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Oil activities in Murchison Falls National Park threaten Wildlife Conservation – AFIEGO study reveals.

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4 months ago

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By Witness Radio team.

A study conducted by the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) and its partners has revealed that oil development activities are threatening the existence of Wildlife conservation at Murchison Falls National Park (MFNP).

Uganda has 10 National Parks including Queen Elizabeth, Lake Mburo, Murchison Falls, Kidepo Valley, Kibale, Mount Elgon, Rwenzori Mountains, Semuliki, Mgahinga Gorilla, and Bwindi Impenetrable National Parks and are managed by Uganda Wildlife Authority, (UWA).

Murchison Falls National Park, one of the oldest and most visited national parks in Uganda, is highly attractive to tourists due to its rich biodiversity. According to the Ministry of Wildlife, Tourism, and Antiquities’ 2024 report, Murchison Falls National Park received the highest number of tourists among all the national parks in Uganda between 2019 and 2023.

Data from Ministry of Tourism shows that in 2023, the Murchison park received 141,335 visitors which is equivalent to 36.4% of the 387,914 tourists that visited Uganda’s ten national parks.

The 24-page document titled Murchison Falls National Park is dying: How oil activities, climate change, and poaching are negatively reshaping the Park’ reveals that the Tilenga oil project infrastructural development presents immense risks to Murchison Falls National Park.

The Tilenga Oil project, part of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is operated by Total Energies E&P (U) B.V. According to the EACOP website, EACOP is being constructed in parallel with two upstream development projects known as Tilenga and Kingfisher respectively.

Between February and June 2024, AFIEGO and partners conducted research to assess the progress of the development of the Tilenga oil project infrastructure and to examine the impact of this infrastructure on biodiversity.

In Murchison Falls National Park, oil sector infrastructure such as drilling rigs, well pads, flowlines, pipelines, roads, and others are being developed to enable commercial oil production by TotalEnergies under the Tilenga oil project.

Findings reveal that there has been progress in developing oil sector infrastructure in park assessed through satellite images. According to the study analysis of May 2024, satellite imagery shows rapid development of the tens of well pads and clearing for roads and the pipeline network inside the park.

The progress in oil development has had chilling effects on humans and biodiversity. Findings from the study expressed growing concern and fear towards light pollution, increased poaching risks, and increased motorization. Elephants are invading different areas of residence because of vibrations from the oil rig.

Among the impacts seen is the escape of wild animals from the park and the killing of people neighboring it. The study reveals that between 2023 and April 2024 in Buliisa district, five people have been killed by elephants. Oil host communities that live around the Park reported that elephants are moving from the Park and are invading communities destroying croplands and killing people.

According to experts in the study, the elephants could feel the vibrations from the drilling rig in their feet which causes them to move away from the Park and into communities.

The study also noted that the Tilenga oil project drilling rig is responsible for increasing light pollution in the Park and the surrounding communities. The light from the rig can be seen at long distances up to 13.9km away. Concerns were raised by this research’s respondents, who observed that the feeding and other patterns of nocturnal and light-sensitive wildlife could be negatively impacted by the rig’s light pollution. Such wildlife includes leopards, lions, birds, and others. These could migrate from the Park, or suffer worse impacts such as death.

Away from the above, the study observed that the paved roads that have been constructed in Park to support the Tilenga oil project activities have opened it up to more motorised traffic exposing wildlife to poaching, accidents as well as noise and air pollution.

Furthermore, Well-pads are located an estimated 950 and 750 metres respectively from the Murchison Falls-Albert Delta Ramsar Site in Park which is an Important Birding Area and important spawning ground for the Lake Albert fisheries.

“The development of good pads near the Ramsar site has been implicated in risking the conservation of aquatic biodiversity such as water birds especially the vulnerable Shoebill, fishes, and mammals like the hippopotamus” the study mentioned.

Additionally, the development of well pads and other oil sector infrastructure were also implicated in increasing the human population in Park. “The presence of human beings has been shown to lead to avoidance by wildlife, especially larger mammalian predators, of areas where human beings are. Wildlife such as the Uganda Kob was said to be slowly acclimatizing to the human presence and can be found near oil sector workers”. The study revealed.

Also, it pins oil activities in the Northern sector of the Park where the rig that will drill the Jobiri wells is located, the Northern side is characterized by savanna vegetation hosting more wildlife than the Southern sector, endangering the conservation of the savanna grasslands. According to experts in the study, predators such as lions, hyenas, leopards, and others also prefer to live in the Northern sector of the Park where they can easily access prey among others.

This study was released barely a few weeks after a group of 828 civil society organizations (CSOs) led by Afiego, oil host communities, fisherfolk, small-scale farmers as well as tour and travel operators, and other individuals from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) petitioned President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni to stop the ongoing TotalEnergies’ oil drilling in Murchison Falls National Park and its planned deployment of a second oil rig in the Park.

