[5] Rio Tinto discovered an estimated 70 million tons of ilmenite in what Scientific American magazine called "one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet" in 1986.

In 2016, after members of the company's Biodiversity Committee pointed out gaps between promises and action, Rio Tinto abandoned that promise, switching strategies towards what Scientific American described as "avoiding making things too much worse" and projected that the company was "poised to extinguish this biodiversity hotspot".

and expressing a "lack of confidence that adequate long-term resourcing and capacity will be provided for the biodiversity program at QMM.

"[7] In January 2013, community protests about the mine were quelled by the Madagascar People's Armed Forces who used teargas to disperse the crowd.

The facility will combine 8MW of solar, 12MW of onshore wind and a battery energy storage system to provide renewable power to the mine.

Protestors linked a release of water from the mine to the death of fish, a claim denied by Rio Tinto.