By Spy Uganda
A huge crude oil pipeline project in East Africa has come under renewed fire from environmental campaigners, with prominent activists and researchers warning that the pipeline is not only incompatible with climate goals but will ruin the lives of thousands of people while further endangering rare animal species.
Ugandan climate activist star Vanessa Nakate joined an online event Wednesday to call attention to the risks posed by the 900-mile-long East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
“It is evident that there is no future in the fossil fuel industry,” Nakate told Africa’s People’s AGM on EACOP. “In regards to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, many people think this is a way of [creating] jobs and economic development. But we know the impacts on our food. We know the impacts on our water. We know the impacts on our livelihood.”
Speaking alongside civil society campaigners and personalities, Nakate stressed the proximity of the under-construction pipeline to Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, which provides water and food to tens of millions.
“Any kind of oil spill would harm about 40 million people … [pollute] our soils and our land. It would affect the food access of so many people when it’s evident that the climate crisis is already affecting so many people not only in Uganda but the African continent.”
On its completion in 2024, EACOP will carry an estimated 70 million barrels of oil per year from oilfields in Uganda to the coast in Tanzania, from where it will be shipped around the world. When burned, the oil will release up to 34 million tons of CO2 emissions a year.
With the UN’s major climate report warning last week that global carbon emissions must peak before 2025 to have any chance of limiting global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius or face accelerating climate breakdown, climate campaigners are stepping up pressure to prevent the pipeline from going ahead.
“The IEA [International Energy Agency] has made it very clear that if we want to [limit global warming] to 1.5 degrees Celsius, then we cannot have any new fossil fuel development,” Nakate said. “But even at 1.2 degrees, we already seeing the effects of the climate crisis on the African continent … the latest IPCC report projects that 700 million people in Africa will be displaced because of drought.”
Responding to a question from Forbes Sustainability, Nakate added: “The climate crisis itself is deeply rooted in colonialism. We also know that those who are least responsible are the ones who are most impacted by the crisis. The African continent historically is responsible for less than 4% of global emissions, and yet we are seeing how so many Africans are suffering some of the worst impacts of climate change. So indeed, colonialism comes through projects like EACOP.”
Nakate joined campaigners in calling on major banks and insurance firms not to back EACOP. At the time of writing, 15 banks and insurers, including HSBC, BNP Paribas and Swiss Re, had said they will not invest in the project. That leaves dozens of the world’s most powerful financial institutions to make such a declaration. With U.S. insurer Liberty Mutual to hold its annual general meeting Wednesday, and banks such as JPMorgan Chase have made pledges to take their businesses to net zero emissions by 2050, campaigners hope the renewed pressure will tip the balance of power against the pipeline.
EACOP is being built by French oil giant TotalEnergies and China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), with the financial backing of Standard Bank of South Africa, SMBC of Japan, and China’s ICBC. The project’s website boasts that the pipeline will be “the longest electrically heated pipeline in the world,” and that it will lead to a 60% increase in foreign direct investment for Uganda and Tanzania.
But in addition to its climate impacts, campaigners say EACOP is a direct threat to both local people and to the natural world. As many as 100,000 people across Uganda and Tanzania could lose their homes and land, and thousands of families are to be forcibly relocated to make way for the pipeline, pulling communities apart.
Furthermore, EACOP looks set to threaten the habitats of numerous endangered animal species, including elephants and chimpanzees. Veteran American climate campaigner Bill McKibben has said “the proposed route [of EACOP] looks almost as if it were drawn to endanger as many animals as possible.”
“The proposed East African Crude Oil Pipeline is an 18th-century project and one which is not fit for either Uganda or the world today,” said Prince Papa, Africa program coordinator for the Laudato Si’ Movement, a Catholic organization dedicated to climate and ecological justice. “The project is already forcefully displacing local communities, endangering wildlife and protected biodiversity areas, and tipping the world closer to climate catastrophe.”
“Uganda and East Africa can be the climate leaders that the world needs,” Papa told Forbes Sustainability. “We have the potential to lead on climate by pioneering a clean energy economy and modeling a prosperous, healthy future free of fossil fuels.”
EACOP enjoys the backing of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who believe the oil firms’ claims that EACOP will be good for their nations’ economies.
