Thousands of climate activists from across Europe are expected to join local protesters on the German-Polish border this Saturday for a mass demonstration against a huge coal mining project that threatens to displace entire communities and set off what scientists consider a carbon time bomb.
The event, which takes place in the run-up to a high-profile climate summit at the United Nations in New York in September, will see people from more than a dozen EU countries form an eight-kilometer-long human chain to link two communities on either side of the border.
Grabice, in Poland, and Kerkwitz, in Germany, are among a group of villages, including some dating back to the Middle Ages, that face being razed to the ground to make space for a massive coal development featuring pits the size of Manhattan. A total of more than 6,000 people in the border region of Lusatia could lose their homes and livelihoods if the project goes ahead.
The two energy companies at play – Stockholm-based Vattenfall and Poland's state-owned PGE – are seeking to expand mining operations in the region, which has vast deposits of carbon-heavy lignite, also known as brown coal. The area is estimated to be the largest source of fossil carbon in the entire E.U., storing as much CO2 as Germany – the industrial powerhouse with the largest population in Europe – emits in a decade.
If the new mines are approved, the coal extracted from this area alone could lock the two countries, both highly influential in shaping Europe’s energy policy, into three more decades of lignite burning. Greenpeace estimates brown coal burning alone would use up half of Germany and Poland’s CO2 budgets from 2020 to 2050, making it virtually impossible for the countries to meet their carbon reduction targets – with a potential knock-on effect on wider E.U. climate policy.
Lignite is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, containing more carbon than hard coal. Power plants burning lignite can emit between three and seven times more CO2 than gas-fired stations. Commenting on the initiative, Greenpeace UK climate campaigner Emma Gibson said: “This is the frontline in the battle to save our climate from Europe’s addiction to dirty coal."
"If this development goes ahead, it will set off a carbon time bomb that could blow away Poland and Germany’s chances to curb climate-damaging emissions, with the impact felt across the whole of Europe. When scientists are warning we need to leave most fossil fuels in the ground if we’re to avoid dangerous climate change, sacrificing entire communities and ecosystems to dig up more dirty coal is as irrational as it is morally unacceptable."
Meanwhile, Gibson added, “The alternatives, from clean technologies to energy saving measures, are getting cheaper and better. If our political leaders don’t start getting to grips with Europe’s coal problem, their pledges to take action on climate change are doomed to remain empty words.”
The Action This Weekend:
WHAT: Human anti-coal chain between Poland and Germany.
WHEN: Aug. 23 starting at 1:45 p.m.
WHERE: Between Grabice, Poland, and Kerkwitz, Germany.
The event will continue with an “Anti-lignite music festival” celebrating a clean energy future with performances by acts including the Asian Dub Foundation, Duck or Dove, Jamal, Isua and others.
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Meanwhile, Political Critique reported in the article "Goodbye Chevron" that the longest-ever protest against fracking – more than 400 days – succeeded last month when the giant oil corporation quit the Lubelskie region of Poland where fierce resistance groups stood in opposition to Chevron's shale gas exploration:
On Monday, July 7, the employees of Chevron left the village Żurawlów in the Lubelskie Region. After 400 days of persisting protest, the farmers, inhabitants and activists managed to stop shale gas drilling.
It was the longest local protest against shale gas drilling in the world. Before Chevron came to Żurawlów, it operated in Rogów. After seismic surveys, the walls in some houses there cracked and then they left.
Before drilling, the local government was not informed at all. Its members did not know anything about the boreholes and threats associated with them, so they were not able to answer any questions. Because of that, the reluctance to drilling was rising.
The most important element in this movement is the people, who started and led this protest - like one farmer, Wiesiek Gryn, who together with his family cultivates 700 hectares. If it wasn’t for him, not much would have been achieved. Wiesiek acts within agricultural organizations, as he has authority. At the beginning, he was not against drilling. But he changed his mind, just as other farmers did, after what happened in Rogów.
It turned out that there are huge groundwater reservoirs, and that if one of them gets contaminated, the same will happen to the rest. Organizational issues were handled by Basia Siegieńczuk and Andrzej Bąk from Zamość. They had enough knowledge and experience to assume the mantle. After some time, young people from all over Poland showed up with an intention to help.
The more popular the case of Żurawlów got, the more people felt responsible. It was no longer only about Żurawlów; it ended up as a tale of David and Goliath.
We were convinced that if we surrendered, nobody would take action. Ironically, Chevron played an important role in the success achieved by the inhabitants of Żurawlów. It invested large amounts of money in an image campaign. In the spots, people from Chevron kept talking about how much they care about the environment, working conditions and relations with local communities. Yet we all knew the reality.
They sued farmers for calling on others to resist. Eight cases are still in court. The most absurd charges were directed at Andrzej Gryn. Policemen testified that he burst into the area belonging to Chevron, yet the judge realized that the witnesses saw Gryn for the first time in the courtroom. Even worse things were happening in Romania, where the protests were brutally suppressed and the inhabitants of the village were constantly disturbed. Chevron has finally realized the harmfulness of the contrast between their image campaign and reality.
I am in touch with the people form Żurawlów. Since last Monday we hope that it all has ended for good. Yet Chevron’s vehicles left the village secretly at 4 a.m. As the main road was blocked by the farmers, the employees of the company had to drive by the houses of the inhabitants, who jumped out in pajamas to take photos of this cowardly escape.
