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Sunday 20 April 2014

[RwandaLibre] Black gold: Africa's blessing and curse

 

Black gold: Africa's blessing and curse

April 20 2014 at 09:00am
By SAPA
AFP

Patrick Karabaranga, a warden at the Virunga National Park, plays with
an orphaned mountain gorilla in the gorilla sanctuary in the park
headquarters. The whole protected territory on the border with Uganda
and Rwanda covers 800 000 hectares.

Goma - The quest for oil may be the latest threat to Africa's most
venerable wildlife reserve, located in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, and already hard hit by deforestation, poaching and armed
conflict.

Early in March, European Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs
warned that "with oil production there would be a major risk of
pollution at this site, located near the sources of the Nile."

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and other environmental bodies,
including local ones, have also voiced concern about the planned joint
operation by small British firm SOCO International and the Kinshasa
government in part of the Virunga National Park.

The whole protected territory on the border with Uganda and Rwanda
covers 800 000 hectares ( and has attained worldwide renown, notably
for its rare and endangered mountain gorillas.

SOCO has stated that in July last year, its chairman Rui de Sousa met
with WWF chief David Nusbaum, and proposed that they "work together to
find the best way forward".

The firm also expressed a commitment to "improving our dialogue" with
all parties "about how (its) activities in eastern DRC could affect
the flora and fauna of the Virunga National Park and the livelihoods
of the regional population."

Created in 1925 in the far east of what was then the Belgian Congo,
the whole park was declared an "endangered" part of the global
heritage by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(Unesco) in 1994.

The area is exceptionally rich in biodiversity, but is located in
scarred North Kivu province, tracts of which have been ravaged by
successive conflicts for more than 20 years.

Poachers and logging teams have damaged the reserve, as elsewhere in
Africa, but the park is also criss-crossed by rival armed groups and
soldiers, while local people have taken up illegal residence.

A global protest campaign erupted after SOCO in 2010 won a contract
from the Congolese government to jointly prospect for oil on a
concession overlapping the park's territory.

International resistance proved strong enough to make Kinshasa suspend
SOCO's permit the next year, until a "strategic environmental
evaluation" had been conducted.

The launch of the study failed to satisfy the WWF and local
organisations, which argue that such contracts and permits handed out
by the state violate both Congolese law on conservation and the Unesco
convention protecting World Heritage Sites.

The WWF filed a complaint against SOCO and on February 14 welcomed the
British government's announcement that issues it had raised regarding
the oil company's activities in the DRC "merit further examination".

Opponents denounce the fact that SOCO has functioned inside the park
for several months since the government directly associated the
company with its own evaluation, thus potentially biasing the outcome.

"No drilling has been planned or is warranted at this stage," SOCO
announced in its outlook for 2014, but it said activity would include
"scientific studies involving a seismic survey of Lake Edward,
environmental baseline studies and social projects."

Sceptics argue that the seismic survey is a cover for hidden oil
prospection that could have serious consequences for the environment.

For Kinshasa, the bottom line is the need to find oil for the economic
development of the country, which misrule and conflict have rendered
one of the poorest nations in the world, despite vast mineral wealth.
Bantu Lukambo, director general of a non-governmental organisation
named Initiative for Development and the Protection of the
Environment, believes the government's stance is a conceit.

Based in North Kivu's capital Goma, Lukambo cites damage done at
Muanda, on the Atlantic coast far across the vast nation, where black
gold has been pumped for about three decades. He rejects "the curse of
oil".

A recent report by a French NGO, the Catholic Committee against Hunger
and for Development, said that "far from constituting a manna for
development", oil production at Muanda had instead led to pollution
and the degradation of the environment.

For Thierry Vircoulon, the central African project director of the
International Crisis Group, "the confirmation of oil reserves in the
east would exacerbate the dynamic of conflicts" there.

Disavowed by the British government, SOCO has declined to take the
same position as French oil giant Total, which signed a similar deal
with Kinshasa but undertook never to operate in the Virunga National
Park.

SOCO has pointed out that it plans to operate only within a small
geographical area of "lowland savannah around Lake Edward and the lake
itself", and that it "will never seek" to enter the gorilla habitat.

This is insufficent for Unesco, which has declared that oil
prospecting and production are "not compatible" with world heritage
statutes. The organisation warned that part of the park may be
unlisted, a prospect that horrifies wildlife activists.

The WWF argues that the DRC has more to gain in economic terms by
protecting the park and developing sustainable tourism, fishing and
hydroelectric projects, rather than undertaking a search for oil that
might not even be there.

- Sapa-AFP

http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/science/environment/black-gold-africa-s-blessing-and-curse-1.1677759

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"Ce dont j’ai le plus peur, c’est des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre."

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RECOMMENCE

RECOMMENCE

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