Full Page Ad in New York Times Challenges World Bank Pres. About
African Oil Pipeline
8/5/99
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Title: Full Page Ad in New York Times Challenges World Bank Pres.
About African Oil Pipeline
Source: Rainforest Action Network media release
http://www.ran.org
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 5, 1999
Byline: Erick Brownstein, Mark Westlund 415/398-4404
In a full-page ad in today's New York Times, Rainforest Action
Network (RAN) challenged World Bank President James Wolfensohn to
stand by his convictions and not approve funding for controversial
oil pipeline project in Central Africa. The headline cries: "Here's
your chance to invest in corrupt governments and get high-yield
rainforest destruction at no extra cost."
The Chad/Cameroon Rainforest Pipeline project will slice through the
heart of Africa's rainforests, and will put millions of dollars into
the pockets of two corrupt governments. Transparency International, a
business coalition that monitors crooked governments, recently rated
Cameroon the world's most corrupt government. Southern Chad is so
dangerous and politically unstable that neither Amnesty International
nor the US State Department were able to visit and confirm the
massacre of hundreds of people.
Wolfensohn has consistently maintained that corruption is the biggest
roadblock to development. In a 1997 USIA interview about oil
companies and African governments, he told the correspondent "people
who corrupt don't get rewarded for it, and people who are corrupted
don't get rewarded for it." Wolfensohn alone has final say whether or
not the Chad/Cameroon Rainforest Pipeline project gets funding.
"Giving money to rogue governments has never been an effective way of
providing humanitarian aid," said RAN's African Rainforest Campaign
Director Erick Brownstein. "The people of Chad and Cameroon deserve a
chance to live a decent life, but destroying their forests, putting
food and water supplies at risk of contamination, and beefing up the
non-democratic governments is no way to achieve that goal."
If the loan is approved, $250-million of the total $365-million
project will go to Exxon, Royal Dutch/Shell and the French oil giant
Elf, which are leading the Rainforest Pipeline project. In
neighboring Nigeria, Shell has contaminated local water supplies with
petroleum hydrocarbons that are 360 times higher than levels allowed
in the European Community. The proposed oil fields for the
Chad/Cameroon Rainforest pipeline are in the heart of Chad's fertile
food-producing region, where even an incidental spill would be
devastating.
Rainforest Action Network works to protect the Earth's rainforests
and support the rights of their inhabitants through education,
grassroots organizing and non-violent direct action. RAN's Africa
Campaign is funded as part of a $1-million grant from the Richard and
Rhoda Goldman Fund.
For a fax copy of a reduction of the advertisement, please contact
RAN
___________________________________________
Rainforest Action Network
221 Pine Stret #500
San Francisco, CA 94014
Telephone: 415/398-4404; fax: 415/398-2732 Website:
http://www.ran.org