ACTION ALERT

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Taxpayer Dollars Underwrite Deforestation in Africa

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/

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 <ranmedia@ran.org>

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.

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