A thick, black liquid bubbles to the surface as Anthony Aalo pokes a stick into the muddy ground just outside Bodo, a fishing and farming community at the heart of Nigeria’s oil-drilling belt.
“You see? That’s oil,” the environmental activist said as he examined the sticky residue. “You can see the level of contamination, it’s still in the ground.”
Bodo, like other parts of Ogoniland in southern Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, still bears the scars of repeated oil spills spanning decades – despite being involved in two major clean-up operations over the last 10 years that promised to restore land and repair environmental damage.
Local fishermen say their catches have still not recovered from a massive 2008 oil spill that polluted the community’s water supplies and farmland, and decimated a nearby mangrove forest.
“Before you would have seen a lot of fish,” said Monday Saka, a 50-year-old fisherman, throwing a fishing net into the water from a traditional pirogue. “[Now], as you throw the net, nothing comes out.”
Big Oil’s environmental destruction
Bodo’s plight has become a symbol of the environmental destruction wrought by foreign oil companies in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, and the community continues to fight in the courts for adequate compensation to make up for lost livelihoods, health costs and environmental damage.
Shell agreed to pay the community compensation over the 2008 spill, and funded an environmental clean-up that ended last year.
Several sites in Bodo have also been earmarked for remediation as part of a $1-billion government-led clean-up for Ogoniland, billed by the United Nations as the world’s “most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise” before work started six years ago.
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The site in Bodo where Aalo, the activist, examined the oily ground was included in the first clean-up, but has yet to be reached by the ongoing Ogoniland-wide operation, known as the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP).
HYPREP, which is funded by a group of foreign oil companies and the Nigerian government, followed a damning 2011 assessment of oil-related damage by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The report said it could take 35 years to clean up Ogoniland.
But even as Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and some local leaders push for oil drilling to resume in Ogoniland for the first time in three decades, residents and environmental experts told Climate Home News and IrpiMedia that the government-led clean-up has fallen short of their expectations.
In line with the UNEP report, 65 sites were earmarked for the first phase of HYPREP’s soil and groundwater clean-up operations.
So far, 17 of them have been completed, the project’s leaders said in an update in June, detailing other achievements including the provision of drinking water distribution hubs, a power plant, a university centre of excellence for environmental restoration, and two new hospitals.
It also launched a coastal clean-up – not part of its original remit, which was over two-thirds done by October – as well as mangrove restoration that was 94% finished, according to a more recent statement. In addition, it notes 7,000 jobs have been created and 5,000 local people trained in a range of skills.
Nonetheless, some local activists and residents said HYPREP’s progress has been disappointing, with many blighted communities in Ogoniland not included in the initial list of sites to be remediated.
Others told this investigation that the project has strayed beyond its original remit into high-impact PR activities – such as the new hospitals and university centre, diverting focus from the laborious clean-up work. It takes about two years to clean each of the sites identified in the project’s first phase.
Funding shortfall
At the same time, there has been criticism over the disruption caused by frequent leadership changes.
A lack of money, however, is the biggest problem facing HYPREP today, said Evidence Ep-Aabari Enoch-Zorgbara, an oil and gas development expert and consultant who has previously worked for Shell and the Nigerian government. “Have we done enough? I will say no. Have we used the money well? I will say no. Have we done something? Yes. Are we at ground zero? No,” he said.
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The initial $1 billion in funding was meant to cover the first five years of work, but has not been topped up as planned, he said.
A 2025 UNEP assessment of the project said HYPREP’s long-term impacts depend on the replenishment of the trust fund underpinning the process, calling for the Nigerian government to work towards securing lasting funding for the ongoing implementation of HYPREP.
HYPREP and Nigeria’s Environment Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the project’s finances, but a senior HYPREP official told local media earlier this year that funding was not a problem – without addressing the issue of its future resources.
Doubts over efficacy of clean-up methods
Meanwhile, the labour-intensive work of cleaning contaminated water and farmland inches forward.
At a site near the settlement of K-Dere, contaminated water is pooled in basins, while polluted soil is excavated for treatment. Once the water and soil are cleaned and the pollutants fall below a certain threshold, it can be used again for traditional activities such as farming and fishing.
“We have a lot of work to do and we are trying to do it to the best of our abilities,” said team lead Israel Siglo, walking around the site in orange overalls and a protective helmet.
UNEP has rated such work positively, but independent monitors such as the NGO Stakeholder Development Network (SDN) have questioned some of the clean-up methods and their effectiveness.
Paul Samuel, from the SDN, said the group’s monitoring had found that treating soil with cleaning chemicals before transplanting it back does not tackle groundwater pollution nor make the land fit for agricultural use.
