Uganda and Tanzania have created facts about the promotion of the fossil industry by launch on the construction of the East African crude oil pipeline. At the same time, the internationally networked resistance of civilian actors towards the booming oil production in East Africa is growing. Judicial complaints are a central element in their fight to uphold the rule of law, human rights and environmental protection.

Last year, the beginning of the end of the fossil era was ushered in at the world climate conference in Dubai. Some countries interpret this as follows: it is necessary to get the last fossil fuels out of the ground. This means drilling, dredging, pumping – to earn crude oil, gas and coal once again.

One example is the fossil industry in Uganda, which is trying to feed its last fossil occurrences from the ground into the global economy. It wants to pump the petroleum down there to the surface and through a heated pipeline into a deep-sea port into the Tanzanian tanga. From there, it, together with the French energy giant TotalEnergies and Chinese participation, is being shipped for the global oil industry.

The oil project called the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) with a targeted running time of 25 years has been under construction since this April. In Tanzania and Uganda, the scope of civilian actors who are fighting against land seizures for the 1,443-kilometre-long pipeline corridor and defending human rights is severely restricted. In Uganda, the police have arrested farmers, journalists, human rights and environmental defenders who have spoken out against the oil projects. Reporters Without Borders once again stated in May that freedom of the press and civil say are strictly curtailed. At the end of May, eight environmental activists were arrested when a letter of protest to the Chinese Embassy was arrested by Ugandan security forces. Obviously, governments sacrifice freedom of expression, human rights and livelihoods for their fossil utopianism.

Bizarre oil shops

Uganda’s government is not only pursuing an export strategy for its crude oil, which is stored in the Albertgraben on the border with the DR Congo. It also wants to modify its own oil import infrastructure. For this purpose, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni initiated an old oil dispute with Kenya: In February, the neighbouring countries decided to resume the plan to expand the Mombasa-Eldoret-Kampala pipeline. This pipeline originates in the port of Mombasa/Kenya, on the Indian Ocean and currently leads via Nairobi to Eldoret in West Kenya. This part has been in operation since May 2014. For many years, plans to extend the pipeline have been circulating, first to Kampala on Lake Victoria, Ugandan, then on to Rwanda’s capital Kigali, possibly even to Lake Bujumbura Burundi around Lake Tanganyika.

This would mean that on the one hand, the export of crude oil is being produced, while at the same time the import of refined oil will be extended. This contradicts any economic logic that the finishing of a product is not outsourced as far as possible. While Uganda wants to transport its crude oil via the East African crude pipeleline EACOP to the port to Tanga and sell it from there on the world market, from Mombasa, 130 kilometres north of Tanga, refined oil via the Mombasa Eldoret pipeline to Kampala is to be pumped at the same time.

On the one hand, crude oil transport for the world market, on the other hand, import of refined oil – that is, of fishing-for fuels – for one’s own energy needs: this is an old pattern for asymmetric trade relations – or, as the Kenyan climate activist Omar Elawi said: business colonialism. Others will benefit from the refinement of the crude oil and transport. The oil, transported twice over thousands of kilometres, puts a heavy impact on the environment and undermines the social development of the adjacent municipalities. The economic dependence of the Global South is simply reproduced in terms of trade policy. And climate policy, the EACOP is also a disaster that undermines the fair energy transition in Uganda.

Problems and protest on the spot …

It is therefore not surprising that the sharpest critics of EACOP include many regional environmental and human rights defenders as well as initiatives affected. For example, Witness Radio Uganda documents land veins on an interactive map and has been providing legal assistance to people in rural areas affected by land expulsion for years. Tonny Katende from Witness Radio says: “We combine legal assistance and media work to mobilize the rural population. This is the only way she can protest with a strong voice against the injustices in land use and environmental destruction and advocate for equal access to resources in our country.”

Another activist is Christopher Opio, founder of the Oil Refinery Residents Association (ORRA). The NGO with over 7,000 members recently protested before the Court in Hoima in Western Uganda. This is where the pipeline is to start, and 42 households have recently been sued by the government, because they refused to accept compensation for their country: “This means that these people are now being driven out of their country,” said Opio. At the protest on the 15th April the landowners moved through the city towards court. They hold signs high with messages such as “Do not attach our rights” and “do not self-elige us for oil”.

TotalEnergies has been drilling in Tilenga on the northern shore of Lake Albert on Lake Albert since June 2023. Four hundred holes are planned, one third of which are in a natural park. In the Kingfisher area further south of the lake, the Chinese company CNCOOC is taking hold to light since January 2023. Fishing communities of both places turn to the companies with a protest letter in April 2024: the light from the drilling rigs violates and distributes the fish, and nitrogen- and phosphorous-containing wastewater is burdening the water quality. The risks documented by international environmental organizations such as Les Amis de la Terre, Natural Justice and Greenpeace, as well as Human Rights Watch and BankTrack, are concerned about water and the health of over eleven million residents at Lake Albert: 426 wells ensure that water is pumped from Lake Lake Lake. The water is then heavily heavy metal and poses a threat to the population as wastewater. A leak would be a disaster for which no one is sufficiently prepared.

… and anti-imperial rhetoric of the revolt

Local civilian actors in Tanzania and Uganda, including lawyers, students and stakeholders, are often discredited by their own governments as an extended arm of imperial Western environmental extremists. An environmental journalist and a community worker temporarily left the country for persecution and intimidation.