The petition followed reports that Total Energies E&P (U) B.V. was sweet-talking the President to allow them to deploy the second rig in the Park following the Petroleum Authority of Uganda’s (PAU) refusal, to allow them to deploy another oil rig in the Park over biodiversity conservation concerns.

As Total looks to add more oil rigs escalating the impacts, the recent study reveals that its current infrastructural projects—including oil rigs, well pads, pipelines, and roads—continue to cause negative impacts on biodiversity conservation in the Park.

In a bid to strengthen biodiversity conservation, the research study recommends that TotalEnergies and the Ugandan government stop all oil exploitation activities in the Park and calls for the intervention of the United Nations (UN), Ramsar secretariat, and UNESCO World Heritage Committee to engage the Ugandan government to stop the oil activities in Park.

Furthermore, the Ugandan government and development partners called upon to support the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) in addressing risks such as climate change, poaching, and human-wildlife conflicts that are endangering the conservation of vital wildlife that supports the multi-billion tourism and other industries in Uganda.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority refused to comment on the study findings. The spokesperson of the Authority Mr. Bashir Hangi in an interview with Witness Radio said he was unable to comment on its contents.

“We haven’t read the detailed report and cannot comment on its contents. Allow us to read the report,” he wrote in a WhatsApp text message to Witness Radio.

Dr. Patricia Litho Kevin, the Assistant Commissioner for Communication in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, acknowledged that there are potential risks associated with oil exploration and production, a reason why they established robust regulations, monitoring mechanisms, and contingency plans to prevent and respond to any environmental incidents.

She adds that the Government of Uganda is committed to ensuring that the oil projects are executed in an environmentally sustainable and responsible manner because it also understands the importance of preserving the natural heritage and biodiversity.

Related posts:

CSOs, oil host communities, and concerned citizens have petitioned the President of Uganda to stop oil drilling in the Murchison Falls National Park. Conservationists want Bugoma Forest made national park 61 CSOs want Ramsar Wetlands affected by EACOP and Tilenga projects in Uganda and Tanzania to be listed in the Montreux Record. Destroying Bugoma will block wildlife migration corridor We won’t leave Queen Elizabeth park land, Rukungiri locals insist

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Forced Land Evictions in Uganda: Tenure and food insecurity on the rise…

Published

1 day ago

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November 20, 2024

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The scale of the issue, as revealed in Witness Radio’s recent report, is staggering and demands immediate attention: Over 5,000 hectares are targeted weekly by local and foreign investors, leading to the displacement of hundreds of Indigenous and local communities. This urgent situation threatens their food sovereignty and environmental stewardship, necessitating immediate and decisive action.

The forced land evictions are not just numbers; they are exacerbating inequality and directly undermining the efforts of local farmers to safeguard food systems and the environment.

Disturbing findings from the Daily Monitor: Uganda is grappling with a surge in malnutrition cases, with over 260,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition, as reported by UNICEF and WHO.

When evicted from their land, which is the source of livelihood, survival becomes very difficult, resulting in unwanted deaths, sicknesses, and poverty. These are not just statistics, but the harsh realities the affected communities face. It’s crucial to remember that there’s a human story of struggle and loss behind every statistic, and it’s these stories that should drive our actions.

Witness Radio’s recent report, which covered the first half of 2024, revealed that Ugandans face forced land evictions daily to give way to land-based investments, with 723 hectares of land at risk of being grabbed daily.

Furthermore, over 360,000 Ugandans were displaced, with a daily average of 2,160 people losing their livelihood. Land is targeted for oil and gas extraction, mining, agribusiness, and tree plantations for carbon offsets. While some investments have taken shape on the grabbed land, other pieces of grabbed land are still empty but under the guardship of military and private security firms.

The report pointed out that the leading causes of forced land evictions were the lack of legal documents for land ownership and transparent mechanisms to regulate an influx of “investors.” This lack of legal ownership is not just a symptom but the root cause of the problem, highlighting the urgent need for legal reform to protect the rights of Indigenous and local communities.

Since the Uganda government announced an industrial policy that commoditized its land to fight its unemployment, which will give Uganda a middle-income class status from a low-developed country, there has been an increase in forced land eviction cases. This policy shift, encouraging large-scale industrial projects, has raised questions about the government’s responsibility and accountability in these evictions.

Many investors fraudulently acquire communities’ land and do not conduct feasibility studies to establish whether the targeted land has interests. On many occasions, communities are not consulted about their land, and no compensation is offered.

According to the Lands Ministry’s 2016 annual report, about 23 percent of Uganda’s land is registered. The registration is mostly with freehold (where the land is owned outright), mailo (a form of land tenure in Buganda, a region in Uganda, customary tenure), and lease (where the land is leased for a specific period) tenure systems.

