‘Defying Global Trends, Zimbabwe Bets on Coal’ 29 April 2021

Coal dust fouls the air in Hwange, a mining town in the Matabeleland North region of Zimbabwe, about an hour’s drive southeast of Victoria Falls. Black smoke and a throat-closing odor saturate the atmosphere. Coal — a blackish-brown sedimentary rock said to be the dirtiest of fossil fuels — releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that worsens the warming of the planet and, ultimately, climate change Nonetheless, Zimbabwe, which relies heavily on coal, is intensifying investments in the industry amid a worldwide push to phase out the fossil fuel. The United Nations, along with environmental activists at both the global and national levels, has pushed countries to reduce emissions that provoke global warming. In May 2019, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said the world “must stop building new coal plants by 2020.” Zimbabwe, a signatory to the legally binding Paris Agreement to reduce global warming, has no such plans.

…Lawrence Mashungu, a government climate change and mitigation expert, sees no conflict between the national policy and coal expansion in Zimbabwe. “The coal project being implemented right now is actually at a much smaller scale than the initial plan — prior to knowledge on climate issues,” says Mashungu, who works in the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Tourism and Hospitality Industry, referring to a new plant scheduled to go up in Gokwe North district, about 348 kilometers (216 miles) from Harare, at an estimated cost of $3 billion. Zimbabwe’s coal industry has existed for a century, and the country possesses 10.6 billion to 26 billion tons in reserve. That’s enough to last another 100 years.

…In Lusumbani village, which sits within Hwange town, Innocent Ngwenya isn’t opposed to coal mining. But he is concerned about its effect on ordinary people. Ngwenya, 35, has lived in the village for 20 years. A logistics officer for a local trust that serves vulnerable people, he ticks off ways coal has upended life in Lusumbani: Blasting from mines shakes houses. Coal trucks constantly rumble through the community. And villagers are always breathing in coal dust. Only mine employees get regular medical checkups, he says. Villagers often don’t know how coal affects their health. “For over a decade we have been engaging different stakeholders over these concerns,” Ngwenya says. “Maybe they are working on it, but we currently don’t know what their answer is.”