Coal kills people. Coal destroys health and communities’ well being. Coal devastates land, water and ecosystems and Coal is destroying our planet. These are the conclusions of the “Women stand their ground against Big Coal” meeting that took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, on January 2015. The meeting, convened by “WoMin: African Women United Against Destructive Extractivism” alliance, gathered nearly two dozen organisations with more than fifty women grassroots activists and leaders from the Southern African Region. It declared that “Women are the ones who grow and put food on the table. And so when lands are stolen and polluted they are the ones that must build new survivalist livelihood strategies and work harder to harvest minimal yields from the soil. When water supplies are polluted, they are the ones that must walk for hours in search of safe water supplies. And when their family members fall ill from their work in the Coal industry or from breathing polluted air it is women that must work long hours to nurse them back to health or death.”
See full declaration here: http://londonminingnetwork.
See WoMin’s webpage here: http://womin.org.za/
