By Agbonkhese Oboh

Oilwatch Africa has said the continent is choking on the COVID-19 pandemic and fossil fuel through exploitation and combustion, as the pandemic “exposed the entire fossil fuels ‘global value chain,’ now better described as a devaluation chain”.

Oilwatch noted that “since firms are taking unprecedented hits to their balance sheets, slashing dividend pay-outs for shareholders, and racking up debt to preserve a facade of stability, the petrochemical sector — hailed by industry leaders as a panacea for future growth — has been exposed for its unviable economic prospects.

“We, who have been victimised by fossil fuel devaluation of our lives and prospects— at sites of extraction, in pipeline construction and operations, in refining, in shipping, in combustion, in disposal and in the most climate-vulnerable parts of the world – welcome the economic pain felt by investors who did not heed our warning and divestment demands.

“We told you so; that the laws of nature create reckonings you have no idea when and where and how deep the pain will affect you in the Global North, not just us in Africa.

“In short, while Oilwatch Africa participants understand that the pandemic can be partially contained through lockdowns, the unfolding climate catastrophe will precipitate a devastating knockdown on the continent, and everywhere on earth.

“There is, therefore, an urgent need for Africa to view the fossil fuel sector with scepticism, hostility and a willingness to promote its shutdown.

“The retrogressive economies, deepening inequalities and irresponsible exploitation of our peoples and environments must now decisively end, before any further damage is done.”

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These were part of a communiqué from Oilwatch Africa virtual Annual General Meeting held, Monday, on the theme We can’t breathe – Africa Choking on COVID and Fossil flames.

The AGM had 32 participants from 11 African countries, including Nigeria, Togo, Swaziland, Mozambique, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, DRC, Uganda, Coted’Ivoire and Zimbabwe.

Observations

The meeting surveyed the impacts of fossil fuels on the continent, punctuated by the recent oil spill off the shores of Mauritius by a Japanese ship, and noted that world economy is just as chaotic as is the global political ecology.

The participants also agreed that “while citizens are restricted by the lockdown, fossil fuel companies have remained active at diverse crime scenes, piling up further ecological harms in their search for profits, to shore up shareholder confidence at a time they are also required to devalue their assets by the tens of billions of dollars, in keeping with accounting standards.

They added that the extractive pathways are entrenched as a mechanism for colonial, neo-colonial and neo-liberal plunder and the worsening of Africa’s overall dependency through “unequal ecological exchange” with the major economic powers.

“We need to change our leaders’ belief in commodity market revival – including of fossil fuels – because we insist we should no longer be dependent upon such export earnings, especially when seen as a means of recovery from COVID-19.

“Such belief has failed everyone in Africa, who has lived or worked in the zones of extraction.

“There is an urgent need for a united Africa empowered with information to tackle the menace of fossil fuel extraction across Africa.

“We need to calculate the vast ‘ecological debt’ that the fossil fuel producers owe us, including multinational corporations that are active across Africa.

“In South Africa’s case alone, as the world’s third most carbon-intensive economy per capita (behind only Kazakhstan and the Czech Republic), the two unprecedented cyclones and a rain bomb did unprecedented damage to Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe in March and May 2019, as well as to its own KwaZulu-Natal coastline around Durban.”

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Demands

At the end of the one-day virtual Oilwatch Africa AGM, participants demanded, among others, that African governments recognise not the hucksters of a ‘global value chain’ in oil, but instead the global devaluation of life due to fossil fuels addictions;

Pursue a just transitioning away from fossil fuels and equitably phasing out coal, oil and gas extraction should be a fundamental part of the plan for African nations’ economic recovery from COVID-19 Pandemic;

Africans should promote accountability for the carnage, deaths and ecocide across Africa, especially that due to worsening climate chaos;

The impact of COVID-19 on the health and livelihoods of countries already adversely affected by fossil fuel exploitation should be assessed. For example, when people near refineries or oil wells suffer asthma, they are also more susceptible to COVID-19;

African governments should establish climate-resilient and just recovery models, to defend communities, stop destructive extraction and support agroecology, through their leading visionary organisations in civil society;

The COVID-19 pandemic should not be used as a yardstick to dispense with workers, to oppress citizens, or to victimise activists across Africa;

African governments should support Annex Zero, by recognising and incentivising countries, nations, subnational spaces, localities, and territories that keep fossil fuels in the ground.

“We need to pressure the Global North to pay its climate debt; one aspect of this is our societies’ willingness to leave fossil fuels underground,” they added.

Signatories

The signatories to the communiqué include Africa Coal Network; JVE, Cote d’Ivoire; Oilwatch Ghana; Friends of Lake Turkana, Kenya; Justiça Ambiental, Mozambique; Green Alliance of Nigeria; Health of Mother Earth Foundation, Nigeria.

Others are Kabetkache Women Development Resource Centre, Nigeria; We the People, Nigeria; Peace Point Development Foundation, Nigeria; Policy Alert, Nigeria; Leke Development Foundation, Nigeria; Earthlife Africa, South Africa; South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, South Africa; Oil Change Africa, Swaziland.

There are also Les Amis de la Terre/Oilwatch, Togo; Africa Institute for Energy Governance, Uganda, and National Association of Professional Environmentalists, Uganda.

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