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Date Published: 18/01/2023

ARCHIVED - Activists in Spain call on Greta Thunberg to help get Sweden to pay for historical mining disaster

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The environmental group Mujeres por Doñana has sent a letter to Greta Thunberg pleading her to ask her country to pay for the 1998 Boliden mining disaster

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Activists in Spain call on Greta Thunberg to help get Sweden to pay for historical mining disaster

The environmental group Mujeres por Doñana (Women for Doñana) has sent a letter to the Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg asking for her help to get her country to pay for the ecological disaster caused by Swedish company Boliden in the area of Doñana in 1998 with the overflow of the Aznalcóllar mining reservoir.

The Doñana National Park, which spans the provinces of Huelva and Seville in southern Spain, has been a protected wetland habitat for migratory birds and other natural species since 1969.

In the late ’90s, however, the Boliden mining disaster threatened many local species of flora and fauna when the banks of the Aznalcóllar mining reservoir, which is supposed to wash and remove mining <span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Activists in Spain call on Greta Thunberg to help get Sweden to pay for historical mining disaster

impurities, burst, releasing between 4 and 5 million cubic metres of mine tailings into the area.

The clean-up project cost almost 90 million euros, which was paid by the Spanish public coffers to restore the affected areas. Now, the environmental group Mujeres por Doñana are asking the Swedish mining company responsible to pay for those costs.

In a statement, they stated that “Sweden, in the eyes of the majority of the world, represents the image of an exemplary nation with regard to the defence of sustainable development and the environmental health of the planet. It is also proud that it is the birthplace of what is currently the most popular icon of green activism in the media: the young Greta Thunberg.”

However, they added that “the reality is very different” and, for this reason, they are asking Greta Thunberg to intercede on their behalf with the government of Sweden, which “has been responsible for some of the greatest environmental tragedies in contemporary history”.

Thunberg herself has this week been detained while protesting against a new mine in Lutzerath, Germany.

The Mujeres por Doñana have invited the young Swedish activist to come and see them at work in Andalucia, where she will be able to learn about their donkey-fire projects to prevent forest fires, their initiatives for sustainable crops without pesticides and the battle they are currently waging to prevent the threat of pellet management from wiping out the forests around the National Park.

Image 1: Archive

Image 2: kallerna/Wikimedia commons

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