Published

2 years ago

July 12, 2024

Alice Rush

The serene coastline of Chongoleani used to be a little-known paradise for local fishers and farmers just north of the Tanzanian city of Tanga.

But now it is becoming the end-point for the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) where, after a journey of over 1,400 km through Uganda and Tanzania, the oil is stored and put onto ships bound for customers abroad.

EACOP is a joint venture between French multinational TotalEnergies, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the governments of Uganda and Tanzania. It plans to bring oil from the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields near Uganda’s Lake Albert, down past Lake Victoria and all the way east through Tanzania to the Chongoleani Peninsula.

While the $4-billion project promises economic growth and energy security for the region, it has sparked protests due to its negative environmental, economic and social impacts – which have been met by crackdowns on the part of the authorities in both countries.

East African climate activists have joined forces with their international counterparts in a campaign called #StopEACOP, arguing that the pipeline will exacerbate climate change by transporting 246,000 barrels of oil a day to customers to burn, releasing greenhouse gases. They also warn that it will displace thousands of people and endangers water resources, wetlands, nature reserves and wildlife.

The Ugandan government says that it has the right to exploit the country’s fossil fuel resources in order to fund much-needed economic development and is taking measures to reduce the project’s climate impact, such as heating the pipeline with solar energy. Wealthy nations like the US, Canada and Australia, meanwhile, are also increasing fossil fuel production.

Living “like town dwellers”

In Chongoleani, residents said they had been warned by the village chairman and other ward leaders not to talk to journalists, but Climate Home spoke to two whose land had been taken over by the government for the pipeline and its port.

Without adequate compensation, they said they had been unable to buy a new farm in the area and have to buy food from the city rather than growing their own and selling the surplus.

Mustafa Mohammed Mustafa said his family used to own two farms in Kigomeni village, together about as big as eight football pitches. On these, they grew coconut, cassava, corn and groundnuts. They ate some of it and sold the rest.

But with the pipeline coming, the government-owned Tanzania Ports Authority took over their land, compensating them with 15m Tanzanian shillings ($5,700), which hasn’t been enough for them to buy new farmland in the area.

“We live like town dwellers these days,” said Mustafa. “We buy firewood, we buy charcoal, we buy lemons, coconut, cassava. We buy all of these supplies from the city centre. How is this alright?”

House prices soar

Part of the reason they cannot afford a farm, says Mustafa, is that EACOP’s arrival has increased the price of local land, as it is considered a project area with potential for business investment.

Villagers either put a high price on their land or hold onto it and only accept offers from the government or foreign investors, according to Mustafa, believing this will get them a better deal.

A sign for Chongoleani oil terminal (Photo: Climate Home News)

Mustafa blames the government for not giving them proper information from the initial stages of the project, nor a choice about whether they wanted to sell their property. Instead, he said, they were told that the project is of great economic importance for the country.

“I am angry that the government took advantage of our ignorance of legal matters and gave us a bad deal that we couldn’t argue against,” Mustafa said.

Sitting alongside Mustafa in Chongoleani village, Mdiri Akida Sharifu said he regrets selling his family’s land in Kigomeni but they had no other option.

“At the moment, we have very little faith that this will benefit us. When government officials came here, they encouraged us to give up our land with the promise that once the project started, we would be given priority in getting jobs. But now that we’ve given up our land, we even have to buy lemons from Tanga town,” he said.

Countrywide compensation battles

Elsewhere along the pipeline’s routes, landowners have complained about unfair compensation, saying the government paid them in 2023 using price estimates made in 2016, ignoring seven years of inflation. Kamili Fabian from the Manyara region told local paper Mwananchi that he was paid less than a third of his land’s value. “Where is the justice in that?” he asked.

The government says it uses national and international standards to compensate people fairly. Energy minister Doto Biteko has said 35bn shillings ($13m) had been allocated for this purpose and the government had built 340 new homes for relocated people.

