Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
Congo's vital rainforest and peatlands are to face destruction from 52 new oil blocks. This plunder is likely to fuel conflict and displacement, enriching Big Oil Companies and complicit leaders. The DRC cannot be a sacrifice zone. We need to protect this lifeline.
The disconnect is terrifyingly stark. Last week, the Guardian newspaper reported that the “World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target”, with the planet heading for at least 2.5C of warming “with disastrous results for humanity."
Last week, some 30,000 delegates and 25 African heads of state, as well as the European Commission President, UN Secretary-General and US Special Envoy on Climate, gathered in Nairobi for the inaugural Africa Climate Summit.
The glossy website for the African Oil Summit in London last week called the event “Africa’s premier global energy conference”. Partners included some of the biggest international oil companies such as BP, Shell, Eni, E.on and Total.
Today marks the twenty seventh anniversary of the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other members of the Ogoni 9. They were murdered in 1995 by the Nigerian junta for their peaceful campaign to highlight the ecological destruction and environmental racism of Shell’s operations in Nigeria.
Two prominent African environmentalists are pushing back against those advocating for more fossil fuel drilling on the continent. They argue that “far from generating prosperity and stability in sub-Saharan Africa, investments in fossil fuels cause real harm,” noting “Decades of fossil fuel development have failed to deliver energy to much of the continent" and "have deepened inequality, caused environmental damage, stoked corruption, and encouraged political repression.”
“Shell’s concern, deeper than its fossil-fuel identity and more urgent than the climate crisis, is Shell. I don’t believe it’s going to lead us to the Paris climate goals, and Shell probably doesn’t believe it will either.”
Rick Perry tells an African Oil Conference: "it’s in fossil fuels that you will see real growth"
The decades’ long struggle for social and environmental justice in the Niger Delta continues, largely unseen by the wider world.
Sometimes the long, lonely struggle for justice does not take years, but decades. And at long last, four Nigerian women’s search for justice against Shell may be coming to an end.
