Sharp, sharp!

During my last stint in South Africa, my reporting focused nearly entirely on the gold industry. Gold is shiny, it's worth a lot of money and it makes for a catchy story. I will continue producing work on gold, but on this go round, I'm shifting a large chunk of my focus to a new industry: coal.

Coal is so deeply imbedded in South Africa's psyche (and wallet), that the country's researchers created a phrase specifically for it. The "Minerals Energy Complex" refers to the inexorably connected nature of coal and energy production in South Africa. Below, I include statistics to give some background on the massive extent of the country's coal reliance and production. It becomes clear that this story is at the same time hugely important yet mired in often boring, long-term policy discussions. But while gold has zama zamas, coal has the future of the country's energy production and its impact on climate change.

Further, with new coal mines and power stations continually coming online in this country, why would I focus on it when my work is abandoned mines? Experts agree the only way to meet international emissions standards and other environmental goals is by severely reducing dependence on fossil fuels, especially coal. Therefore, new coal projects will likely have a short lifespan. The term "stranded investment" is coming into play more and more, meaning money put into coal infrastructure that is meant to last for decades could be abandoned because of climate change goals and falling renewables prices. Just like gold, this could stick communities with the bill for social, economic and environmental rehabilitation.

Here are some stats to put South Africa's coal in perspective:

~According to Eskom -- the parastatal utility company providing nearly all South Africa's electricity -- 77 percent of the country's electricity needs are fueled by coal. According to Eskom: "This is unlikely to change significantly in the next decade, due to the relative lack of suitable alternatives to coal as an energy source." Of course, nearly all objective analysis argues against this stance. In a 2015 report, the country's Department of Energy wrote: "South Africa is fortunate in that, over and above its rich coal resources, it is also well endowed with non- depletable RE sources, notably solar and wind. The country has an average of more than 2,500 hours of sunshine per year and average direct solar radiation levels range between 4.5 and 6.5kWh/m2 per day, placing it in the top-3 in the world."

~According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, coal is quickly becoming a comparatively expensive form of energy generation, as the price of renewables drop. Removing country-specific tax incentives, coal plants coming online in 2022 in the U.S. will cost less than offshore wind and thermal solar coming online in the same year. However, coal plants will cost 1.64 times more than photovoltaic solar, 2.16 times more than onshore wind and 3.1 times more than geothermal.

​~According to StatsSA -- South Africa's governmental statistics body -- the coal industry accounted for R51 billion (~$3.65 billion) of the country's economy in 2013. This means that the coal segment of the mineral extraction industry is growing while other sectors such as gold are contracting.

~According to the Chamber of Mines -- which represents about 90 percent of South Africa's mineral extraction industry -- South Africa exports the sixth most coal of any nation. In 2014, the country produced an estimated 252.3Mt of coal. More than 27 percent of this was exported, and exported coal was sold at a price more than twice as high as that sold internally.

I am currently working on the story of a proposed underground coal mine in a highly important and legally protected wetlands area of Mpumalanga. A legal loophole allows mining activities to commence in protected areas if the ministers of both the Department of Mineral Resources and the Department of Environmental Affairs sign off on a specific project. This particular project has the DMR's approval, and activists are afraid that it might soon gain that of the DEA, as well.

But with the environmental impacts of coal, the higher job potential in renewables and the lower cost of new renewables, why the continued investment in coal projects like this one?

That's where my work over the next few months will come into play. Without trying to prove any particular side of the energy production argument, I am looking for the facts: does the entire economy benefit from the coal industry, how much job creation exists and who stands to gain from new coal? More to come.

Cheers,
​Mark

Eta,
​“The water comes from God,” Chief Chikhawo explains from his scratchy and broken armchair. He is one of several chiefs in Chikhawo Village , a poverty-stricken community just outside the capital of Lilongwe in Malawi.

The chief pauses, then clarifies with a laugh: "It's rainwater." I was interviewing him during a two-week reporting stint in Malawi, where I was chasing a complicated story of the interplay among ambitious irrigation plans, a country reliant on hydropower, and an ancient lake experiencing falling water levels.

