Batangas City —Civil society organizations, including Greenpeace, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice, Health Care Without Harm, and the Archdiocesan Ministry on Environment (AMEn) joined Batangas local groups and community members in voicing their opposition to the project.
The coal project in question is the same facility that 10,000 people protested against in 2016, under the global banner of Break Free From Fossil Fuels.
In support of Batangas communities opposing the project, Yeb Saño, Executive Director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said:
“Batangas province does not need any new coal-fired power plants. The whole country does not need any new coal plant. The writing is on the wall – coal plants bring along with them a host of problems that include adverse health burdens for the local communities and dangerous pollution of the air, land, and water – in the entire value chain of coal.”
The 2016 Greenpeace report “Coal: A Public Health Crisis,” which was based on a study conducted together with Harvard University, estimates that 2,400 Filipinos are dying from coal-related air pollution every year.
“We have said, time and again, that coal projects are highly questionable in this day and age when renewables are more economically competitive and have much less environmental impacts. It gives us reason to think that proponents of coal-fired power plants are just out there for short-term profit at the long-term expense of communities and the environment,“ Saño added.
ENDS
To download the Greenpeace report Coal: A Public Health Crisis (2016): http://www.greenpeace.org/seasia/ph/press/reports/Coal-A-Public-Health-Crisis/
For more information:
Yeb Saño, Executive Director, Greenpeace Southeast Asia
[email protected] | +63 998 849 4846
Johanna Fernandez, Digital Campaigner, Greenpeace Southeast Asia
[email protected] | +63 920 975 9844
