Slow Death in Siberiahttps://www.redpepper.org.uk/slow-death-in-siberia/Anne
Harris reports on how the UK's coal dependency is devastating the lives of
indigenous Shor people.
Forest People’s organisation Fern and Coal Action
Network have just released Slow Death in Siberia. The report looks at how
Europe’s coal dependency is devastating Russia’s forests and indigenous Shor
people.
Slow Death in Siberia illustrates a dark stain of coal dust from
the Kuzbass region of Russia to our European homes and businesses where the
electricity is consumed. A stain which incorporates the breathlessness of the
Shor people, the choking rivers, the displaced wildlife and the poisoned land
all along the vast rail and sea trail which links us to the Shor and Teleut
land.
Valentina Boriskina, is a native Shor and former school teacher,
who lives alone on her pension in Chuvashka. She is one of the last Shor
speakers in the village. Her grown-up children live 25 kilometres away, where
they work in underground mines, since other jobs are so scarce. In front of
Valentina’s house is the Sibirginsky mine. At the side is a waste tip from
another mine.
“Our village is surrounded by coal mining, and the dust
which blows from the mines and waste heaps coat everything,” explains
Valentina.
Before mining, much of the Kuzbass was covered in taiga. The
taiga here was a low density forest, and populated with cedar trees, birches,
Siberian pines and larches. Wolverines, foxes, lynx, sable, brown bears, red
deer and roe deer all ran wild, and the area was biologically diverse. It had
been blessed with wetlands, streams and wide slow-moving
rivers.
Valentina continues, “I used to collect plants from the taiga,
including Kolba, a wild onion with nutrients which keeps us healthy in winter.
Now I buy them at the market. We used to eat deer, rabbits and bear from the
forest. These animals are no longer here. I don’t want to go into the forest any
more because it is so impoverished.”
Governments and businesses in Europe
want us to believe that coal is sourced in ways which are benign but the truth
is exactly the opposite. While the UK Government claims to be protecting the
climate by stopping burning coal several years from now, people on the ground in
the Kuzbass and other mining regions suffer. Faster action needs to be taken
immediately.
“The water is the worst. It comes from a pipe, but it is
undrinkable and smells like rotten eggs. Before the mining started we drank the
water from the river Mras-Su but it’s been polluted. The head of the Myski
authority said they would bring drinking water in 2017, but it hasn’t arrived.
The mines also have a big impact on our health. My teeth have fallen out and my
hair is thinning too.
If the mining companies have their way, Chuvashka
will be destroyed. Eight other Shor villages have already
disappeared.”
Drax power station, the UK’s largest coal power station is
one of the end consumers of the coal. Currently Drax burns coal in three of its
six units, for the other three consume biomass from forests in the Southern USA.
RWE’s South Wales power station Aberhaw and Uniper’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar power
stations are also burning coal from the Kuzbass. As Slow Death in Siberia shows,
burning coal also contributes to forest destruction when it lies underneath
ecosystems like the taiga as it does in the Russian Kuzbass.
When the
report’s authors visited the Kuzbass they were struck by the attachment to the
taiga, and the heartbreak its destruction caused.
“The Shors are
children of nature, completely in tune with the land. We believe that the
forests, rivers, mountains, plants and soil all have souls. But mining has
destroyed all of this and so destroyed our culture. It feels like these souls
have turned their backs on me,” describes Valentina.
The indigenous
people and their sustainable way of life has been ridiculed and now they are
forced to work in the very coal mines which are destroying their villages and
have poisoned the rivers.
“Our culture was [also] changed by the Soviets.
In the Soviet times we were regarded as uneducated, illiterate, without language
and incapable. They brought gulags to this area and [transported] people they
had arrested far away to fill them.
The administration said that the last
Shor school book was eaten by a cow, that is how much they care about teaching
in our language. My people used to dress very richly with large ornate jewels
and pearls. But even by my parents’ generation people had stopped wearing these
things. I haven’t got any of these things as my family had to sell them when
times got hard.”
The impact of mining is extensive. According to Russian
environmental group Ecodefense, for each tonne of coal produced, six hectares of
land are disturbed. The mines are intentionally placed close to concentrations
of people, so that facilities like roads, water, electricity and crucially
labour are cheaper. Across the Kuzbass the story is similar to that in
Valentina’s village.
Valentina explains that incomers have changed the
area, “Although our village is predominantly Shor, most people don’t speak the
language. We used to get official documents in the Shor language. There were
schools which taught in Shor, but these have closed. The administration said
that the last Shor school book was eaten by a cow, that is how much they care
about teaching in our language. Since 1990 we have had the law to protect
minority peoples, but it is merely a public statement. The only law which
actually works is the law of power.”
People in the Kuzbass have been
coming together to demonstrate against the encroachment of the mines. This
included Valentina participating in solo demonstrations. Because protests of
more than one person are outlawed in Russia they protest alone, on
rotation.
“We have no escape-door, there is nowhere else for us to go.
I’m tired. Fighting the coal company as well as looking after my house at my age
is difficult. Life in Chuvashka, especially in winter is hard. We burn coal from
the mines on our stoves, but keeping the fire going requires a lot of work and
I’m not young any more. I have scratches up my arms from the work, and from
chopping wood. In winter I will also have to clear the snow so I can get out of
my house. I want to sell my house and leave this village but the mining company
doesn’t want to buy it. Who else would?”
We need to respect the human
rights of all who live in the vicinity of coal mines to be respected by mining
companies and the governments supporting them. This means putting an end to the
destruction of forests for coal taking place in Kuzbass and around the world,
and a worldwide ban on new coal power stations and a commitment to phase out
existing installations as soon as possible. This will improve our chances of
keeping global temperature rises well below two degrees Celsius.
Coal
Action Network support communities in the UK, Russia, Colombia and the USA to
fight the opencast coal mines which power the UK’s remaining coal power
stations. At present they are very active working to prevent a new opencast coal
mine starting in County Durham. The UK claims to be a world leader because it is
phasing-out coal in 2025. But for the people, like Valentina, living at the
frontline of fossil fuel extraction, this date is too far away.
All the
best
Ecological North West
Line * St. Petersburg, Russia