‘Thousands sign petition to stop Lower Zambezi mining’ 26  October 2019

DIPAK Patel and 5000 others have petitioned the granting of a go-ahead for an open-cast copper mine inside Lower Zambezi National Park. By close of yesterday over 4,000 Zambians had signed the petition seeking to ensure “no mining NOW or EVER in the national park. In January 2014, then Minister of Lands, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Harry Kalaba shocked all concerned and ordinary Zambians when he gave a go-ahead to the mining project in the Lower Zambezi National Park.

…“This is not economic empowerment but the strong arm of corruption and greed at work. The solution is simple: take away all licences, permits and bring those who approved such atrocities to justice. We the Zambian people want to know why this is being allowed by our judiciary when they know full[y] well that it is clearly an environmental tragedy and a step closer to the extinction of our wildlife and indigenous vegetation. Our forests have been cut down of precious timber, our rivers have been polluted with toxic waste from the mining and agricultural sector, our soils have been degraded with chemical fertilizers and our natural resources have been pillaged and are nearly at the point of depletion…now climate change is making our situation worse through the ignorance and greed of those who do not understand it.”