Go-betweens and blockers use this gap with support from some government officials to acquire land titles fraudulently and later evict bonafide land occupants (Indigenous and local communities) to give way for land-based investment.

Related posts:

Breaking: There has been an alarming Rise in Forced Land Evictions in Uganda; over 360,000 Ugandans were Displaced in the First Half of 2024. How land grabs are causing food insecurity: A case of a community land rights defender in Mubende district forced to buy food for a family of 13 people for the last five years. Land as a security issue: endless forced land evictions and impunity threaten Uganda’s peace, lawlessness on the rise. Kiryandongo leadership agree to partner with Witness Radio Uganda to end rampant forced land evictions in the district. Breaking; Lands Minister directs police chief to arrest armed mobs involved in forced and illegal land evictions.
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Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) rejects the request to dismiss the EACOP appeal case.

Published

3 days ago

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November 18, 2024

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By Witness Radio team.

The Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) has rejected a request by the Tanzanian government to dismiss an appeal filed by four East African civil society organizations (CSOs) seeking compliance with the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) with regional and international human rights standards.

Tanzania’s Deputy Solicitor General, Mr. Mark Mulwambo, requested the judges dismiss the Appeal, arguing that the record of proceedings from the hearings held at the First Instance Division was missing. The record of proceedings includes the CSOs and respondents’ submissions. He added that, without it, the judges at the Appellate Division could not determine whether the First Instance Court erred in the ruling that they made.

However, the court could not grant his request. Instead, it ordered the four CSOs that filed the Appeal to file supplementary information so that the judges could hear the case.

The Appeal will be heard by a panel of judges from the Appellate Division of the EACJ, including Justice Nestor Kayobera, the division’s president; Justice Anita Mugeni, the Vice President; Justice Kathurima M’Inot; Justice Cheboriona Barishaki; and Justice Omar Othman Makungu. These judges, with their expertise in regional and international law, will review the Appeal and make a final decision.

The Appeal was filed by four CSOs, including the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO) from Uganda, the Centre for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) from Uganda, the Natural Justice (NJ) from Kenya, and the Centre for Strategic Litigation (CSL) from Tanzania, in December 2023. This was in response to the dismissal of their case, which sought compliance with the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) with regional and international human rights standards, by judges at the First Instance Division of the EACJ in November 2023.

During the dismissal, the court ruled that the applicants filed the petition out of time, stating that the petitioners should have filed the petition as early as 2017 instead of 2020. The court also ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case, meaning it did not have the legal authority to decide on this matter. These decisions were based on legal precedents and the specific circumstances of the case.

The CSOs were ordered to file the record of proceedings by Justice Nestor Kayobera by November 29, 2024.

The court session was attended by EACOP-affected communities from both Uganda and Tanzania. Among them was Mr. Gozanga Kyakulubya, an affected person from Kyotera District in Southern Uganda, who traveled to Arusha to participate in the hearing. His personal story underscores the profound impact of the EACOP on the lives of these communities.

He shared his grievance, stating, “I came to the court because I have a lot of pain. My land was taken for the EACOP, and before I was paid, it was fenced off. The government of Uganda also sued me because I rejected the low compensation offered by EACOP. We need at least one court to be fair to EACOP host communities, and we hope the East African Court of Justice will be that court.”

The EACOP has been designed, constructed, financed, and operated through a dedicated Pipeline Company with the same name. The shareholders in EACOP are affiliates of the three upstream joint venture partners: the Uganda National Oil Company (8%), TotalEnergies E&P Uganda (62%), and CNOOC Uganda Ltd (15%), together with the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (15%).

The 1,443km pipeline will eventually transport Uganda’s crude oil from Kabaale—Hoima to the Chongoleani peninsula near Tanga Port in Tanzania.

Climate activists and civil society organizations, however, continue to oppose the project, claiming that it will harm several fragile and protected habitats irreversibly and violate key agreements and treaties.

The potential environmental damage is a cause for concern among these groups.

Related posts:

Appellate Division of the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) to hear an Appeal filed by CSOs which seeks to reinstate a petition against the construction of the EACOP project tomorrow. EACJ’s Appellate Court will hear an appeal on the dismissed Case against EACOP development. The Appellate East African Court of Justice sets timelines for hearing an appeal against the construction of the EACOP. East African Court of Justice is to decide whether it has jurisdiction to try the EACOP case filed by Four East African NGOs today. The East Africa regional court dismisses a case challenging the construction of the EACOP project.
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Big oil firms knew of dire effects of fossil fuels as early as 1950s, memos show

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3 days ago

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November 18, 2024

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Newly unearthed documents contain warning from head of Air Pollution Foundation, founded in 1953 by oil interests.

Major oil companies, including Shell and precursors to energy giants Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP, were alerted about the planet-warming effects of fossil fuels as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents show.

