ECONOMY: Activists Try Again to Stop Bank-Backed African Pipeline

By Emad Mekay Reprint | | Print |

Emad Mekay

WASHINTON, Sep 28 2002 (IPS) - Cameroon residents affected by a controversial World Bank-backed oil pipeline are appealing to the agency’s Inspection Panel to stop the damaging project – just weeks after an earlier attempt was rebuffed by the bank’s directors.

The locals, joined by the U.S.-based Centre of Environment and Friends of the Earth-Cameroon, hope their plea will succeed where an earlier complaint filed by citizens of neighbouring Chad affected by the project did not.

Bank directors affirmed Sep. 14 that the project would proceed despite the complaint, after adjusting for some problems noted by the Panel.

“The findings of the Panel will lead to improvements in the ongoing implementation of this challenging project, which has enormous potential to bring great benefits to the people of Chad and Cameroon,” said Bank President James Wolfensohn.

The new claimants charge that several Bank policies are being violated during the ongoing construction of the pipeline, which “traverses their villages, lands and, in the case of the Bakola pygmy communities, their traditional hunting areas in the coastal rainforest”.

The claim cites breaches of the Bank’s policies on natural habitats, indigenous peoples, environmental impact assessment, poverty reduction, public disclosure and consultation and project supervision – all of them designed to protect ordinary people.

Unlike the previous claim made by Chad nationals, this one presents detailed cases of the harm done by the 3.7-million-dollar project.

The locals complain that construction of the 1,000-kilometre pipeline has polluted water sources, reduced crop production, eliminated forests, violated labour rights and created health problems – particularly the incidence of HIV/AIDS in the area – via the influx of workers and job seekers in the communities.

“This time we want to make sure that all the problems around the pipeline have a face,” said Samuel Nguiffo, a Cameroon activist in Washington to present the case.

“There are people, human beings, being affected by it. There are serious individual problems and sad individual cases behind all the major problems you hear about,” he added.

Activists are calling for the project to be suspended until its backers can guarantee that they are meeting all environmental, social and political commitments.

The pipeline, a joint venture between ExxonMobil (which holds 40 percent of the private equity), Chevron (25 percent), and Malaysia’s state oil company Petronas (35 percent), is due to be completed by 2003.

Other agencies involved in the project include the U.S. Export-Import Bank, Coface of France, the European Investment Bank and a consortium of banks led by Dutch ABN-Amro.

The Inspection Panel is a three-member body created in 1993 as an independent forum for private citizens who believe that they or their interests have been or could be directly harmed by a project backed by the World Bank, the world’s largest development body.

The Bank agreed to help finance the 3.7-million-dollar project on the condition that profits go to help the poor and that it not damage the environment.

It stipulated that 80 per cent of revenues – expected to be as much as 1.7 billion dollars for Chad and 500 million dollars for Cameroon over 28 years – be spent on improving health services, education, agriculture, infrastructure and rural development.

But earlier this month, the Bank’s executive board snubbed a Panel report that sided with many of the complaints from Chadians, including claims that famine conditions were taking hold in Chad’s Doba basin area due to inflated food prices.

The claim also said that in-migration and spontaneous settlements were putting an impossible burden on local infrastructure and increasing social tensions.

Nguiffo says the Cameroon activists should have a stronger case because they have had an extra year to prepare.

Their report describes the case of a 67-year-old man who had to endure six months of dynamite explosions and bulldozers churning metres from his home as workers dug for the pipeline, which will run 12 meters from his house.

“Even after they left, the man ended up with a swamp of water, full of mosquitoes, in front of his house. They destroyed a small canal in front of his house,” said Nguiffo.

The activist, who travelled the 800 kilometres that the pipeline travels in Cameroon to interview affected residents, says that even when locals are compensated, they receive far less than they deserve.

“Sometimes they get only 10 percent of the value of their plants or property,” he said. One farmer who refused to take what local officials offered for his trees, was threatened by them, Nguiffo said.

“He was told that he could go to prison if he didn’t accept the payment.”

“The World Bank touts the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline as a model project that will reduce poverty while compensating for environmental impacts,” said Nguiffo. “Our new Inspection Panel claim demonstrates the failure of World Bank rhetoric to match reality.”

It is expected that the Doba Basin will produce about 225,000 barrels of oil per day, which will be transported via the pipeline through neighbouring Cameroon to an offshore offloading facility in the Atlantic for export.

Friends of the Earth – one of the world’s largest environmental groups – has been challenging the World Bank’s ongoing support of fossil fuel and mining projects at the annual meetings of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this weekend in Washington.

More than 150 civil society groups have endorsed the group’s appeal for an immediate phase-out of all financing of fossil fuel and mining projects by the Bank and other international financial institutions.

The groups say that such investments have benefited multinational corporations but failed to help the poor, a violation of the Bank’s mission to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable development.

Representatives of communities in Cameroon, Peru, Romania, Nigeria, and Georgia that are directly affected by World Bank projects are also here this week to protest the Bank’s ongoing support of fossil fuel and mining projects.