A Bandra girl was among 22 campaigners and scientists from Greenpeace International who rebelled against the loading of a large-scale coal consignment from the Norwegian mine Svea Nord onto a transport ship. The protest took place in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago 1400 km south of North Pole.

At 7 am the team started blocking the conveyer belt of the Svea mine. A day after the protest Mumbai girl Faye Lewis spoke to Newsline. “Coal burning is the greatest contributor to climate change. My fight here is not just to save the Arctic but also to save Mumbai which will be adversely affected by the impending sea level rise,” she said.

Transport ship MV Pascha with a capacity to load about 70,000 tonnes of coal was planning to bring the consignment to Europe from Svea Nord. The mine is operated by Norwegian state-owned company Store Norske. The mine produces more than 2 million tonnes of coal every year. Coal from here is exported to many coal-fired power plants in Germany, France, Denmark, Netherlands and Portugal.

Lewis, a product of Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College, has been working as a deckhand on board the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise which is on a three-month expedition to study the impact of climate change on the Arctic ecosystem.

As part of their protest the team put up banners that read “Coal Climate Crime” and “Coal Powered Arctic Meltdown”. Calling for a complete ban on the polluting fuel power plant by 2050, the campaigners wore masks of US President Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and other world leaders.

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