The warning, from the head of an industry-created group known as the Air Pollution Foundation, was revealed by Climate Investigations Center and published Tuesday by the climate website DeSmog. It represents what may be the earliest instance of big oil being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its products.

“Every time there’s a push for climate action, [we see] fossil fuel companies downplay and deny the harms of burning fossil fuels,” said Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center who uncovered the historic memos. “Now we have evidence they were doing this way back in the 50s during these really early attempts to crack down on sources of pollution.”

The Air Pollution Foundation was founded in 1953 by oil interests in response to public outcry over smog that was blanketing Los Angeles county.

Researchers had identified hydrocarbon pollution from fossil fuel sources such as cars and refineries as a primary culprit and Los Angeles officials had begun to proposal pollution controls.

The Air Pollution Foundation, which was primarily funded by the lobbying organization Western States Petroleum Association, publicly claimed to want to help solve the smog crisis, but was set up in large part to counter efforts at regulation, the new memos indicate.

It’s a commonly used tactic today, said Geoffrey Supran, an expert in climate disinformation at the University of Miami.

Fire emanating from a factory chimney
A gas flare from the Shell Chemical LP petroleum refinery burns against the sky in Louisiana. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“The Air Pollution Foundation appears to be one of the earliest and most brazen efforts by the oil industry to prop up a … front group to exaggerate scientific uncertainty to defend business as usual,” Supran said. “It helped lay the strategic and organizational groundwork for big oil’s decades of climate denial and delay.”

Then called the Western Oil and Gas Association, the lobbying group provided $1.3m to the group in the 1950s – the equivalent of $14m today – to the Air Pollution Foundation. That funding came from member companies including Shell and firms later bought by or merged with ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Sunoco and ConocoPhillips, as well as southern California utility SoCalGas.

The Air Pollution Foundation recruited the respected chemical engineer Lauren B Hitchcock to serve as its president. And in 1954, the organization – which until then was arguing that households incinerating waste in backyards was to blame – asked Caltech to submit a proposal to determine the main source of smog.

In November 1954, Caltech submitted its proposal, which included crucial warnings about the coal, oil, and gas and said that “a changing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with reference to climate” may “ultimately prove of considerable significance to civilization”, a memo previously uncovered by John shows. The newly uncovered documents show the Air Pollution Foundation shared the warning with the Western Oil and Gas Association’s members in March 1955.

In the mid-1950s, climate researchers were beginning to understand the planet-heating impact of fossil fuels, and to discuss their emergent research in the media. But the newly uncovered Air Pollution Foundation memo represents the earliest known cautionary message to the oil industry about the greenhouse effect.

The Air Pollution Foundation’s board of trustees, including representatives from SoCalGas and Union Oil, which was later acquired by Chevron, approved funding for the Caltech project. In the following months, foundation president Hitchcock advocated for pollution controls on oil refineries and then testified in favor of state-funded pollution research in the California Senate.

Hitchcock was reprimanded by industry leaders for these efforts. In an April 1955 meeting, the Western Oil and Gas Association told him he was drawing too much “attention” to refinery pollution and conducting “too broad a program” of research. The Air Pollution Foundation was meant to be “protective” of the industry and should publish “findings which would be accepted as unbiased”, meeting minutes uncovered by John show.

After this meeting, the foundation made no further reference to the potential climate impact of fossil fuels, publications reviewed by DeSmog suggest.

“The fossil fuel industry is often seen as having followed in the footsteps of the tobacco industry’s playbook for denying science and blocking regulation,” said Supran. “But these documents suggest that big oil has been running public affairs campaigns to downplay the dangers of its products just as long as big tobacco, starting with air pollution in the early-to-mid-1950s.”

In the following months, many of the foundation’s research projects were scaled back or designed to be conducted in direct partnerships with lobbying groups. Hitchcock resigned as president in 1956.

Last year, the largest county in Oregon sued the Western States Petroleum Association for allegedly sowing doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of it.

DeSmog and the Climate Investigations Center previously found that the Air Pollution Foundation underwrote the earliest studies on CO2 conducted in 1955 and 1956 by renowned climate scientist Charles David Keeling, paving the way for his groundbreaking “Keeling Curve,” which charts how fossil fuels cause an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Other earlier investigations have found that major fossil companies spent decades conducting their own research into the consequences of burning coal, oil and gas. One 2023 study found that Exxon scientists made “breathtakingly” accurate predictions of global heating in the 1970s and 1980s, only to then spend decades sowing doubt about climate science.

The newly unearthed documents come from the Caltech archives, the US National Archives, the University of California at San Diego, the State University of New York Buffalo archives and Los Angeles newspapers from the 1950s.

The Western States Petroleum Association and the American Petroleum Institute, the top US fossil fuels lobby group, did not respond to requests for comment.

Origin Source: The Guardian

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