Zambian Farmers’ $80 Billion Lawsuit Over Toxic Mine Spill

In September 2025, 176 subsistence farmers from Zambia’s Copperbelt filed an $80 billion lawsuit against two Chinese-owned mining companies, Sino Metals Leach Zambia and NFC Africa Mining, over a tailings dam collapse that poisoned rivers used by roughly five million people. The Zambian farmers’ lawsuit against the Chinese mining companies over the toxic spill is now before the Supreme Court on appeal, after the High Court in November 2025 rejected the defendants’ attempt to have it thrown out.¹

What Happened at the Tailings Dam

On February 18, 2025, an earthen wall at a waste reservoir operated by Sino Metals Leach Zambia collapsed at its copper mine near Chambishi.² The breach released millions of liters of acidic tailings carrying cyanide, arsenic, lead, uranium, chromium, cadmium, copper, and zinc into local waterways.³

Contamination was detected more than 100 kilometers downstream on the Kafue River, which supplies drinking water to about five million people, including residents of Lusaka. Water service in Kitwe, Zambia’s second-largest city, was cut off, leaving roughly 700,000 people without drinking water.⁴ Fish died in mass, livestock were killed, and staple crops of maize and beans were destroyed on contact. Residents reported headaches, coughs, diarrhea, skin sores, and blood in their urine.⁵

Testing found 24 heavy metals in the Mwambashi Stream and Kafue River, 16 of them above World Health Organization safety thresholds.² Health experts warned that long-term exposure could cause organ damage, birth defects, and cancer.³

What the Farmers Are Asking For

On September 12, 2025, 176 residents of Kalusale and Chambishi filed a constitutional petition, Case No. 2025/HP/1285, in the High Court of Zambia. The petitioners say they represent roughly 300,000 affected households, and they attribute the dam failure to “engineering failures, construction flaws and operational mismanagement.”⁵ The petition alleges violations of constitutional rights to life, property, and a clean environment, and it invokes Zambia’s Environmental Management Act, Mines and Mineral Development Act, and Mineral Regulations Commission Act.¹

The relief sought includes:

An $80 billion reparation fund, to sit in a government-managed escrow account, covering long-term remediation, restoration, and compensation.⁶
A $200 million emergency fund for immediate community aid, health assessments, and interim support.⁷
Monthly relocation payments of 8,000 Zambian kwacha (about $344) per person for temporary relocation outside the contaminated area.⁶

A separate group of plaintiffs has also signaled intent to sue for $220 million in damages and creation of a $10 billion long-term rehabilitation fund.⁷ Some academics have called the $80 billion figure “largely symbolic,” aimed at forcing accountability rather than reflecting a realistic payout.⁸

The petitioners are represented by two Zambian law firms, Messrs. Malambo & Co. and Lusitu Chambers, with strategic support from the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide.⁹

Who Is Being Sued

Both defendants are subsidiaries of China Nonferrous Mining Corporation (CNMC), a state-controlled company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. CNMC operates as the overseas mining platform for China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group, a central state-owned enterprise managed by China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.¹⁰ NFC Africa Mining was incorporated in 1998 to acquire the Chambishi Copper Mine; Sino Metals Leach Zambia was established in 2003 and began commercial production in 2006. The Sino Metals mine operates within NFC Africa Mining’s surface area near Chambishi.¹

CNMC labeled the lawsuit “unfounded” in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing and asserted it had “fully fulfilled its restoration and remediation obligations.”⁷ NFC Africa Mining also called the suit “unfounded” and said the incident “has not caused any significant impact on the surrounding environment or community.”¹ Despite the suspended operations, CNMC reported after-tax profits of $371 million in the first half of 2025 and issued a $167 million dividend for 2024, its highest in at least six years.¹¹

The Settlement Waivers Villagers Signed

A parallel controversy shadows the lawsuit. In July 2025, the Zambian government ordered Sino Metals to provide interim compensation to 454 affected farming households.¹²³¹³

To receive the money, villagers had to sign a “Deed of Settlement and Release” declaring the payment a “full and final settlement of all claims” and waiving the right to sue for further damages. Some agreements also carried confidentiality clauses barring recipients from discussing the spill or the deeds themselves.¹³ By July 2025, at least 27 of the petitioners had signed these agreements.³

Lawyers for the affected communities challenge the legitimacy of the waivers. They argue most residents are impoverished, that many are illiterate, and that signers were not given adequate time or opportunity to seek independent legal advice.³ Whether the deeds are enforceable is now a central issue in the litigation.

Where the Case Stands Now

After the petition was filed, Sino Metals applied to dismiss it on procedural grounds. The company argued the case had been filed under the wrong procedure, that the constitutional issues were “too remote” from the environmental harm, and that the lawsuit was premature because no completed environmental impact assessment existed.¹⁴ On November 17, 2025, the High Court rejected all three arguments and let the case proceed.¹ A substantive hearing followed on December 10, 2025.