Without tackling contamination deeper in the ground, some experts fear progress made in the first phase could end up going to waste.
“We are about 20-30% of the way through the project, because groundwater remediation is still completely missing,” Enoch-Zorgbara said.
President: “Put this dark chapter behind us”
Last September, when announcing the push to resume oil production in Ogoniland for the first time since protests led by environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in the 1990s, President Tinubu urged the Ogoni people to “put this dark chapter behind us and move forward as a united community”.
In a reminder of the persistent tensions between local people and government authorities 30 years since the execution of Saro-Wiwa by Nigeria’s then-military junta, security personnel with rifles slung over their shoulders keep guard at HYPREP’s headquarters in Port Harcourt.
In June, Tinubu’s government granted a posthumous pardon to Saro-Wiwa, whose killing sparked international outrage.
But for many Ogoni activists, such gestures are a government ploy to access the territory’s hydrocarbon reserves, as oil continues to leak from the aging pipelines criss-crossing the region.
“If there is anyone who needs a pardon, it is the federal government, not the Ogoni people who committed no offence,” said Celestine AkpoBari, a veteran environmental campaigner and coordinator of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum.
Not everyone in Ogoniland is opposed to new oil drilling, seeing it as a source of potential wealth for the region – as long as the lessons of the past are heeded.
Speaking to reporters from his palace in Port Harcourt, King Godwin Bebe Okpabi, the ruler of the Ogale community, said leaving the region’s oil riches in the ground “makes no sense” – even as the world strives to transition away from fossil fuels.
At the same time, King Okpabi is representing his community in a UK lawsuit against London-headquartered Shell and its former Nigerian subsidiary, which was taken over by Renaissance Africa Energy Company.
Having extracted oil in the area for decades, fossil fuel giants including Shell and Italy’s Eni are now accused by the local community of washing their hands of the responsibility for its aftermath by divesting from the region without adequately compensating for the pollution their activities caused.
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Shell has denied this, saying Renaissance will remain accountable for any clean-up and remediation work, while Eni has said that, at the time of the sale of its onshore operations, it had remediated “100% of the spills” on its joint venture assets.
TotalEnergies said it had fully met its financial obligations on remediation funding for environmental clean-up and site restoration purposes, including by contributing to HYPREP.
Oil firms blame spills on thieves
Energy companies have often blamed the frequent oil spills in Ogoniland on local oil thieves who drill holes in pipelines.
“This criminality is the cause of the majority of spills in the Bille and Ogale claims, and we maintain that Shell is not liable for the criminal acts of third parties or illegal refining,” a Shell spokesperson said.
But Enoch-Zorgbara and environmental activists say that the spills in Ogoniland were primarily caused by corrosion of aging oil infrastructure.
UNEP’s 2011 environmental assessment came in the wake of the devastating 2008 spill in Bodo, which took place when a decades-old pipeline, then operated by Shell, ruptured and leaked 3,900 barrels of oil for 72 consecutive days.
Black waves of crude swept through the fishing village and the surrounding areas, polluting rivers – a primary source of livelihood – contaminating fields, and destroying natural habitats.
After a group of Bodo residents took Shell to court, it acknowledged the environmental disaster had been caused by the erosion of the pipeline. Shell also agreed to restore the mangrove forest, which had shrunk by two-thirds as a result of the spill, and to pay £55 million ($72 million) in compensation to the community.
The 15,600 people behind the lawsuit received £2,200 each, with £20 million earmarked for community benefits, including a medical centre.
But for Saka, the fisherman in Bodo, the money does not make up for what the community has lost.
“Compared to what the oil destroyed in our river, the compensation is small – it cannot help us,” he said.
This article was published in partnership with IrpiMedia and Afrique XXI.
The post For blighted Niger Delta communities, oil spill clean-ups are another broken promise appeared first on Climate Home News.
For blighted Niger Delta communities, oil spill clean-ups are another broken promise
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up around half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support conservation in the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge by 12 donors of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
Alongside the US and much of Europe, the UK has significantly cut its aid budget in recent years, leading to much of its Congo rainforest spending being cancelled or reappraised.
The government says it still plans to “prioritise” rainforest regions, including the Congo basin, but civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030. This was backed by more than 140 nations.
The UK also made various funding pledges, including £200m to protect the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
These commitments target the world’s three largest rainforests, all of which face major forest loss due to threats such as agriculture, logging and climate change.
The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink. Yet, its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both the Conservative and then Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was launched by the UK at COP27. It was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
CBFA set out to “empower central African nations”, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with support for “community forests” and other measures to curb forest loss.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s recent aid cuts, intended to free up money for defence spending.
