• Activists’ early-morning direct action blockades gas production, storage plant
• Protesters say plant threatens Doñana wetlands, UNESCO World Heritage Site
Some 20 activists from Greenpeace España, the Spanish section of international environmental organization Greenpeace, began a blockade early Tuesday morning of a controversial natural gas production and storage facility operated by Spanish energy giant Gas Natural Fenosa in the Doñana wetlands reserve, a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site within the estuary of the Guadalquivir River in Andalucia.
Greenpeace said in a statement issued Tuesday that Fenosa’s ongoing gas drilling and extraction at the plant, as well as its plans to build an underground gas storage facility at the site, are not compatible with the sustainable development of the Doñana reserve and its adjacent areas and represent a specific threat to Doñana National Park, a 209-square-mile preserve of marshes, shallow streams, and sand dunes in Las Marismas delta area of the Guadalquivir, where the river flows into the Atlantic Ocean.
Greenpeace also said the continued gas extraction and storage plans at the site threaten Spain’s ability to comply with the terms of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and greenhouse gases emissions, adopted by consensus of all parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December.
The Greenpeace direct action to blockade the Fenosa facility comes just three days after more than 1,500 people representing some 200 local, regional and national groups marched near the Fenosa plant to protest the gas facility, calling for its relocation away from the natural reserve and a shift by Fenosa away from fossil-fuel production toward development of renewable energy sources. In early November, Greenpeace launched a petition calling for an end to Fenosa’s natural gas activities in Doñana and have gathered more than 56,000 signatures on the petition to date.
► Read More in Spanish at Cadena Ser and Andalucía Información …
► Follow developments LIVE in Spanish at Greenpeace Doñana live blog …
► Read more in Spanish at Greenpeace press release, here …
