A protest about the Government’s support for a gas project in Mozambique is due to be held in Cumbria this month.
Friends of the Earth members and supporters are planning to visit Workington MP Mark Jenkinson’s office on December 7 to hand in a letter explaining why the organisation is taking the Government to court over this and urging him to tell it to withdraw its $1.15 billion pledge for the fossil-fuel project.
Two of the local FoE members have personal connections to the area where the gas field is proposed.
Clare Brown has lived and worked for many years in Mozambique and knows the area and its people well. Ruth Balogh has two teenage grand-daughters whose father comes from Cabo Delgado, the area where it would be sited.
Ruth said: “My grand-daughters’ other grandma has already been forced to leave the beautiful coast of Cabo Delgado due to the unstable political situation there. She moved south to Beira, but massive floods in 2019 have forced her to move yet further south. This project will only cause further instability – not just to my family, but to the region and the planet.”
Clare said: “I’ve visited Cabo Delgado on a number of occasions and have seen how local farming and fishing communities have had their livelihoods harmed by extractive industries where the purpose is big profits for the international players rather than the well-being of local people. Mozambicans are fighting this project on the ground but have few resources. It’s important we campaign together to save our planet.”
Ruth added: “We’re in the middle of a climate emergency but the UK government is supporting fossil fuels. People in Mozambique are already suffering the consequences of climate change – like us in West Cumbria they’ve been flooded, though on a far worse scale. And like us in West Cumbria where we’ve got a coal mine plan that would wreck the climate, they’ve got a fossil fuel plan supported by our government.
“Yet only a few short weeks ago the Prime Minister urged the world to rapidly act on climate change. This isn’t only outrageous, we believe it is unlawful too.”