Here's the story: Malawi is in the midst of a large-scale irrigation project called the Green Belt Initiative that is guaranteed to have a massive -- potentially good, potentially bad -- impact on the country. Lake levels are already falling, and some scientists predict that drawing more water away from the lake could drop lake levels to a point where the Shire River would dry up. The Shire handles all the lake's outflow, and nearly all of the country's electricity comes from hydropower plants on the river. This conflict is escalating with nutrient loading, a warming lake, fish die-offs, increasingly severe weather events, and food shortages.

I stumbled onto the story by accident while a world away, attending a journalism institute about Lake Superior. During an American scientist's lecture at the conference put on by the (awesome) Institute for Journalism & Natural Resources (IJNR.org), he told a fascinating story about Malawi (sidenote: the open bar had nothing to do with the following decision...). As tends to happen, I figured that South Africa and Malawi are (really not) close enough that I should go to both. So, a few weeks later, I bought a plane ticket to Malawi.

According to World Bank data, Malawi is the world's poorest country. My reporting in Malawi both added credence to that, as well as taught a lesson about why journalists should plan ahead. I landed in the country, alone and unprepared but very much believing the story was an important one. The next two weeks saw me crisscross much of the country in a beat-up, old Toyota Starlet, which needed a lifesaving infusion of air daily in a patched up rear tire. I saw a dusty countryside, often largely stripped of trees; street corners populated with beggars missing limbs; bicycles everywhere as substitutes for cars; billboards imploring the population to halt the rampant murders of people with Albinism; men on the roadside who would hold up a pair of pants all day to sell it for a pittance; and large numbers of ex-pats due to the reliance on them in NGOs, aid organizations, and in some cases even the government.

In February, I published my first piece on the topic with the Oxpeckers Center for Investigative Environmental Journalism (story here: http://oxpeckers.org/2016/02/2450/).

Here are some facts to frame the story:
~~Lake Malawi is millions of years old and is believed to host more fish species -- somewhere around 1,000 -- than any other lake on earth.
~~In December, Lake Malawi reached its lowest recorded surface level since 1997.
~~According to the Department of Irrigation, there are 104,000 hectares already irrigated in the country. The department identifies about four times as much irrigable land (that's about 23 times the land area of Washington, D.C.).
~~The first hydropower plant in line on the Shire River -- Nkula A -- operated at only 60 to 65 percent of its capacity for parts of last year because of low flow on the Shire.
~~Large amounts of foreign money are involved in Malawian aid and infrastructure, including a $350.7 million investment from a U.S. tax-payer funded group called the Millennium Challenge Corporation, for which Congress appropriates money to be given as aid. This particular investment is in energy infrastructure and fixing up parts of Nkula.

When I toured Nkula A and B, I was asked not to take photos inside the power stations, but what I found was a mess. Commissioned in 1966, Nkula A was missing floor and ceiling tiles, its control room was archaic, and a sheet of paper with the words “NOT TO BE OPERATED” scrawled on it covered some controls.

(As is evident in this rambling post) I am finding a story such as this one quite difficult to write properly. A complex interplay of variables (irrigation, energy production, climate change), no clear "good guy/outcome" vs. "bad guy/outcome", and the lack of celebrity characters provide unique challenges. In addition, how do I come to a country full of absolute poverty and write a simple "here are the country's environmental concerns" story?

Example 1: Rural Malawians strip the landscape of trees because many people have little or no access to electricity for cooking or warmth. I spoke to Malawians who fully understood the issue of deforestation but said that without a reliable energy sources they had no other choice but to burn wood.

Example 2: Irrigation has obvious environmental consequences for Lake Malawi, but NGOs also say implementing irrigation is the most efficient way to assist rural Malawians.

Example 3: To increase reliability of the country's hydropower, irrigation and near-shore agriculture would have to disappear. So do you choose electricity or agriculture? Food or warmth?