Sino Metals then appealed to the Supreme Court. That appeal, Appeal No. 8/2026, was heard on June 3, 2026.¹⁵ During the hearing, the Supreme Court directed that the government of Zambia be joined as a party, citing its role as custodian of the public interest and the broader societal implications of the disaster.¹³ A ruling on the appeal had not been issued at the time of the most recent reporting.

There is also a parallel private action. Panthera Ventures Limited has sued Sino Metals in the Lusaka High Court seeking to force the company to cease polluting operations, suspend activity at the tailings facility, install air pollution controls, and compensate farmers and property owners.¹⁶

The Dispute Over How Much Was Spilled

The scale of the spill is itself contested, and the disagreement matters to the case. Sino Metals initially reported that about 50,000 cubic meters of material had been released and that the breach was “promptly brought under control within hours of detection.”⁵ Drizit Environmental, a South African pollution control firm that Sino Metals itself hired to assess the damage, reached a very different conclusion. After a two-month investigation involving roughly 30 experts and more than 3,500 samples, Drizit found that at least 1.5 million tons of toxic waste had escaped, 30 times the company’s figure.¹⁷

Drizit’s 385-page report described the site as a “toxic environment capable of causing irreversible harm to both the ecosystem and human health” and estimated that roughly 900,000 cubic meters of toxic material remained in the environment. Cleaning it up, Drizit said, would require 100 trucks working daily for a year.³

Sino Metals terminated Drizit’s contract, citing “contractual breaches.” Drizit told the story differently, alleging the company had “actively sought to disrupt the assessment process” and terminated the contract just days before its conclusion “seemingly with the intention of preventing our report from reaching the proper authorities.”¹⁸

Why This Case Matters

Zambian regulators did suspend the mine’s operations, fined the company 1.5 million kwacha (about $50,000), and ordered remediation steps including liming rivers and planting trees.⁸⁴⁵¹⁹

A government-commissioned assessment by Applied Science and Technology Associates, disclosed at a public meeting on January 6, 2026, found that the dam failure was caused by “long-standing failures in oversight and enforcement” rather than being a purely technical event. The report identified a core contamination zone of about 5.35 square kilometers with elevated heavy metals in the soil and warned that river sediments remained reservoirs of pollution. At least 158 people were living in areas deemed unsafe for human settlement.²⁰

Between December 2023 and February 2025, the Copperbelt experienced three major incidents: a mudslide from an old waste dump, a heap leach pond spillage, and the Sino Metals collapse. Researchers have attributed this pattern to gaps between mining law and mining regulation, weak enforcement by the Zambia Environmental Management Agency, and a regulatory culture that gives mining companies significant discretion over safety standards.²¹ Whether the Supreme Court allows the constitutional petition to move to a full merits trial will shape whether the 176 farmers, and the households behind them, get anything more than the small deeds they were asked to sign in July 2025.

1
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. Sino Metals Leach Zambia and NFC Africa Mining Re Dam Collapse Contamination Zambia
2
ADF Magazine. Zambia Still Grappling With Impact of Chinese Mining Disaster
3
Inside Climate News. China Sino Metals Zambia Toxic Spill
4
University of Alabama at Birmingham Institute for Human Rights. Zambia Acid Spill: The Death of a River and the Ongoing Struggle of Local Communities to Recover
5
BBC News. Zambian Farmers Sue Chinese Mining Firms Over Toxic Spill
6
Barron’s. Zambian Farmers Sue Chinese Mining Firms Over Toxic Spill
7
Inside Climate News. Chinese Mining Firm Downplays Toxic Waste Spill in Zambia
8
South China Morning Post. Lawsuit Targeting Chinese Mining Companies Poses Dilemma for Zambian Government
9
Southern Africa Litigation Centre. Zambian Communities Sue Mining Giants Over Spill Disaster
10
China Nonferrous Mining Co. Company Profile
11
Makanday. Chinese Mining Company’s Profits Rise as Zambia’s Farmers Wait for Justice
12
ADF Magazine. Chinese Mining Pollution Tests Zambia’s Resolve
13
Leigh Day. Zambia’s Toxic Spill Settlement Agreements in the Aftermath of Environmental Disasters
14
Southern Africa Litigation Centre. Landmark Human Rights and Environmental Case Trial on 10 December 2025
15
Makanday. Chinese Mining Firm Faces Supreme Court Test Over Zambia Toxic Spill
16
European Journal of International Law. Critical Minerals, Environmental Harm, and the Unspoken Rights of Nature: The Kafue River Spill in Zambia
17
PBS NewsHour. A Chinese Mining Company Is Accused of Covering Up the Extent of a Major Toxic Spill in Zambia
18
Mining.com. Toxic Spill at China Owned Zambian Mine 30 Times Worse Than Estimated
19
U.S. Embassy Lusaka. Health Alert: U.S. Embassy Lusaka, Zambia
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Makanday. How Enforcement Failed Before the Sino Metals Tailings Disaster
21
Springer. Mining Regulation and Tailings Management in Zambia