Reporting on these issues is a challenge. When Climate Home visited the coastal village of Putini, a man called Mahimbo – who would only give one name – refused to comment on the compensation process and said local leaders had told the villagers not to speak to journalists about the pipeline.

But he took Climate Home to the office of village chairperson Abdallah Said Kanuni to seek permission to comment on the record. “We have been given clear instructions to neither speak with journalists nor allow them to interview villagers on matters relating to the pipeline, unless the journalists have official permits from the regional [government] office,” Kanuni said.

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Compensation battles are playing out far beyond this area. A Total spokesperson told Climate Home nearly 19,000 households have been compensated for the effects of the pipeline and the associated Tilenga oil field on them and about 750 replacement houses have been handed over.

But Diana Nabiruma, communications officer for the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), said her organisation had spoken to hundreds of people who had received compensation and had yet to meet any that said it was adequate.

She said a major problem has been that people were paid in 2023 based on their land’s value in 2019. As in Chongoleani, the price of land rose in those four years, partly because of EACOP and the promise of paved roads. Many people have not been able to replace the property they lost, she said.

Ugandan riot police officers detain an anti-EACOP activist in Kampala, Uganda, on October 4, 2022. (REUTERS/Abubaker Lubowa)

Nabiruma added that many people want to seek top-up compensation but are scared – and unable to afford – to challenge EACOP and the government in court. In Uganda’s capital Kampala, police have beaten and arrested activists protesting against the pipeline.

The Total spokesperson said EACOP will improve living conditions, adding that Total complies with local regulations and international standards and there is a fair grievance management mechanism in place for local people.

An EACOP spokesperson said that since last year, the project has provided households affected by leasing of their land in Chongoleani with food baskets and cash transfers, adding that the villagers are given preferential access to unskilled or semi-skilled work on the project.

The Tanzania Ports Authority did not respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by CHN staff and Joe Lo, editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

The post Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation appeared first on Climate Home News.

Where East African oil pipeline meets sea, displaced farmers bemoan “bad deal” on compensation

Climate Change

DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations

Published

8 hours ago

June 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

This week

Bonn talks close

‘SIDE-STEPPING AND STALLING’: UN climate talks in Bonn have ended in “gridlock”, according to Climate Home News. The outlet reported on the failure to balance developing countries’ need for climate-adaptation finance with “richer nations’ desire to move forward” on emissions cuts. It added that both topics were subject to “rule 16”, meaning no agreement could be reached and work will be pushed to the COP31 summit in Turkey. Inside Climate News quoted UN climate executive secretary Simon Stiell, who said the talks had seen “side-stepping and stalling”.

JUST TRANSITION: One “glimmer of hope” came from negotiations on achieving a “just transition”, reported Euronews. The news outlet said negotiators “made headway on operationalising the Belém-Antalya mechanism”, intended to support people in the shift to a low-carbon economy. However, Politico concluded that much of the focus in Bonn had “shift[ed] to efforts outside diplomatic talks – raising questions about the future of global climate negotiations”.

‘ATTACKING SCIENCE’: Agence France-Presse reported on the EU, Switzerland and “dozens of developing nations” warning of “attacks on science” by a “small group of fossil-fuels interests” in Bonn. Table Briefings explained that “the 1.5C target is increasingly being challenged” and the role of the UN climate-science panel – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – in an upcoming assessment of global climate progress “remains controversial”. See Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the talks for more detail.

US-Iran deal

PRICE DROP: The US and Iran announced that they have reached an interim agreement to halt the war and reopen the strait of Hormuz, reported Bloomberg. Oil prices have fallen, as the “long-awaited deal” began the process of “eas[ing]” the global energy crisis triggered by the conflict, according to the New York Times. The Associated Press noted that high fuel prices will “likely outlast the Iran war”.

