CREDO Action at Working Asset – 2016-05-11 01:28:56
http://act.credoaction.com/sign/Coal_Bangladesh
ACTION ALERT:
Stop Big Coal’s War on Bengal Tigers
Tell the US Export-Import Bank:
Don’t finance Big Coal in Bangladesh
CREDO Action at Working Assets
The Largest Mangrove Forest in the World — the Sundarbans
ACTION: Sign the Petition:
Tell the US Export-Import Bank:
“Do not finance Orion Group’s proposed coal-fired power plants in Bangladesh. These plants would fuel climate change and threaten a UNESCO World Heritage site, which serves as a safe haven for endangered species.”
Public US funds could be used to finance Big Coal’s destruction of a UNESCO World Heritage site that is home to precious endangered animals — in a country that is one of the most climate-endangered in the world.
The Orion Group, a Bangladeshi company, has approached the US Export-Import Bank to obtain financing for the building of two coal-fired power plants in Bangladesh. (1)
One of them would seriously damage the Sundarbans — the world’s largest mangrove forest and home to the endangered Bengal tiger. The other plant would be located just outside of the country’s capital, Dhaka, polluting the air and water of millions.
We’ve joined with our friends at Rainforest Action Network to send a powerful message to the US Export-Import Bank: Americans will not stand by and be a party to the destruction of a World Heritage site, our climate, and precious endangered species — all to boost the profits of Big Coal.
The Sundarbans mangrove forest that would be destroyed by the Orion Khulna plant stands as one of the world’s most unique ecosystems. It serves as a refuge for the endangered Bengal tiger, the Ganges river dolphin, and provides a livelihood for over half a million Bangladeshis.
Building these plants would require the trampling of local citizens’ rights and property and the destruction of their livelihoods. And the Orion plant that would be built outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, would threaten the air and water quality of 17 million people in Dhaka’s metropolitan area. And none of this even begins to take into account how this potential deal affects the global climate.
Financing coal projects abroad while we continue to move away from coal here at home is not only hypocritical, but incredibly shortsighted and counterproductive to the international effort to curb carbon emissions and combat climate change.
But doing so by building dirty, fossil-fuel processing plants in a country that’s been listed by one study as the most threatened by climate change is the height of recklessness. (2)
We can’t allow a US government agency to cooperate with a foreign conglomerate to work against the very values and efforts we here at home are working to uphold, while also destroying a UNESCO World Heritage site and threatening the endangered species and human lives it protects and sustains.
The US Export-Import Bank needs to hear an outpouring of opposition from all of us. Sign the petition now to make sure these dirty coal plants aren’t built with any US support.
Tell the US Export-Import Bank: Don’t finance Big Coal in Bangladesh
Thank you for your activism.
1. “Orion signs deals for generators for its 660MW power plant,” The Daily Star, May 11, 2014.
2. David Maxwell Braun, “Bangladesh, India Most Threatened by Climate Change, Risk Study Finds,” National Geographic, October 20, 2010.
A fishing family makes their way through the Sundarbans mangrove forest
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
