The impact of Total’s oil exploitation megaproject in Uganda will again be examined by the French courts. Dismissed of their first action, deemed inadmissible by the Paris court in March 2023, the NGOs campaigning against this project deemed “climaticide” and detrimental to local populations and biodiversity have decided to counterattack. Friends of the Earth, Survival, three Ugandan associations and twenty-six directly affected farmers filed an action for damages against the major on Tuesday, June 27, under the law on the duty of vigilance of multinationals with regard to their subsidiaries and their subcontractors.
“Total has failed in its duty of vigilance,” explains Juliette Renaud, Friends of the Earth. Families have been deprived of their land and crops without receiving prior and adequate compensation. By forbidding them to cultivate their fields, their right to food has also been violated. Many have faced threats and intimidation from regimes whose authoritarian nature the company could not ignore. Total should have identified and prevented these risks as required by the law adopted in 2017. We expect French justice to recognize these damages and order Total to repair them. »
The project, in which Total plans to invest 10 billion dollars, aims to extract the oil present in the Lake Albert region, bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), then to transport it to the port. Tenga in Tanzania via an oil pipeline called EACOP (East African Crude Oil Pipeline). Heated to 50°C and 1,448 kilometers long, the pipeline will be the longest ever built. 118,000 people are affected by partial or total expropriations. More than 400 boreholes will be drilled, including a third in Murchison Falls National Park, home to many endangered species.
File complexity
In Uganda and Tanzania, opponents of the exploitation of fossil fuels continue to suffer reprisals. “Our office in Buliisa [district headquarters in which the drilling and the construction of a crude processing plant will be carried out] has been closed since 2021, contacts with the populations remain closely monitored. Our members remain under threat of arrest,” testifies Diana Nabiruma, representative of the Ugandan NGO Afiego (Africa Institute for Energy Governance), a party to the complaint.
The NGO tried – without success – to have the social and environmental impact certificate issued to Total by the Ugandan environmental management authority canceled in 2019 by bringing the case to the Kampala High Court. “We had denounced the biased procedures for consulting the populations as well as the failure to take into account certain data which would have made it possible to reduce certain risks such as floods, continues Ms. Nabiruma. However, in 2022 and 2023, several major floods occurred, which everything suggests are linked to the construction of the Kasenyi treatment plant. This had never happened before the start of the work. According to satellite images presented by the NGOs, the flows caused flooding in rivers downstream of the plant as well as spills in Lake Albert located 8 kilometers away.
However, it is less on the environmental impact of the project managed by Total than on the violation of human rights that the NGOs intend to focus on. On the relatively modest number of plaintiffs – twenty-six – coming directly from the communities, they emphasize the complexity of the file and the security that will have to be guaranteed to each of them throughout the procedure “There is no group action. We must assess the damage individually for each victim and demonstrate Total’s liability. But if we win, it will set a precedent,” hopes Juliette Renaud.
From the beginning, Jelousy Mugisha has been one of the diehards who are not afraid to express themselves. “Many have stopped complaining because they were scared, but I can’t resign myself,” says the farmer whose land was requisitioned. I wanted compensation in kind not in cash for my farm, but they [the company commissioned by Total to draw up the community resettlement plan] said that it was a second home and that I was not entitled to it . I don’t want their money. What he gives us is not enough to build a new house. As in 2019 during the first trial, Jelousy Mugisha traveled to Paris to testify against this project which has become, in the words of Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné, “the symbol of the anti-oil fight”.
