Berlin, Germany – Today Hilda Nakabuye, Ugandan climate and environmental rights activist and founder of Uganda’s Fridays for Future movement, challenged top European decision-makers over their support for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue. Nakabuye delivered a powerful speech to other keynote speakers including Annalena Baerbock the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kwasi Kwarteng the British Secretary of State for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, and António Guterres the Secretary-General for the United Nations.
Photos of the intervention will be available here from approximately 2pm CEST
Hilda Nakabuye said: “I have come here today to remind you that the greed exhibited by your leaders and global north corporations is a danger to the lives of people in Africa. It is a danger to wildlife and a threat to future generations. Despite promising time and time again to cut fossil fuels at home, European backing for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline is clear evidence the region continues to support devastating fossil fuel projects in the global south. Europe developed by burning fossil fuels but that is not the path we want to take – Uganda and the rest of Africa wants to develop but not at the expense of nature and human lives.”
Annalena Baerbock the German Minister for Foreign Affairs responded: “it’s our global responsibility to ensure that we don’t export our energy crisis to countries of the global South, and that the energy transition is equitable, even in the rest of the world.”
The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline is a proposed 1,443-kilometer crude oil pipeline from Hoima in Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania that, if completed, would be the longest heated crude oil pipeline in the world. The likely risk of oil spills pose a huge threat to the livelihoods and welfare of tens of millions of Ugandans and Tanzanians, and would generate over 34 million extra tons of carbon emissions every year, accelerating the climate crisis.
Today’s intervention is one important stop on the StopEACOP tour: Ugandan climate activists, including Vanessa Nakate, have been traveling across Europe to raise the awareness and support for their ongoing campaign to halt the construction of the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline. With the support of European climate activists they want to end European support for this devastating project. Currently EACOP is financed and supported by European companies like Total, financiers that include Deutsche Bank and Standard Chartered, and insurers like Munich RE and Allianz.
During the StopEACOP tour the Ugandan activists have:
- Met with Pope Francis and Vatican officials seeking support for the campaign;
- Delivered an intervention at the UN in Geneva;
- Staged protests outside Total offices in Berlin and Total’s headquarters Paris;
- Met with French government officials to discuss EACOP;
- Given speeches to tens of thousands of people in Paris and Berlin;
- Met with representatives at BNP Paribas and Natixis to demand an end to the bank’s financing of fossil fuels.
Hilda Nakabuye on the StopEACOP tour: “We want people in Europe and around the world to know about the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline. We want financial institutions and other big companies supporting Total to withdraw their support. We want to see this project stopped, as well as any other new oil projects in Africa and around the world.”
As a direct result of the pressure applied by climate activists during the StopEACOP tour 18 French MPs from seven parliamentary groups have denounced the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, and the world’s third and fourth largest (re)insurers, Hannover RE and SCOR announced they won’t be supporting the project.To date fifteen major banks and five major reinsurers have ruled out support for the pipeline.
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Media Contact: Katja George, [email protected], +491778756592
Information about the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue
Bio for Hilda Nakabuye:
Hilda Flavia Nakabuye is a Ugandan climate and environmental rights activist and founder of Uganda’s Fridays for Future movement. She also advocates for greater gender equality and racial diversity in the climate change movement. One of her environmental concerns is saving Lake Victoria, which connects Uganda to neighbouring countries. As part of her activism, Nakabuye visits schools and communities to empower more women to join the fight against climate change, stating that the climate crisis has no borders”. She also created Climate Striker Diaries, an online platform to encourage digital awareness about climate change.
East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline facts:
- The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) will be more than 1,400 km long – the distance between Paris and Rome – and would run alongside Lake Victoria basin, which is the continent’s largest freshwater reserve and the source of the Nile, between Uganda and Tanzania.
- The oil would be heated permanently to 50°C to keep it fluid and transport it to the port of Tanga, in Tanzania, and into international shipping tankers.
- This project that would extract 200,000 barrels of oil per day and generate up to 34 million tons of carbon emissions each year – seven times what Uganda emits each year and about 1/16th of France’s emissions.
- More than 100,000 people are being forced off their land and expropriated.
- The project risks poisoning the water resources and wetlands of Uganda and Tanzania, including the Lake Victoria Basin, on which more than 40 million people depend for drinking water, food production and their livelihoods.
- This will violate a multitude of human rights: the right to property, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to food, the right to education, the right to health, the right to adequate housing, the right to life and safety, the right to freedom of expression, assembly and association, and the right to free, prior and informed consent.
- There are threats, harassment, intimidation, attacks, arrests and imprisonment of environmental, human rights and journalistic defenders.
For more information about the StopEACOP campaign please visit their website