Since the early twentieth century, the copper-mining industry on the Zambian and Congolese Copperbelt has moved millions of tonnes of earth and dramatically reshaped the landscape. Nonetheless, mining companies, governments and even residents largely overlooked the adverse environmental aspects of mining until the early 1990s. By scrutinising environmental knowledge production on the Central African Copperbelt from the 1950s until the late 1990s, particularly regarding notions of ‘waste’, this article problematises the silencing of the environmental impacts of mining. To make the environmental history of the Copperbelt visible, this article examines forestry policies, medical services and environmental protests. Moreover, by historically tracing the emergence of environmental consciousness, it contextualises the sudden ‘discovery’ of pollution in the 1990s as a local and (inter)national phenomenon. Drawing on rare archival and oral history sources, it provides one of the first cross-border environmental histories of the Central African Copperbelt.

中文翻译：

---

中非铜带的采矿、废物和环境思想，1950-2000

自 20 世纪初期以来，赞比亚和刚果铜带上的铜矿开采业已经搬运了数百万吨地球，并极大地改变了景观。尽管如此，直到 1990 年代初，矿业公司、政府甚至居民在很大程度上都忽视了采矿对环境的不利影响。通过仔细审查从 1950 年代到 1990 年代后期中非铜带上的环境知识生产，特别是关于“废物”的概念，本文将采矿对环境影响的沉默问题化。为了使铜带的环境历史可见，本文考察了林业政策、医疗服务和环境抗议活动。此外，通过历史追溯环境意识的出现，它将 1990 年代污染的突然“发现”作为一种地方和（国际）国家现象。它利用罕见的档案和口述历史资源，提供了中非铜带最早的跨境环境历史之一。