‘OIL GLUT’: The Financial Times reported that the International Energy Agency (IEA) has forecast a “glut of oil” emerging next year, if the peace deal holds. The IEA said this would allow countries to build new strategic reserves, as they “review their energy strategies and policies in response to the crisis”, according to Reuters.

‘NEW ERA’: Agence France-Presse reported that oil and gas companies have “few illusions about a return to normal for the Gulf energy industry after more than three months of blockage”. One analyst told the newswire that the war “showed the oil and gas industry that Hormuz risk is no longer just a geopolitical headline”.

Around the world

OCEAN MONITOR: The Trump administration is “abandoning its plan” to dismantle a $368m ocean monitoring system key for tracking climate change after a “bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill”, reported the New York Times.
CORAL HAVEN: The New York Times covered preliminary research, presented at the Our Ocean Conference in Kenya, suggesting there could be three times as many “coral refugia” – where corals are relatively safe from climate change – than previously thought.
BAD CREDIT: Down to Earth reported that the first carbon credits issued under the Paris Agreement’s new Article 6.4 mechanism are “facing scrutiny over alleged links to institutions controlled by Myanmar’s military junta”.
OIL BACKTRACK: Reuters reported that oil-and-gas company Equinor has dropped a renewable-energy target and scaled back clean investments, while another Reuters story noted that Shell is selling off its offshore wind assets.

1.1 billion

The number of children facing “at least three overlapping climate hazards”, according to a new Unicef report covered by Agence France-Presse.

Latest climate research

Including the “permafrost carbon-climate feedback” in climate models increases the chance of exceeding “tipping elements” – such as the Greenland ice sheets, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or Amazon rainforest – by up to 50% | Environmental Research Letters
The intensity of influenza outbreaks could decline in temperate regions, but increase in tropical areas over the next century, as the climate warms | PNAS Nexus
European snow cover has declined by 20% for December and January since the start of the industrial era, revealing an “unprecedented ongoing shrinkage of European winters” | Communications Earth & Environment

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

Captured

The more than 2m battery electric vehicles (BEVs), 1m “plug-in” hybrids (PHEVs) and 100,000 electric vans on UK roads are already saving drivers a total of around £3bn a year, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. This amounts to savings of more than £1,100 a year in fuel costs for each BEV driver in the UK. The analysis comes amid reports in UK media this week that the government is considering “watering down” its EV sales targets.

Spotlight

Oceans rising at UN climate talks

The state of the world’s oceans is inextricably linked to the changing climate – and many delegates at UN climate talks want to see more focus on this issue, reports Carbon Brief.

Oceans are often described as the world’s “greatest ally” against climate change – absorbing 30% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and most of the heat generated by those emissions.

They are also the site of important climate solutions, such as huge offshore windfarms and the shipping industry’s transition to cleaner fuels.

At the same time, the oceans themselves present a growing danger to coastal communities and sea life due to sea level rise, marine heatwaves and ocean acidification.

These diverse issues have led to growing calls within the UN climate process for more focus on oceans. During climate negotiations this week in Bonn – known as SB64 – nations and civil society had a chance to air these views during an “ocean and climate change dialogue”.

‘Elevate action’

Oceans first entered UN climate outcomes in 2019, when the final COP25 negotiated text requested a new “dialogue” on “the ocean and climate change to consider how to strengthen mitigation and adaptation action”.

The following years saw this dialogue established as an annual event. However, the political weight of these discussions has been limited.

COP31 is being co-led by Turkey and Australia, but with Pacific islands playing a supporting role. These small islands sometimes self-identify as “large ocean states”, stressing the ocean’s centrality in their societies.

In Bonn, figures from across the presidency threw their weight behind this issue. Chris Bowen, an Australian minister and incoming COP31 “president of negotiations”, told attendees:

“Australia, Turkey and the Pacific see an important opportunity to elevate ocean-based climate action.”

Ocean dialogue breakout group. Credit: IISD/ENB, Maja Schmidt-Thomé.

