ACTION ALERT
Taxpayer Dollars Underwrite Deforestation in Africa
2/5/98
OVERVIEW, SOURCE & COMMENTARY by EE
Rainforest Action Network appeals for letters regarding a World Bank
financed pipeline through Central African rainforests. In Cameroon,
92% of original frontier forests have been lost already.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Taxpayer Dollars Underwrite Deforestation in Africa
Chad Oil pipeline/Action Alert 135 -- Feb. 1998
Source: Rainforest Action Network
Status: Distribute freely with credit to source
Date: February 3, 1998
Byline: Mark Westlund
The World Bank plans to fund an oil pipeline through Central African
rainforests that will bring huge profits to Shell, Exxon, and Elf
while causing environmental havoc and threatening local populations-
all with U.S. taxpayers backing the deal. The oil companies are about
to build a 600-mile pipeline from the Doba oil fields in Chad to
coastal Cameroon, slashing through fragile rainforest that is home to
the Baaka and Bakola peoples, communities of traditional hunters and
gatherers. "Once construction begins, we'll see an uncontrollable
influx of people in search of work - the result will be deforestation,
wildlife poaching, and the loss of community land," says Environmental
Defense Fund economist Korinna Horta.
Observers fear that the project will create another Ogoniland, the
Nigerian region devastated by decades of oil extraction and brutal
military rule. Shell has worked with Nigeria's dictatorship to crush
non-violent environmental organizing among the Ogoni, who have watched
more than 2,000 of their people killed during the last five years.
Even as the plight of the Ogoni has come to public attention, the
World Bank seems to have learned little from the oil conflict as it
pursues funding the Chad-Cameroon pipeline in the neighboring
countries. In Chad, the pipeline will likely escalate current
conflicts as it traverses Doba, an area where the government is locked
in a long-standing ethnic and regional struggle. In Cameroon, laying
the underground pipeline will require moving into rainforest areas
that are home to farmer and hunter-gatherer peoples, creating a
climate for environmental resistance. These situations are of
particular concern because both Chad and Cameroon have records of
violence against government critics, according the U.S. State
Department.
Even as the World Bank concedes that Cameroon has mismanaged its
finances and is facing environmental degradation, it is still rushing
head-first toward funding the pipeline, following in the footsteps of
other mega-projects that have helped fuel the destruction of 92
percent of Cameroon's original frontier forests.
It is not too late, however, for the World Bank take a step in the
right direction and reorienting its energy lending practices,
starting with redirecting investment in the Chad-Cameroon pipeline
into a renewable energy project for the region. Such a move would
fall in line with demand of hundreds of environmental and human rights
organizations from around the globe, which in December signed the
Kyoto Declaration, calling on the World Bank and other institutions to
"end to all lending, credit, and other forms of subsidy ... for fossil
fuel extraction and extraction-related projects" and instead invest in
renewable energy projects that will attend to the basic needs of the
Earth's peoples, including the poorest populations.
"Rainforest Action Network has fought for thirteen years against World
Bank boondoggles like this one," says RAN Executive Director Kelly
Quirke. "Even at the end of the 1990s, the Bank continues to use the
development practices of the 1950s. This project is another assault on
African rainforest, and more evidence that the World Bank is out of
step."
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Tell the World Bank officer in charge of African development projects
that it is unacceptable for the Bank to destroy rainforests and
threaten African communities with U.S. taxpayer support. Since the
World Bank receives Congressional authorization, make it clear that
you will ask your representatives to withhold funding from the Bank
until it stops funding fossil fuel projects and instead invests
renewable energy projects that benefit local communities. Sample
letter:
Jean-Louis Sarbib, Vice President for Africa
The World Bank, 1818 H Street NW
Washington, DC 20433
Dear Mr. Sarbib,
I have recently learned of the planned Doba oil pipeline leading from
Chad to Cameroon, a project that all the evidence indicates will be an
environmental disaster and endanger African communities.
I am especially disappointed that the World Bank continues to misuse
my tax dollars to finance and back environmental destruction. I will
ask my Congressional representatives to withdraw their support of the
World Bank until its stops funding out-dated oil projects such as this
one and instead invests in renewable energy projects that benefit
rather than harm local populations
Korinna Horta, Environmental Defense Fund, contributed to this alert.