Water reserve loses ground to coal mine
18 Feb 2021
Undermining: The Mabola Protected Environment in Mpumalanga, which supplies South Africa with half of its water, is once again being threatened by coal mining.
(Robert C Nunnington)
The protected status of a large part of the Mabola Protected Environment area near Wakkerstroom has been revoked by Mpumalanga’s minister for agriculture and environmental affairs. Now the way appears to have been cleared for a firm linked to Jacob Zuma’s relatives to mine for coal there.
On 8 December, MEC Vusi Shongwe published a notice of exclusion “to promote the co-existence of mining activities and conservation” in the biodiversity-rich protected area, a strategic water source area.
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Coalition condemns MEC’s decision to revoke protected area to allow new coal mine
Water heritage under threat Mabola Protected Environment, Wakkerstroom, Mpumalanga, faces potentially catastrophic threats from a new coal mine. One of only 22 Strategic Water Source Areas in the country, it is composed mostly of wetlands, pans and endangered grassland ecosystems that support endangered species and the provision of clean water. The mine is set to cause irreversible damage to the sensitive and critically important aquatic environment. Picture: JAMES OATWAY for CER.
11 February 2021 - Last month, the Mpumalanga Provincial MEC for Agriculture, Rural Development, Land and Environmental Affairs, MEC VR Shongwe, published his decision to revoke the protected area status for a large part of the Mabola Protected Environment in Mpumalanga in order to enable a controversial new coal mine to proceed.
Experts discuss climate change at CWA event
January 25, 2021
Kézha Hartier-Reiss sits down with Laura Garcia, Bobby Peek and Bill Mckibben to discuss climate change. Jan. 25, 2020. (Mairead Brogan/CU Independent).
The University of Colorado Boulder’s Conference on World Affairs is hosting a three-day virtual event titled International Affairs During the Next Presidential Administration the week of Jan. 25. To start off the event on Monday, climate experts discussed the intersection of feminism, anti-capitalism and open democracy in addressing the climate crisis.
“We need a radical solution because we have procrastinated too long. We have run out of other options,” Laura Garcia, CEO and president of Global Greengrants, said. She points to our romanticization of neoliberalism as the ultimate hurdle for addressing climate change.
Western Imperialism and the Role of Sub-imperialism in the Global South
At first blush, Joe Biden’s election as U.S. president brings respite from a world threatened by Donald Trump’s climate-denialist, dictator-coddling, xenophobic, racist, misogynist, rules-breaking regime. On second thought, 2021 will also initiate an unwelcome restoration of legitimacy to Western imperialism akin to Barack Obama’s rule. Biden’s (2020) recent
Foreign Affairs article began by stressing how since 2017, “the international system that the United States so carefully constructed is coming apart at the seams.” In reconstructing imperialism, Biden may draw upon a legislative and public-advocacy record dating to the 1980s, based upon consistent service to several internationally ambitious circuits of U.S. capital:
Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine
(It is in the shelter of each other that the people live)
– Irish proverb
As 2020 lurches towards a close, many of us in the UK will feel little cause for celebration. This was, after all, a year in which our government facilitated the early deaths of over 60,000 people from Covid-19. A year in which underwhelming climate policies were painted thick with
.
But 2020 also saw fierce resistance around the world, most recently in the Indian farmers’ protests. We can look to various parts of the world for inspiration, not only for how to fight, but how to win.