“Min­ing is going on a hun­dred meters away. When they start­ed blast­ing, all the dust was brought to our veg­etable gar­dens. Veg­eta­bles got cov­ered with the coal dust which is impos­si­ble to wash out. Now I don‘t want to harm myself by eat­ing any­thing from this gar­den,” a res­i­dent of Kazas, Siberia, Rus­sia, describes the impact of coal min­ing.

The Lon­don Min­ing Net­work and the Coal Action Net­work are head­ing off on tour with a Russ­ian envi­ron­men­tal activist who has wit­nessed first hand the impacts of the UK’s burn­ing of coal on indige­nous peo­ple.

“The con­se­quences of coal min­ing in Rus­sia are ter­ri­ble. There are envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic dis­as­ters hap­pen­ing in min­ing regions, espe­cial­ly in Kuzbass where the most of coal reserves locat­ed. Pub­lic health is get­ting worse and worse, indige­nous peo­ple being forced out of their land, air and water poi­soned.” Vladimir Slivyak, Ecode­fense.

The UK imports two thirds of the coal it burns in the remain­ing nine coal fired pow­er sta­tions. In 2015, 24% of our elec­tric­i­ty came from burn­ing coal. Just under a third of this coal comes from Rus­sia.

Vladimir, a Russ­ian anti-coal activist is vis­it­ing the UK for a speak­ing tour start­ing on the 25th May in Brighton before tour­ing around the UK and fin­ish­ing on the 10th June in Lon­don. Full details of the tour can be found www.coalaction.org.uk/tour. He will dis­cuss the prob­lems caused by min­ing for the UK’s pow­er sta­tions in his home coun­try, while the Coal Action Net­work dis­cuss how we can act to end the destruc­tion.

The tour is part of the launch of Ditch Coal, a new report from the Coal Action Net­work released ear­li­er this year. It tells the human and local­ized envi­ron­men­tal sto­ry of the coal burnt in UK pow­er sta­tions. The cli­mate change impacts of burn­ing coal are well doc­u­ment­ed, but some­how hard to relate to in a con­crete man­ner. By con­trast the sto­ries of those liv­ing in the shad­ows of the mines are some­how more tan­gi­ble, being direct human expe­ri­ences being felt already.

The tour will be joined by local com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign­ers fight­ing open­cast coal oper­a­tions in Sheffield, New­cas­tle and Edin­burgh. Speak­ers from Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign will join at Brighton, New­cas­tle, Cam­bridge and Lon­don.

The prob­lem in Rus­sia
The Siber­ian vil­lage of Kazas was sur­round­ed by open­cast coal mines and had a pop­u­la­tion of pre­dom­i­nant­ly indige­nous Shor peo­ple. Kazas was entire­ly destroyed in 2014 to make way for the expan­sion of the mines although the vil­lagers did not all con­sent to leave. The prob­lems of this vil­lage are not unique. For each tonne of coal pro­duced six hectares of land is dis­turbed, land which was home and habi­tat to both peo­ple and wildlife before the min­ing com­pa­nies’ encroach­ment.

Pri­or to the destruc­tion of Kazas, pres­sure was applied to get fam­i­lies to move. Infra­struc­ture was no longer main­tained – roads were not cleared of snow in win­ter and clean drink­ing water was no longer pro­vid­ed. With only 6% of water from the mines being treat­ed, filthy water killed the fish and the wildlife dis­persed, pre­vent­ing the tra­di­tion­al eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties of the Shor peo­ple — hunt­ing and fish­ing.

Com­mu­ni­ties in the coal min­ing regions strug­gle to have their objec­tions heard as the sys­tem is stacked against them. Deci­sions about min­ing appli­ca­tions are heard away from the ances­tral lands which are threat­ened so those affect­ed can­not attend hear­ings.
The wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion for the res­i­dents meant that many agreed to leave. For those who did­n’t the out­come was more sin­is­ter, their homes were destroyed by arson.

The vil­lage of Kazas now only exists in the mem­o­ries of the peo­ple who lived there. “Chu­vash­ka is the Shors’ only vil­lage in this area. In the 1990s, about 16,000 Shors were liv­ing here. Today, there are just between 4,500 and 5,000 peo­ple here” said a Shor woman in Ecode­fense’s film Con­demned. Eight oth­er vil­lages in the area have been destroyed.

The min­ing exploits in the Kemero­vo region have left many of the indige­nous Shor home­less, or dis­placed to oth­er areas, which sev­ers their spir­i­tu­al, cul­tur­al, and prac­ti­cal attach­ments to the land. No ade­quate sub­sti­tute land, nor com­pen­sa­tion has been offered to them. The Kemero­vo Oblast, where most of the Shors and Teleut live, pro­duces 60% of Rus­si­a’s coal for export.

The Russ­ian coal indus­try also has the most dan­ger­ous work­ing con­di­tions of any indus­try in terms of risk to life and wel­fare, with 40–50 fatal acci­dents each year, killing 180–280 peo­ple annu­al­ly, main­ly in the deep mines.

Why is the UK burn­ing Russ­ian coal?
In the year to August 2015, 31% of all ther­mal coal burnt in the UK came from Rus­sia. Since 2005, Rus­sia has sup­plied the UK with more coal than any oth­er coun­try — coal is cheap­er from Rus­sia than any­where else, which is why we burn so much of it. There is lit­tle trans­paren­cy in the coal sup­ply chain and large vol­umes.

Where else does coal come from?
32% of the coal used in the UK was extract­ed in Britain in the year to Sep­tem­ber 2015. Here open­cast min­ing oper­a­tions have con­tin­u­al­ly faced resis­tance from those liv­ing in the shad­ow of mines and pro­posed sites. At the end of March 2016 there were 21 open­cast mines work­ing, a num­ber which is decreas­ing. There are no longer any under­ground coal mines in this coun­try.

Colom­bia is known for its human rights abus­es, yet it sup­plies 23% of the coal import­ed to the UK. Over 90% of Colom­bian coal pro­duc­tion occurs in three large-scale open cast min­ing oper­a­tions in the north­ern depart­ments of La Gua­ji­ra and Cesar. Com­mu­ni­ties close to the mines suf­fer the same prob­lems in terms of forced relo­ca­tions as those neigh­bor­ing Russ­ian mines, addi­tion­al­ly there have been links made to assas­si­na­tion attempts on those who speak out against the mines, mass killings and vio­lence.

Most of the 14% of coal com­ing to the UK from the USA is from dam­ag­ing long­wall min­ing sys­tems — where the mate­r­i­al over the coal is inten­tion­al­ly col­lapsed as the mine pro­gress­es — or from open­cast or moun­tain­top removal mines. Both of these meth­ods destroy huge areas of land, dis­place peo­ple and dam­age the water table. Dur­ing moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing is destroy­ing entire moun­tain ranges in Appalachia.

The Coal Action Net­work is work­ing with grass roots groups on cam­paigns to close the UK’s remain­ing coal fired pow­er sta­tions. Come along to one of our tour dates to find out why we must close these pow­er sta­tions and to see how you can get involved.
Full tour details www.coalaction.org.uk/tour