Continental Focus, International Reach

Conservationists Petition Banks to Abandon Uganda/Tanzania Pipeline

Monday, June 10, 2019

In Uganda, conservationists are dead set against the crude pipeline the government has planned to export its crude from Lake Albert to the Tanga Port on the Tanzanian coast. According to reports, a group of 30 international and local campaign groups have petitioned two banks to abandon plans to raise funds for the construction of the pipeline.

The conservationists say the project will damage local livelihoods, water resources, and wildlife along the pipeline route.

South Africa’s Standard Bank Group and Japan’s Sumito Mitsui Banking Corporation are helping to raise the debt needed to finance the pipeline.

“We consider this project to present unacceptable risks to local people through physical displacement and threats to incomes and livelihoods,” Global Witness and 29 other groups from the UK, the US and elsewhere told the banks.

The groups sent the institutions a letter urging the banks not to arrange financing, the groups said the project posed “unacceptable risks to water, biodiversity and natural habitats, as well as representing a new source of carbon emissions the planet can ill afford.”

Standard Bank said in an email it had received the letter and was reviewing it. Sumito Mitsui Banking Corporation declined to comment, according to Reuters


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