I am still working to untangle this story and publish more articles from my time in Malawi, and I have a feeling that I will be back to continue this work. As always, thanks for taking the time to slog through my work. 

Tiamwere ('Cheers' or 'the drinks are on you' in the Chichewa language),
Mark

Sharp, sharp!

I am reporting from the mines that are currently abandoned, derelict and ownerless, but there is a much broader context explaining why this situation arose. The few interviews I have conducted with illegal miners so far illuminated this. They work to send remittance; they work because unemployment is rampant in South Africa yet astronomical in their home countries; or they work to pay for their children's schooling. It is evident that a specific environment is necessary to foster such a black market.

Their existence and that of other less-than-legal behavior brings crime, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, prostitution and numerous related issues. However, the act of arresting someone for a criminal behavior does little good -- if not some bad -- when broader issues are not addressed. To give my readers the beginning of that necessary context, I have listed 11 important statistics concerning life in South Africa. I included minimal editorializing to aid understanding of the numbers while allowing you to draw your own conclusions. Read on to learn more, and be on the lookout in the coming weeks for more information on the process of illegal mining, the legal issues of addressing it and much more.

Cheers,
Mark

24.3 percent -- Stated unemployment rate, reported by the government for 2014 Q4. However, 43 percent of the potential labor force, the population aged 15-64, is not seeking work. Unemployment in South Africa is the highest it has been in the past decade.

53.6 percent -- Youth unemployment, defined as 15-24-year-olds, in 2013, according to the World Bank.

Nearly 90 percent -- Amount of the country's electricity generated by coal-fired plants, according to the country's Department of Energy. According to the CIA, that number rises slightly above 90 percent with the addition of other fossil fuels. South Africa remains one of the world's largest coal producers, but much of the highest grade coal is exported, leaving power outages due to "load shedding."

8 percent -- The amount of the GDP from mining in 2015 Q1, according to government statistics. An additional unknown yet large percent of mining and quarrying comes illegally through "artisanal mining."

62.15 percent -- Percent of the vote won by the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's party, in the 2014 national elections, according to the Electoral Commission of South Africa. Its rivals, the Democratic Alliance, received 22.23 percent, and the ANC-breakaway Economic Freedom Fighters won 6.35 percent. Another 10 parties earned enough votes to hold at least one seat in the National Assembly.

80.2 percent -- The percent of South African citizens classified who are "black," according to South African government statistics. Then, 8.8 percent are "coloured," 8.4 percent are "white" and 2.5 percent are "Indian/Asian." Race classifications still retain legacies of Apartheid.

57 years -- The life expectancy in South Africa as of 2013, according to the World Bank. This comes as a sharp contrast to 1995, the year after Democracy, when life expectancy was 61. In the mid-noughts, this dropped to 52 years, in large part due to HIV/AIDS and former president Thabo Mbeki's slow response to the disease as he questioned the links between the HIV virus and AIDS.

About 6.2 million -- The estimated number of adults living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa in 2013, according to the CIA. South Africa has more people living with the disease than any other country in the world. That is roughly 1 in 5 South African adults. Additionally, the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a successful HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment program pioneered by President George W. Bush, was meant to run out in 2008 and is being phased out currently.

10 percent -- The drop in percentage points of enrollment rates between primary and secondary education, according to the Department of Basic Education. About 99 percent of eligible-aged students are enrolled in primary school, but that number drops to about 89 percent for secondary education.
 
1.9 percent -- GDP growth in 2013, according to the World Bank. The economy contracted following the 2008 global market collapse, and projections show growth hovering at merely 2 percent over the next several years. South Africa holds the second largest economy in Africa after Nigeria, although measured per capita, South Africa is still solidly on top of the rankings.

4.5 percent -- The GDP growth in 2014 (4.2 percent in 2013) of sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank. Africa hosts some of the world's faster growing economies, and while South Africa is looked to as one of the continent's economic leaders, it has lagged behind in recent years.