Medupi project’s bad karma

Eskom’s Medupi power station has the potential to seriously disrupt the social fabric and in particular the lives of women in Lephalale,” says Gender Action, an international organisation that promotes women’s rights in International Financial Institution (IFI) investments.
“Women are disproportionately affected by IFI-investments in the extractive industry, often being the first to lose their livelihoods and to bear the burden of negative environmental and health impacts,” the organisation said in a statement this week.
It has identified the coal-fired Medupi power station and its related infrastructure in Lephalale as a potential hotspot for gender injustice and held workshops this week to train women and men from local communities to minimise and mitigate Medupi’s harmful gender impacts.
The workshops which ended today (Friday) were held at the Palm Park Hotel in Lephalale in conjunction with groundWork and Earthlife Africa. It facilitated the training of civil society organisations and communities from Lephalale, Thabazimbi, south Durban, the Vaal and Highveld to use the IFI Toolkit. This toolkit allows participants to conduct IFI gender analyses to better understand the impacts Medupi will incur on the lives of women and how mitigation of these can take place.
Gender Action’s Sarah Little, who has worked on development issues in Sub-Saharan Africa, now heads up this work with groundWork on issues related to climate change and gender in the broader Lephalale area:
“Through this workshop, we hope to help the local community identify the negative impacts on gender equality they will face as a result of Medupi and give them the tools to hold the [World] Bank accountable to their own policies promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Bank is sensitive to its reputation as a poverty alleviator. If we can document the negative impacts on men, women, boys and girls as a result of the environmental and social degradation caused by Medupi, we hope to shame the bank enough that it is forced to publicly recognise and redress the harm this investment in dirty energy has and will continue to cause.”
In response to the Inspection Panel 2010 investigation, called for by groundWork and Earthlife Africa, the World Bank Board last year admitted that the development of the power station would be accompanied by major social and environmental risks.
Effects of the power station have already been felt by the women living in the area. Along with the current and future environmental and health issues that are facing Lephalale, the area now has a disproportionately large male population as a result of the influx of labour from South Africa and across its borders. This places a strain on limited infrastructure, such as housing and sanitation, and promotes social ills such as prostitution.