Protect The Deltas: New website and campaign launch

Today, we’re excited to be launching a new data visualization website that highlights the threat of oil drilling to three iconic and critically important African Deltas: the Niger Delta in Nigeria, Saloum in Senegal, and Okavango in Botswana.

Go to ProtectTheDeltas.org to visit the new website.

Working with our partners Fossil Fuel Atlas and Skytruth, we’ve put together maps, graphics, photos, and stories to help visualize the threat to the Deltas by oil and gas development. The plan is to track the fossil fuel industry’s activities in the Deltas over time, the threats to biodiversity, and highlight communities fighting fossil fuel expansion.

Here’s what it looks like:

ProtectTheDeltas.org homepage

The science is clear: the future of our planet depends on a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels. Yet it’s business as usual for the industry, pushing forward with a vision of massive oil and gas exploration around Africa that would doom communities and the ecosystems they depend on. For decades, fossil fuels have failed Africa’s development goals with empty promises of jobs, energy access, and profits for Africans. Yet, the threat is growing.

Oil exploration threatens the Okavango Delta in Botswana. In Senegal, offshore oil and gas is ramping up, threatening the Saloum Delta. In the Niger Delta, where communities have fought the oil industry for decades, international oil companies are abandoning onshore production to go offshore, leaving a trail of poverty and destruction in their wake.

As our Africa Director, Thuli Makama, puts it:

“Extraction of fossil fuels in the Deltas will repeat the cycle of burdening local communities and national governments with the costs, whilst the oil companies make profits. Significant investments have gone into conserving Deltas in Africa. Local communities practice indigenous knowledge and conservation to sustain life in the Deltas. Governments and international conservation groups have invested massive resources to protect these same deltas and other biodiversity hotspots in Africa.

Allowing extraction for fossil fuels in the Deltas is a threat not only to the fauna and flora but also to all these conservation efforts. The biggest losers are local communities who risk displacement and irreparable loss of heritage. Through this website, research and lived experiences from frontline communities will find space to depict the true costs of fossil fuels.”

Each of these deltas are biodiversity hotspots and have millions of people who depend on them for their food, water, and livelihood. They need protection from oil and gas development.

The new ProtectTheDeltas.org website tells these and other stories and will continue to be updated over the coming months.