredited by Adani’s own economic expert under oath in court.

On its website, GHD claims to have a “commitment to sustainable development”. Yet it is doing the engineering design for a project that threatens water supplies, trashes traditional owners’ land rights and will fuel ever-worsening heatwaves, bushfires, droughts and storms.

Helping ramp up the use of one of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuels in the midst of deadly global warming is the opposite of sustainable development.

Groups involved in the #StopAdani alliance have written to GHD twice, once in October 2018 and again this month, requesting a meeting and asking GHD to refuse further work on the project. Despite these letters, media requests for comment and thousands of emails from the public, GHD’s management has maintained a strict silence about its role in building this climate-wrecking coal mine.

GHD’s silence perpetuates the mystery around why it remains so committed to such a destructive project. According to its business reporting, 16% of revenue in 2018 came from “energy and resources” (only a proportion of which would be from coal mining), while 27% of revenue came from its “environment” work.

GHD owes its staff, clients and the general public an explanation as to why it’s willing to risk its brand and fuel our climate emergency…

Considering the massive reputational risks of the deeply unpopular Adani Carmichael mine here in Australia and its impact on the global climate, GHD owes its staff, clients and the general public an explanation as to why it’s willing to risk its brand and fuel our climate emergency for a project that’s not currently a major part of its business nor a growth industry.

Take action

Tell GHD to refuse any further work on the Adani Carmichael coal mine and rail project: