EACOP is a climate time bomb

On September  29, the pro-East African Crude oil pipeline (EACOP)  hoodwinked some students to demonstrate against the EU Parliament Resolutions directing TotalEnergies to suspend EACOP and explore less environmentally harmful alternatives.

The same pro-EACOP brigade could not stand 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 nine anti-EACOP protesters at the EU offices in Kampala.

The pretense 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 pretense 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.

The government’s intolerant reaction to the EU EACOP resolution and its citizens who support the STOP EACOP campaign reflects poorly on its governance credentials.

Oil is big business. But it is dirty energy of the past. The future is green, clean, and renewable. The hullabaloo about the EACOP after the EU Parliament resolution was a fresh breath after years of a largely singular narrative of development by the government and the companies interested in the oil.

Prior,  the government not only ignored local anti-EACOP voices but also arrested and closed their offices as in the case of AFIEGO staff. The government unfairly labeled anti-EACOP voices as unpatriotic and anti-development.

I stand with nature, biodiversity, wildlife, and the pristine environment against EACOP and other new fossil fuel investments.

My opposition to EACOP rests on environmental, biodiversity, health, and climatic concerns though the governance, economic, and human rights objections to the project are just as important.

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 five years from today, if nothing is done, it is predicted that 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.

Additionally, the world has less than 10 years to fix the climate crisis or dance to the death tune of an environmental disaster. 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 Wednesday, September 14, we must stop all new EACOP-like projects because fossil fuels are not only environmental disasters but also a danger to human health.

Also, EACOP threatens biodiversity in the forest, wetlands, and lake basin ecosystems. The story of EACOP’s burial in the ground hides the reality that soil too has a 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 the two countries.

On the other hand, development must be sustainable. Sustainable development ensures that it does not compromise the ability of future generations to flourish. Uganda, Tanzania, and the rest of East Africa are blessed with clean energy potential with 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 are articulated by Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which offer a blueprint 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 the 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.

Lastly, all natural resources require good governance. Without good governance underpinned by rule of law, good governance, accountability, transparency, and genuine, and informed public participation, the little oil money Uganda will get compared to the mammoth profits Total Energies will reap, will elude Ugandans.

Kiiza Eron,

CEO – The Environment Shield