Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Next Steps for Mozambique: A Broader Vision of Justice and
Sustainability
The campaign to halt the incineration project and export the pesticide
wastes from Matolo, Mozambique, was successful. This was a pleasant
surprise for people throughout the international EJ and NGO commu-
nity as they witnessed activists from one of the world's poorest nations
exert uncommon political leverage.
Since this unprecedented success, Livaningo has used the opportunity
to broaden its focus beyond toxics to include other environmental justice
struggles in the region. As Livaningo expands its work, it is now pursuing
projects aimed at introducing ecologically sound waste management
systems in healthcare institutions in Mozambique, in collaboration with
international activist groups like Health Care without Harm. They are
also working to oppose harmful “development” projects like the Mpanda
Uncua Hydroelectric dam on the Zambezi River in Mozambique, in
partnership with TSMOs like International Rivers (based in Berkeley,
California). Livaningo is also combating oil extraction efforts by trans-
national corporations in southern Africa, which would pollute the air,
land, and water and return few economic benefi ts to the people of the
region.
Livaningo's victory in the pesticide incinerator case is credited with
opening a broader political space for other civil society groups and
social movements to work in Mozambique on a host of social concerns.
Organizations working on HIV/AIDS, human rights, land rights, and
global economic justice efforts now enjoy greater support as a result of
the political space Livaningo opened. In other words, they secured access
into the nation's political process by challenging and transforming the
structure itself. As Anabela Lemos (2004) stated,
It is true that we opened things up for people in our nation because we are not
scared to speak out and to raise our issues. We think we have the right to do so.
And I think that civil society has to get involved, we can't just sit on our hands
and complain. If something is wrong, we should work for it. I think people
should start to realize that to have big changes we have to give a lot up and we
have to sacrifi ce. . . . You should not be scared. If you are right, then you have
the right to speak, and I think it does make a difference.
Thus, the Danida case allowed activists to build on the success of a
single environmental justice struggle and expand outward to be inclusive
of a greater breadth of environmental and social concerns of civil society.
This mobilization also revealed how deeply Mozambique had become a
part of the “world risk society” (Beck 1999) through the embrace of