Strategies and finance

The two-day dialogue in Bonn involved a series of panels, statements and breakout groups.

One of the main topics was how oceans are integrated into national climate plans under the Paris Agreement, known as “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs).

Three-quarters of the latest round of NDCs mention oceans, with conservation of “blue carbon” ecosystems the most frequently described action. (Landscapes such as mangroves can both absorb CO2 and protect coastal areas.)

Delegates also discussed alignment with the UN biodiversity process, as well as ocean finance, which currently makes up less than 1% of all climate finance.

(As discussions were taking place in Bonn, country officials also gathered in Mombasa, Kenya for the 11th Our Ocean Conference. Carbon Brief’s associate editor Giuliana Viglione attended the conference and will publish a full summary shortly.)

Developing countries were clear that many of the ocean-related actions in their NDCs would depend on receiving more financial support.

‘Political momentum’

With the backing of the COP31 presidency, delegates were hopeful about where this year’s dialogue could lead.

Charles Hamilton, an advisor for the Bahamas who spoke for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in the dialogue, told Carbon Brief that island representatives “are not traveling thousands of miles to just talk and pat ourselves on the back”. He added:

“A dialogue that just remains a dialogue is just more talk – no action.”

Given that, he said “discussions in the dialogue must move into COP decisions and the decisions must be actioned”, noting the importance of finance.

Marina Corrêa, oceans lead at WWF-Brazil, pointed to an upcoming UN climate change Standing Committee on Finance forum as a space to ramp up pressure on ocean finance.

More broadly, she wanted to see the presidencies translate their support into a “leader-level ocean initiative” that could “mainstream” oceans across negotiations.

“We have a really interesting opportunity, in terms of political momentum,” Corrêa told Carbon Brief.

Watch, read, listen

‘HOTTER THAN HELL’: An episode of the BBC’s Rare Earth podcast titled “hotter than hell” considered the issue of extreme heat, with input from experts and “people facing up to the hottest temperatures on the planet”.

NOT BROKEN?: John Drake, a professor of ecology at the University of Georgia, wrote an essay for Aeon – also re-published as a Guardian “long read” – questioning the framing of ecosystems and climate systems “breaking down”.

ON COURSE: On his Volts podcast, US climate journalist David Roberts interviewed UK climate minister Katie White, quizzing her about whether the UK will “stay the course with its climate plans”.

Coming up

20-28 June: London climate action week
21 June: Colombia presidential runoff
24 June: UK Climate Change Committee progress in reducing emissions 2026 report to parliament

Pick of the jobs

Mongabay, managing editor – Africa | Salary: Unknown. Location: Global
Contexte, environment reporter – Brussels | Salary: €45,000-€60,000. Location: Brussels
Climate 200, communications director | Salary: Unknown. Location: Australia
Energy Tracker Asia, energy transition correspondent | Salary: $3,000-$4,000 per month. Location: South-east Asia (remote)

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.

This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.

The post DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations appeared first on Carbon Brief.

DeBriefed 19 June 2026: Bonn talks end in ‘gridlock’ | Energy’s ‘new era’ | Oceans in climate negotiations

Climate Change

Planning For Life After Coal Cost a Montana County Commissioner His Seat

Published

9 hours ago

June 20, 2026

Alice Rush

The fiscal future of Musselshell County is uncertain after the coal mine that anchors its economy helped defeat the official working to diversify the area’s revenue streams.

By Jake Bolster

Robert Pancratz couldn’t believe it.

Planning For Life After Coal Cost a Montana County Commissioner His Seat

Climate Change

El Niño Is Here and Will Have ‘Big Consequences’ for Global Weather

Published

9 hours ago

June 20, 2026

Alice Rush

A deep pool of warm water that forms in the Western Pacific could bring strong storms to Southern California and throughout the South while increasing the risks of Western wildfires.

Interview by Jenni Doering, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Jenni Doering with author Kevin Trenberth.