Pro East African Crude oil pipeline (EACOP) recently hoodwinked some students to demonstrate at EU Uganda offices against the EU Parliament Resolutions directing TotalEnergies to suspend EACOP and explore less environmentally harmful alternatives (EU resolution).
The same government leaning pro-EACOP brigade could not stand STOP EACOP university students demonstrating in support of the EU resolution. They have injected significant resources, threats, intimidation, arrests, detentions, prosecutions, propaganda and blackmail in opposing the EU resolution.
The same Uganda police that protected pro-EACOP protesting pupils who were tricked into believing that they were going to meet Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja shamelessly arrested and detained the 9 anti-EACOP protesters at the EU offices in Kampala.
The pretence of observing human rights was thrown through the window. Discrimination on the basis of EACOP opinion was on full display.
The stakes were too high to keep up the pretence even in dealing with an EU resolution that red-flagged not only environmental and climatic objections but also human rights concerns relating to access to information, involuntary displacement, insufficient and delayed compensation of project affected persons.
Government’s angry, intolerant and oppressive reaction to the EU EACOP Resolution and its citizens who support the STOP EACOP campaign reflects poorly on its poor governance credentials yet governance is the most important element in determining whether the people of Uganda will actually benefit from EACOP should it survive renewed opposition from environmentalists and human rights defenders in Uganda and abroad.
Oil is big business. But it is a dirty energy of the past. The future is green, clean and renewable. The hubbub about the EACOP after the European Union (EU) Parliament resolution advised Total Energies to suspend the pipeline construction and explore alternatives was a breath of fresh breath after years of a largely singular narrative of development by government and the companies interested in the oil in the Albertine.
Before the EU resolution, government not only ignored local STOP EACOP voices but also arrested, jailed, and closed their offices as in the case of AFIEGO staff. Government unfairly labelled anti-EACOP voices as unpatriotic and anti-development.
I stand with nature, biodiversity, wildlife and pristine environment against EACOP and other new fossil fuel investments. My opposition to EACOP – a 1,443km long heated 50 degrees heated oil pipeline from Kabale, Hoima District in Uganda to the Tanga Port of Tanazania - primarily rests on environmental, biodiversity, health and climatic concerns though the governance, economic and human rights objections to EACOP are just as important.
EACOP is a climatic bomb and environmental nuke in an East African landscape especially prone to the climate crisis. Uganda is among the developing countries (Global South) most vulnerable to climate change though we least contribute to it.
East Africa cannot afford anything that worsens the climate crisis given its peculiar vulnerability to it. Oil and other fossil fuels are the primary drivers of climate change. In just 5 years from today, climate change consequences in Uganda will be unbearable.
Floods, landslides, earthquakes, droughts and the like will hit us harder and longer resulting in more climate related deaths, famine, diseases, depression etc.
The world has less than 10 years to fix the climate crisis or dance to the death tune of an environmental Armageddon. We cannot afford to be accomplices in a climatic suicide in the name of oil extraction.
As the World Health Organisation (WHO) and some 200 other health associations warned on 14th September, 2022, we must stop all new EACOP like projects because fossil fuels are not only environmental disasters but they also endanger human health of especially communities around extraction sites like the Albertine.
WHO called for a halt to any new fossil fuels investments and phase-down of existing ones world over because they cause cancer, deadly pollution, birth complications and haematological ailments.
East Africa has enough cancer problems. People especially vulnerable groups to be crossed by EACOP cannot afford a rise in cancer and other oil diseases in the name of development. Life is more precious than expertly marketed development.
Besides climatic and health dangers, EACOP also threatens biodiversity in the forest, wetland and lake basin ecosystems it will rip through. The story of EACOP’s burial in the ground hides the reality that soil too has rich biodiversity.
To bury an oil pipeline, you must dig and remove vegetation including irreplaceable biodiversity. EACOP will drink from Lake Albert, snake through Lake Victoria basin, cross tributaries of River Nile and feed directly from 10 well pads and a feeder pipeline in Murchison Falls National Park.
It will cross protected areas in Tanzania and threaten wildlife habitats in both Uganda and Tanzania. Biodiversity, the variety of all life on earth, is a provider of such ecosystems functions as climate regulation, rain making, food, medicine and shelter provision.
These are more important goods for life, livelihoods and economies than any profit or development oil or other fossil fuel can spew.
Development must be sustainable. Sustainable development ensures that development today does not compromise the ability of future generations to develop.
Climate and health science highlighted by the International Energy Agency, UN Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UNEP, WHO, and the UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres is unambiguous: the world must stop its fossil fuel addiction and embrace renewable energies.
Oil belongs to the past and the development of the future will be powered by clean/renewable energy. Uganda, Tanzania and the rest of East Africa are blessed with clean energy potential with her reliable rivers and ever bright sun.
Renewable energy is the safe and cost-effective pathway to sustainable development. The importance and scope of sustainable development is articulated by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which offer a blue print for sustainable development with a clear emphasis on climate action and green growth.
Uganda, like other parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change committed to keeping global average temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius while aspiring to keep the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels of 1880. EACOP will frustrate our Paris goals.
Instead of keeping fossil fuels in the ground in an existential battle against climate change, EACOP - the longest heated oil pipeline the world has ever seen - will transport crude oil at 50 degrees.
The result will be a yearly pumping of 34 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to worsen climate change and pollution contrary to both the Paris Agreement goals and SDG 13 on climate action.
EACOP haunts Uganda with the spectre of oil spills that beckon not as an accusation against EACOP but as matter of engineering reality.
All natural resources require good governance. Oil demands a competent steward. We have a wrong oil steward in President Museveni who personalises the black gold as his oil. Under his unending reign, corruption, militarism, arbitrariness and human rights violations including torture are rife. That is just like oily Nigeria under military dictator San Abacha. Military dictators just cannot harness dirty oil money for their people.
The author is a lawyer and CEO, The Environment Shield
