Victory! Malaysia Rejects Borneo Coal Plant
Sometimes the good guys do win. Thanks to the hard work of community activists and a huge international uproar, plans to build a coal plant in an environmentally-sensitive area of Borneo have been sidelined.
It was just over a month ago that I blogged about how the Malaysian government was fast-tracking a 300 megawatt coal-burning power plant sited for on a pristine beach of the world's third-largest island. The project was set to displace locals, threaten the Coral Triangle, one of the world's most diverse marine ecosystems, and endanger critical rainforest habitat and species.
Around that time more than 2,000 Change.org readers and many others around the world told the Malaysian government that this coal plant was unacceptable. Last week, the government decided to back down. Agence France-Presse just reported that the state environment minister has rejected the project because of his environmental concerns. One caveat is the project's backers do have the option to appeal for another environmental assessment, or they could abandon their plans. Let's hope we've heard the last of this issue from Borneo.
This good news comes on the heels of more success on the forest front, this time closer to home. Apparently our leaders in Washington aren't as hip as the folks in Malaysia to saying "no" to coal. In the U.S., however, activists are having a lot more success taking their case to Wall Street, according to Rainforest Action Network's newly-crowned executive director Rebecca Tarbotton.
The group, RAN for short, has spent two years putting pressure on the financial sector to stop bankrolling mountaintop removal mining (MTR) -- a practice now devastating the forests, streams, and communities of Appalachia. Now, their hand work is paying off. Wells Fargo, for example, recently became the sixth major bank to curb its financial ties with coal companies engaged in this destructive practice. "This sector-wide banking shift is critical to stopping MTR once and for all," Tarbotton wrote.
If we don't have any sane policy coming from Washington yet, then RAN's strategy of going after the bankers providing capital to these projects makes a lot of sense. Anything that makes it hard for coal companies to keep clearing forests and blowing up mountains is good news in my book.
Photo credit: irwandy
Tara Lohan
is a senior editor at AlterNet.org where she heads up the environment, water, and food sections. Her work has appeared on the websites of The Nation, Mother Jones, the Huffington Post and in Yes! Magazine.
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