The hope is that this fight is at an end. Last month Chevron left Ministrówka in the Miączyn district, near Żurawlów. Some water boreholes were made, but then all the equipment disappeared. The pit was left empty and Chevron does not seem eager to defend the well. At the same time, the equipment disappeared also from Pungești in Romania. The protests there were much more brutal than in Poland, but they also resulted in getting rid of Chevron.
A great advantage is that the protesters do not act individually, but in groups. The most active committees against drilling take action in five countries: Argentina, Ecuador, Romania, the United States and Nigeria.
On May 21, which was an international day of mobilization against Chevron, we signed the Victim’s Declaration, which garnered signatures from more than 200 organizations around the world. The inhabitants of Żurawlów are also engaged in a national network Złupieni.pl.
They act together with people from Mazovia and the Kashubian and Lubelskie regions. They organize workshops and cooperate with the European countries. This cooperation resulted, among others, in an open letter to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who accused environmental groups of acting according to the orders of Russia and its gas tycoons.
The presence of Chevron in Żurawlów has come to an end - at least we hope so - but the employees of the company still have not left the Lubelskie region. But our progress so far would not be achieved if it was not for the mobilization of the inhabitants, international cooperation and insolence of Chevron.
Meanwhile, activist and journalist Roman Kurkiewicz writes, "Let’s move the capital to Żurawlów!":
The fact that a small group of people – farmers and inhabitants of a village Żurawlów near Zamość – managed to win over a global concern, Chevron, and force it to leave after the protest lasting 400 days is comforting. It shows that even a small community acting with outstanding civil determination is able to win in an unequal confrontation.
It is not only another version of a never-ending fight between David and Goliath. This case shows that the protesters who were left alone, left by the state, the police, the voivode, the local government and media (for media Żurawlów is too far away and they are, similarly to the authorities, totally in love with the shale gas remaining blind to the lack of reciprocity and harm caused by drilling), thanks to the loyalty to their rights and for the sake of commitment to something more important than mere interim benefits, persisted and witnessed the escape of the ashamed vehicles belonging to Chevron – the company that is threatened by the highest fine ever (tens of billions of dollars) for its abusive practices.
They won without money and without support (except for some activists, ecologists and the Greens), getting rid of the ones who used to live the shale gas dream. What kind of victory it was? Real and symbolic. And unfortunately it is a victory in a battle, and not in a war going on on unequal terms.
On one side there is the government (changing without public debate the mining and geologic laws according to the interests of global mining companies) in which the position of the Minister of Environment (who might be considered as a natural ally of the protesters) is occupied by a senior official of the Ministry of Economy in order to facilitate shale businesses.
On the same side are global concerns, among which there are companies dependent on Gazprom that is often used as an explanation of a quick shale action supposed to provide us with independence from Russian gas. On the other side there is a group of people asking simple questions: what will happen to the water after fracking? What will happen to the earth? What about the destruction for that, according to the new law, the contractor is not responsible? What about our roads that are not adapted to the arrival of the heavy equipment?
Nobody answered any of these questions – neither the state, nor Chevron that actually run away from them. Żurawlów popularity and sympathy from tens of countries and its media. Only Polish journalists seemed uninterested.
After all, we should be glad that thanks to the persistence of the inhabitants we heard the voices full of doubt in the procedures and laws serving mining tycoons at the expense of ordinary people. This and every next government (as far as the enthusiasm for shale gas drilling is concerned, mainstream parties do not differ much) will have to start answering the questions posed by the protesters.
If this does not happen, we will have to make Żurawlów the capital city. That is where we saw people fighting for better future for Poland.
And finally, ethnologist Magdalena Krysińska-Kałużna completed the report on Chevron's banishment in her essay entitled, "Żurawlów is not Manhattan":
Plush tigers, 600 meters of pavement, Christmas gifts for toddlers, computers for secondary school students… When I read about presents that Chevron gave to the inhabitants of Żurawlów, where shale gas drilling was supposed to be performed, it reminded me the history of Huaroni from the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Oil concerns were buying boat engines and engine-powered saws for the local Indians. The companies assumed that these who got presents would be more likely to accept the practices performed in their neighborhood and will consent to drilling during the consultations. At the ceremony that took place on Huaorani terrains in 1993, not long after the Indians agreed to drilling performed by the company Maxus, the daughter of the president of Ecuador, Alicia Durán Ballén took off her golden earrings and gave them to one of the Huaorani women saying in English to the rest of the government delegation: “Is it, according to you, a sensible exchange?” Mark Wiznitzer, a political advisor from the U.S. embassy responded: “That’s how we conquered Manhattan.”
Half a month ago to Żurawlów came two Argentinians taking actions for improvement of the living conditions of the local communities and for preserving the good state of the environment in the region Neuquén inhabited by the Indians Mapuche. Shale gas drilling is going to be performed there on a large scale. After talking to the Polish farmers they concluded that the way the mining concerns act are basically the same in Poland as in Argentina.
Ecuador as well as Argentina ratified the 169. Convention of the International Labor Organization that imposes among others the obligation of consulting with the locals the practices of mining and exploiting the deposits on the areas inhabited by them. Signing the contracts with the mining concerns, Huaorani did not know, what was going to happen next. When negotiating with such strong subjects they should have been supported by the government.
Yet it was impossible as the government had already been on the other side in these negotiations. Even the appropriate regulations, when not supported by the government and non-governmental organizations, will not work in a situation in which the power balance is highly unequal. When the government washes hands when the actions taken by the corporations are concerned, the citizens have to act on their own so that the rules of the game could be fair.
And the citizens from Żurawlów, unlike the Huaorani Indians, have apparently known the story of conquering Manhattan.
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