Governments sacrifice the environment for their fossil utopianism

Activism does not arise from a capitalist lobby, but scientifically proven risks to the environment, dangers to the health of neighbouring communities, concrete human rights violations such as land displacements and expropriations, and de facto violent attacks by the police and the military – including rape and massive bodily injury to the rural population. On the basis of research and witness reports, problems are combated, such as the inadequate compensation of the oil lobby or the authoritarian behavior of the project operators. Here the anti-imperial rhetoric of the government side is like a diversionary manoeuvre.

The Chinese CNCOOC and TotalEnergies are now feeling resistance from all over the world in addition to the local protest. This is the international (instead of imperial) dimension of the debate. More than 260 civil society organisations are demanding a stop from EACOP. The political forms of action and protest of the well-connected movement against the construction of the EACOP are manifold: an important lever is legal complaints against violations by companies and governments. Another strategy is divestment. Potential investors or insurance companies should be persuaded not to invest in environmentally harmful and anti-social projects, or to deduct their capital from such projects.

Complained, divestment and political pressure

In November 2020, four East African civil society organisations, including AFIEGO, Natural Justice Kenya and the Tanzanian Strategic Litigation Centre (SLC), filed a complaint against EACOP at the East African Court (EACJ). After an initial dismissal, the Appeals Division of the East African Court requested the plaintiffs at the beginning of the year, until 22. March submit written comments. By the end of April, the defendants were again allowed to react to them in writing. The civilian plaintiffs see legal principles violated by the state, including the environmental and human rights standards enshrined in the Treaty of East African Community for the benefit of current and future generations, as well as compliance with international treaties.

The consortium of lawsuits is an expression of a regionally and internationally well-connected NGO community, which takes legal action against the fossil fuels, including its financial and reinsurance companies, through legal action. This means that among the global civilian NGO networks is growing know-how to strategies for how to take several tracks against the land grabbing of the climate-damaging fossil industry. With the worldwide campaign “StopEACOP, 29 investors have now been discouraged to be part of the pipeline project, including the second largest German insurance group Talanx.

In the fight against the large-scale fossil-fuel project EACOP, the strategy of divestment is considered promising, especially in Europe: Public pressure on the suppliers from the construction, insurance, logistics and credit institutions sectors is to prevent the cash flow for the project, which is still not financially secured. Another great success of the international campaign alliance “StopEACOP” was the withdrawal of the Japanese Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group over a year ago. Meanwhile, 27 banks and 23 reinsurers as well as four export credit agencies have announced that they will not support EACOP. Therefore the mood on the Instagram account of the campaign alliance is sometimes euphoric.

The political pressure was also some success. International alliances confront politicians with studies such as “A Disaster in the Making” by Les Amis de la Terre or “Our Trust is Broken” by Human Rights Watch 2023. The European Parliament called on the governments of Uganda and Tanzania to comply with human rights standards in September 2022. In a decision on the COP27 climate conference, the German Bundestag spoke out against the financing of the EACOP in 2022.

Do the climate complain?

Lucien Limacher from the organisation Natural Justice from South Africa, one of the members of the plaintiffs against the EACOP before the East African Court, generally likes the effects of climate lawsuits. On the one hand, climate lawsuits are also increasing on the African continent. However, Limacher also says: “In the global North there is a misunderstanding about how we define climate processes. Africa will suffer massively from the consequences when global warming of more than 2.5 degrees is suffering.” In addition, in view of the 400 to 600 fossil projects that are up to 400 to 600, the climate cannot be saved solely through the route of the process. “So we need to think about how we proceed in legal disputes. A new way of thinking is emerging on the African continent: local climate lawsuits are no longer just about emissions, but about much more comprehensive risk factors such as access to food and water or land, because these areas that will be most severely affected.”

Despite the manifold resistance, the further construction of the EACOP is also progressing – and thus Uganda’s desire to become part of the ranks of the petrostate, half of which cover their economy from oil business. After the exit of European and Japanese banks from EACOP financing, the French energy giant TotalEnergies has signed a contract with China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering (CPP) for the construction and supply of line pipes. This means that the cross-border project has been relocated to Beijing, from where most of the still missing loans are likely to come from. During the recent visit of China’s head of state Xi Jinping to France in early May, there was no public talk of the oil shipping in Uganda. It is hardly conceivable that Macron and Xi of all people can silence the issue, because the resistance against the EACOP is great, especially in France.

The struggles for oil production in Uganda, with the words of the Ugandan anthropologist Paddy Kinyeras ¹, show that pipelines as critical infrastructures represent physical manifestations of power geometry. The realization of the pipeline requires governmental power and strengthens it at the same time. Since the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Climate Summits have been a place to publicly confront this government and corporate power and to create political back pressure against the fossil industry. They also serve as an international networking area for the civilian actors.

At the end of 2024, after the United Arab Emirates in 2023, a fossil heavyweight will once again host the World Climate Summit: Azerbaijan. And thus for the third time in a row a country that plans to rely on fossil resources and revive oil and gas production before the agreed phasing-out. Once again, the summit will be headed by a long-standing employee of an oil company, Muchtar Babaiev. He is the Minister for the Environment of a host country that has little understanding for civilian engagement. It is not very promising to take place against the charged fossil lobby. This is one reason upon all, internationally networked environmental, research and human rights initiatives in the fossil industry. They are essential to open the oil business with protests, climate lawsuits, divestment campaigns and political pressure.

Source: www.iz3w.org