An explosive report. The TotalEnergies oil megaproject in Uganda is a “disaster” for the population, “has devastated the livelihoods of thousands of people” and “will contribute to the global climate crisis”, lamented this Monday, July 10, in a new report, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), calling for it to be stopped.
TotalEnergies announced last year a 10 billion dollar investment agreement with Uganda, Tanzania and the Chinese company Cnooc, including the construction of a 1,443 kilometer pipeline (Eacop) linking the deposits of the lake Albert, in western Uganda, to the Tanzanian coast on the Indian Ocean.
The project, however, has met with opposition from environmental activists and groups who believe it threatens the region’s fragile ecosystem and the people who live there.
For HRW, the project “impoverishes thousands of people” and will displace more than 100,000 people. Eacop “has caused food insecurity and household debt, contributed to children dropping out of school and risks having devastating effects on the environment”, continues the NGO in a report, the result of more than 90 interviews. , including with 75 displaced families in five districts of the East African country.
The oil project is “a disaster for the tens of thousands of people who lost land that provided food for their families and an income to send their children to school, and who received insufficient compensation from the part of TotalEnergies,” Felix Horne, an environmental researcher at HRW, said in the report, before continuing, “Eacop is also a disaster for the planet and the project should not be completed. »
Several farmers, interviewed by HRW, say they had to wait years for compensation and had gone into debt. Some villagers said they were made to sign compensation agreements in English, a language they could not read, while others also told researchers that “the presence of government and security at public meetings has helped create an aura of intimidation,” points out HRW.
“They come here promising us everything,” a resident told HRW. We believed them. Now we are landless, the compensation money is gone, the fields we have left are flooded and dust fills the air. »
In a response sent to AFP, the oil giant claimed it was “false” that the project would displace hundreds of thousands of people, saying: “A total of 775 households, or approximately 5,000 people, will be relocated nearby and in better conditions on 5,600 hectares acquired. »
TotalEnergies also affirmed, with its partners, “to put environmental and biodiversity issues as well as the rights of the communities concerned at the center of the project” and that Eacop “constitutes a major development challenge for Uganda and Tanzania”.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1986, has repeatedly described the project as a major economic boost for the landlocked country, despite a non-binding European Parliament resolution last year. calling out human rights “violations” against opponents.
At the end of June, twenty-six Ugandans and five French and Ugandan associations launched a new legal action in France to demand “compensation” from the giant TotalEnergies for the “damages” caused, according to them, by its controversial oil megaproject.