By Penny-Jane Cooke The last quarter of 2015 saw five out of the nine provinces — KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, the North West, including the breadbasket of the country, the Free State — declared as water disaster areas and by extension disaster areas for agriculture. Somehow, the linkages between how the intensive water use for coal-fired […]
Coal fired electricity
Posted inBusiness, Environment
The mining multinationals in Mozambique: Is it a win-win situation?
By Antonio Macheve Jr The generic stories of multinational companies extracting natural resources from poor resource-rich countries often maintain a strong emphasis on exploitation of cheap labour, environmental degradation, poor local economic and social development, and unresponsive corporate social responsibility policies as the most direct effects of such operations on the population, particularly around the […]
Posted inBusiness
Eskom’s water accountability
In the article “Eskom, Sasol sound warning over water supply”, published on March 18 2012, it is made clear that a big drought in the Vaal River catchment could jeopardise the region’s agricultural and industrial output. But because Eskom and Sasol are “strategic water users” their use of water would not be curtailed. The same […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, General, News/Politics
Imagine your electricity bill went up 459%
You’ll often hear that renewable energy is a nice idea, but it’s simply too expensive to be a realistic option. The choice between burning coal and switching to renewable energy is said to be a simple cost calculation — one that coal wins every time. It’s the rationale for why Eskom is going ahead with […]