All Villages Stay!

We’re sorry to say that only this page is available in English, but we strive to give you as much information here as possible. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

What’s the issue?

It’s hard to believe for many people, but Germany still destroys entire villages for lignite, an especially dirty form of coal. Lignite is mined in huge open pit mines. For people in more than a dozen villages in Germany, the future was at stake: houses, churches, forests and fertile farmland were to be consumed by the mines. With our resistance, we’ve managed to save nearly all of them in the last years – we only lost the fight for Lützerath, but we made it an extremely tough one. Now only one village is still in danger of being destroyed: Miłoraz/Mühlrose in Lusatia.

This is happening despite it being clear that renewable energy production is possible and a faster coal exit is absolutely necessary to stay within the 1,5°-limit.

What are we doing?

We’re standing in the path of this injustice. We – those directly affected by the mining and forced resettlements, people active in the climate justice movement, solidary citizens – have joined forces, coming from different regions and backgrounds. Not another village fall victim to lignite mining. We are united in solidarity to save the villages, maintain lively communities and make a just and self-governed transformation reality. This also means: The lignite has to be kept in the ground, to avert a climate catastrophe and to stay within 1,5° of global warming.

What can you do?

Press review

Here are some selected international articles about the threatened villages:

13.10.2022 – New York Times: Germany’s New Hunger for Coal Dooms a Tiny Village
13.04.2022 – E&E News: Germany to demolish village for coal, despite phaseout plans
11.02.2022 – The Times: RWE: Last farmer digs in against advance of German coal giant
12.11.2021 – De Volkskrant: Stopt de opmars van bruinkoolmijn Garzweiler II bij boer Heukamp?
01.11.2021 – Huffington Post: En Allemagne, une mine de charbon qui engloutit les villages
23.10.2021 – Washington Post: Germany portrays itself as a climate leader. But it’s still razing villages for coal mines.
15.08.2021 – The Times: When it comes to the climate crisis, it should be penalties for those filthy Germans
28.06.2021 – NPR: A Coal-Mining ‚Monster‘ Is Threatening To Swallow A Small Town In Germany
19.01.2020 – Deutsche Welle: Hambach Forest: Germany’s sluggish coal phaseout sparks anger
30.09.2019 – The Guardian: ‚Human rights before mining rights‘: German villagers take on coal firm
10.08.2019 – The Guardian: Greta Thunberg takes climate fight to Germany’s threatened Hambach Forest
24.03.2019 – MENAFN – Daily News Egypt: As Germany phases out coal, villages still forced to make way for mining
06.12.2018 – Washington Post: A dying industry is displacing entire communities

Contact:
presse@alle-doerfer-bleiben.de

List of the endangered villages (on german webpage)

We will stand in front of our villages and protect them.

We demand the immediate stop to all forced resettlements, all demolitions, all forest clearances and destructions of land and nature in the lignite mining regions.

We demand the quickest possible exit from coal mining and policies that guarantee staying within the Paris agreement’s goal to limit global heating to 1,5°C – for climate justice in our regions and everywhere in the world.

We demand that #AllVillagesStay – #AlleDörferBleiben!