Good afternoon. Coal mining is expanding in Mozambique. Indian conglomerate Jindal Steel & Power has formally inaugurated its 3.5m-tonne-a-year Revuboè coal mine, with President Daniel Chapo in attendance at the ceremony last week (see below). In his speech at the ceremony, Chapo said that the mine should be run according to strict standards to limit negative social and environmental impacts. But Jindal has a terrible track record in that department.
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It is Jindal’s subsidiary Vulcan Mozambique that is responsible for the nearby Moatize coal mine, which must count as the most polluting mine in Mozambique, and one of the worst in the world relative to its size. Since it was taken over by Vulcan in 2022, the mine has sent out a black cloud of coal dust over the surrounding town of Moatize, which gets into people’s houses, their lungs and everywhere else. Vulcan also damaged several neighbouring houses with flying debris from the explosions it let off in the mine. The explosions have - finally, following complaints - got smaller, but it is not clear if Vulcan has really addressed the coal dust problem: the rainy season means that dust clouds are being reduced by rain anyway.
