EACOP is a 1,443km heated 50-degree oil pipeline from Kabaale, Hoima district in Uganda to the Tanga port of Tanzania. 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 nine anti-EACOP protesters at the EU offices in Kampala. 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 and 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.

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 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 basin.

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 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 five 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. 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 September 14, 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 basin.

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. 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 blueprint for sustainable development with 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 two 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 tonnes 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. The Guardian quotes US engineer Bill Powers clarifying that EACOP is bound to lead to oil spills besides producing enormous waste with heavy metals and toxic substances.

The havoc spills can wreak in oil-extraction communities will soon be witnessed unless we stop EACOP. Remember the Niger delta where oil spills wreaked poverty, death and disease to especially the Ogoni people of Nigeria?

Uganda and Tanzania should not drive themselves into an Ogoni tragedy and sacrifice communal livelihoods on the altar oil money. Life and nature are more precious than oil money.

Adding to the environmental, health and economic injuries EACOP will inflict on East Africa is the bitter salt of the opacity and sheer lack of transparency about oil activities in the Albertine region and the oil agreements. Even Parliament of Uganda passed the EACOP laws without accessing key oil agreements.

A delegation of EU diplomats was blocked from accessing the oil infrastructure in 2021. One Ugandan human rights lawyer once survived arrest for trying to photograph oil infrastructure in the Albertine basin. Some journalists, lawyers and student protestors focusing on EACOP have suffered arrest, detention, intimidation or offices closures.

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 Sani Abacha. Military dictators just cannot harness dirty oil money for their people. The steward Uganda has, simply cannot and is incapable, by his guerrilla/military character and background, of delivering oil dividends to the people of Uganda.

Without good governance underpinned by rule of law, good governance, accountability, transparency, genuine and informed public participation and respect for human rights, the little oil money Uganda will get compared to the mammoth profits Total Energies will reap, will elude Ugandans.

The author is CEO, The Environment Shield