Follow-up to Desmond D'Sa visit

Last Thursday's Thoreau Center Brown Bag speaker was Desmond D'Sa, the chairperson of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) in South Africa who was here to talk about the work of the alliance and its plans for the future. His visit to the San Francisco Bay Area was hosted by the International Development Exchange (IDEX), which promotes sustainable solutions to poverty by providing long-term grants and access to resources to locally run organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. D'Sa helped found the SDCEA in 1995 as an alliance of community organizations addressing the environmental and human rights issues caused by the largely unrestricted expansion in Durban of industry and oil refineries. Through vigilant pollution monitoring, information sharing, education, community empowerment, and government lobbying, the SDCEA has had numerous success over the years, although major problems remain, namely climate change and the need for grassroots mobilization to strengthen the movement for climate justice. For a full rundown of his visit to the area, see this report prepared by IDEX.