World Bank’s pipeline to disaster may include summary executions

Washington, DC, June 6— The World Bank approved a $3.7 billion oil well and pipeline project Tuesday to link oil fields in Chad to Cameroon’s Atlantic coast. Having given up on getting the World Bank to comply with even its own environmental and social development policies, 200 non-government organizations from 55 countries have called for the institution to withdraw altogether from financing oil, gas and mining projects.

The 200, including Friends of the Earth and many grassroots organizations in Third World countries directly affected by such projects, issued a joint platform during the April 16 Washington, DC, protests against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, arguing “Nowhere is the incompatibility of environmental destruction and poverty alleviation more evident than in the World Bank Group’s investments in the extractive industries: oil, gas and mining.”

The World Bank’s oil, gas and mining projects, the platform states, “enable wealthy multinational corporations to extract resources and profits from poor countries, leaving poverty in their wake. They fuel global climate change, pollute the environment and lead to deforestation. Even worse, extractive industries have further entrenched corrupt and dictatorial regimes, and exacerbated human rights abuses.”

In 1999, the World Bank Group lent 3.8% of its total portfolio for oil, gas and mining projects. Its private-sector arms, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, which work hand-in-glove with the big transnational corporations, lent 16% of their total portfolio for such projects.

At the top of the list of concerns of the NGOs (non-governmental organizations) is the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline project, which involves drilling 300 oil wells in the southern Doba region of Chad, then pumping the oil along a purpose-built 1100-kilometer pipeline to Cameroon’s Atlantic coast at Kribi. The project is anticipated to produce 225,000 barrels of oil each day.

The COTCO/TOTCO consortium, which will run the project, comprises ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, with a 40% share, the Malaysian oil company Petronas with 35% and US oil giant Chevron with 25%.

ExxonMobil and Chevron have appalling environmental and human rights records. Chevron is currently being sued in US Federal Court for violations of international human rights law over its complicity in Nigerian police killings at its oil facilities in the Niger River delta. Besides its long history of oil spills, ExxonMobil has been implicated in murders of local people at its sites in the Doba region. The Bank’s vote comes in the wake of recent threats by Chadian military officials to execute any citizens who oppose the project.

The World Bank staff recommended that the board approve a US$115 million loan to the governments of Chad and Cameroon and a $250 million IFC loan to the COTCO/TOTCO consortium.

ExxonMobil has made it clear from the initial stages of the project that World Bank involvement is crucial to the project going ahead for two reasons: IFC involvement will allow the recruitment of other multilateral and private lenders, and the World Bank is at the center of the consortium’s political risk management strategy.

Chad and Cameroon are deeply in debt and are dependent on World Bank goodwill for further aid and loans. The consortium hopes that such “leverage” will ensure that neither government interferes in its business.

NGOs in Chad and Cameroon say the project will be environmentally and socially devastating.

The Doba region is at the center of escalating conflicts between the area’s largely Christian and animist inhabitants and the Muslim government in the north, over demands for southern self-rule. The Chadian military has killed hundreds of civilians in the region, including massacres in November 1997 and March 1998 which the government has refused to investigate. The unrest means that adequate environmental impact surveys have not been able to be conducted along large sections of the Chadian pipeline.

In Cameroon, the pipeline traverses major rivers 17 times, passes through areas inhabited by the Baka and Bakola pygmy peoples and cuts into the country’s Atlantic littoral forest. According to a report by the US-based Environmental Defense, the pipeline, and attendant roads and construction sites, will threaten loss of biodiversity and intensify deforestation; Cameroon already suffers one of the world’s fastest rates of deforestation.

The pipeline’s terminal, in Kribi, is a single-hulled floating refinery located in front of the Lobe waterfalls, one of the rare waterfalls that flow directly into the ocean. Kribi is nestled between two nature reserves and is presently dependent on eco-tourism.

The environmental studies have come in for prolonged criticism from environmental groups and local communities. The first report was deemed inadequate by the World Bank but the second, despite its length (19 volumes), fails to fix many of the earlier report’s problems. For example, the plan still does not include an adequate oil spill response plan, despite great dangers of spills.

Further, according to the Bank Information Center, the project’s plans do not address the lack of legal recognition for Cameroon’s indigenous people, the lack of local participation and consultation, or the lack of a budget for involving indigenous communities.

The center lists five World Bank policies that the project violates: the indigenous peoples, environmental assessment, involuntary resettlement, economic evaluation of investment operations, and information disclosure policies.

The World Bank claims that its involvement is due to the “the crucial importance of the project in fighting poverty.” It claims that Chadian oil export revenues from the project will be approximately US$1.7 billion, 50% of the country’s total current revenue, and that Cameroon will earn US$505 million from royalties over the 28-year life of the project.

However, a study by Harvard Law School’s human rights center found that only 4.5% of direct revenue will be spent on development in the affected communities; Baka and Bakola communities will receive only US$600,000. The management structure for dispersing the funds is stacked with local elite figures.

The remainder will be absorbed by general government expenditure. Cameroon has indicated that most of its revenue will be channeled into repayments on its crippling foreign debt, much of it held by the World Bank.

NGOs in Chad and Cameroon also point out that their governments have little or no commitment to development and will use the funds to strengthen their capacity for repression.

Cameroon has been listed by Transparency International for two consecutive years as the most corrupt country in the world and both countries have been condemned by the US State Department for repeated human rights violations. Both governments have closed, or threatened to close, organizations that have criticized the governments’ handling of the project, and Chad has imprisoned a member of parliament who criticized the original project agreement.

A leaked 1995 World Bank report even recognizes the low government willingness to tackle poverty, and expresses concern at financial mismanagement.

“Once the money is flowing,” far from enriching the two countries, speeding up development and weakening the hold of the elite, as the World Bank claims, “the unholy trinity of oil, power and corruption will make corrective action difficult,” Environmental Defense economist Korinna Horta notes.

A leaked copy of the Project Appraisal Document, which forms the basis of the project, puts net revenues at US$9 billion over the 28 years. Of that sum, US$6.5 billion will be retained by the consortium operators. ExxonMobil already earns four times the total annual revenue of Cameroon and 40 times that of Chad; the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline will increase the ratio in ExxonMobil’s favor.

Source: Green Left Weekly; Associated Press

Dalai Lama supports Vieques activists

May 8— H.H. the Dalai Lama sent a letter of concern and solidarity to Vieques activist Hector Rosario on behalf of the people of the Puerto Rican island. Rosario will read it in front of the White House when he and other activists begin a water-only-fast on June 14, together with the letters of support from various religious and civic leaders from around the world.

Said the Dalai Lama, “I am concerned by the terrible effects on people, animals and plants of Vieques, an island in the archipelago of Puerto Rico, as a result of the military exercises conducted on the island. I am told that because of the pollution from these military exercises the cancer rate in Vieques is much higher than on the main island. I therefore support the action of the people of Vieques in protesting against such military exercises.”

Source: Hector.Rosario@artmouth.EDU

Women occupy land in Brazil

Pernambuco, Brazil, June 5— For the first time in MST’s (Movement of rural workers Without Land) history, a group of women did a land occupation in the Northeast state of Pernambuco. The women named the encampment “Dorcelina Falador,” after the mayor of Mundo Nova, Minas Gerais, who was assassinated last October. Of the 70 women who participated in the occupation, the majority already have land. Luiza, one of the coordinators, explained: “Those of us who already have land will not abandon those who do not. We decided to do the land occupation only with women in the memory of Dorcelina. Also, we wanted to show men, especially those in power, that we women are not afraid of threats.”

Source: Direct Action Media Network: damn@tao.ca