Its original £90m budget has now been reduced to £18.8m. Government data shows that £15m of this has already been spent.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to this latest round of aid cuts.
The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – championed by the previous government and worth at least £12.3m – has been closed, just two years into its seven-year schedule.
Government documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk as the UK scales back its aid budget, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region.
One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”. Officials working on the other, while more optimistic, reported that the project may be forced to operate in fewer countries as the cuts set in.
Documents also reveal the difficulties that come when operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior director of forests at WWF International tells Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a series of recent parliamentary responses, Chapman revealed that the UK had only spent £39.8m on Congo forest finance, as of 2024. (She declined to provide any information on the Indonesia and Amazon regional goals.)
Despite being presented as the UK’s “contribution” to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029.
Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution so far has been relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, tells Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world for whom the environment is an existential issue.”
Future targets
The Labour government says it has met the five-year “climate finance” target of £11.6bn that expires this year.
Ministers also say the government has met “and exceeded” the £3bn and £1.5bn sub-goals for “preserving nature” and forests, respectively, within the £11.6bn. These are the funding streams that include support for the Congo basin and other rainforests.
The UK has funded a variety of projects in line with its forest goals, including mangrove restoration in Indonesia, support for carbon-offsetting projects in Brazil and promoting “forest stewardship” among farmers in Cameroon.
Chapman has stated that the UK will continue to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest, in line with its new plan for aid spending in Africa. The UK even helped to launch a new “call to action” for Congo basin funding at COP30 last year.
The UK government also says it supported the creation of Brazil’s flagship “Tropical Forest Forever Facility” (TFFF). However, so far it has not provided any funding for the facility.
When the government announced a new climate finance pledge for 2026 onwards, it stressed that nature would still be a “focus” and said it would also generate billions in “climate and nature positive investments”. Nevertheless, it dropped the “ring-fenced” amounts for nature and forests that had appeared in its previous pledge.
The UK, alongside other developed countries, has pledged to provide biodiversity finance to developing countries, under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) – a non-binding global pact to halt and reverse nature loss by 2030.
Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee of MPs, says “sub-pledges” for nature and forests are a “cost-effective and impactful” way to ensure this finance is provided, alongside climate finance. She tells Carbon Brief that she was “concerned” about the move away from this approach:
“When the minister recently appeared before the international development committee, I was concerned to hear her characterise this shift as a ‘gamble’.”
A government spokesperson tells Carbon Brief:
“We remain committed to providing finance for forests, including in the Congo basin, as a core element of our overall climate funding.”
A shorter version of this article was first published in Cropped, Carbon Brief’s fortnightly newsletter that provides a digest of food, land and nature news, on 15 July 2026. Subscribe for free.
The post UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo appeared first on Carbon Brief.
UK withdraws millions in funding from world’s second-largest rainforest in Congo
Climate Change
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Global drought and heat
DRY THEN WET: A recent heatwave and months of low rainfall has led to a prolonged drought for Uganda, resulting in at least 16 deaths from hunger and significant crop losses, reported BBC News. Bastille Post Global suggested that “a developing El Niño later this year could bring heavier rainfall to parts of the region, raising the risk of flooding in areas now struggling with drought”.
FUNDING FOOD: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have appealed for $200m in funding to help African nations deal with the impact of El Niño, stated Deutsche Welle. This would target 22 high-risk countries with measures, including “cash transfers, climate-resilient seeds, livestock protection and flood control.” The Guardian explained how El Niño could still “cause a severe shock to global food prices lasting into 2028”.
FARMING FEARS: Extreme weather has devastated agriculture across the world. India saw its driest June in 12 years, reported BBC News, and France has had a “double-digit production” decline, according to Le Monde. The Financial Times reported that farmers in the UK are mitigating the impacts of extreme heat by eliminating “chemicals and intensive ploughing to improve soil quality so it retains water”.
EURO FIRES: Wildfires have spread across Europe, with Spain reporting at least 12 deaths so far, according to the Guardian, and France experiencing road closures, said Reuters. Wildfire Today reported that the most extreme conditions are “across France, Spain and northern Portugal, the Alpine arc extending into northern Italy, the south of the UK and south-east Ireland”. CNN explained how “the climate crisis is driving hotter, drier weather, which is setting the stage for fiercer fire seasons”.
Endangering species
REDEFINING HARM: The Trump administration “reversed decades of longstanding environmental law protecting endangered species…opening up sensitive habitats…to drilling, mining, farming and real estate development”, reported CNN. According to the story, the change “redefines what constitutes ‘harm’” to endangered species, which historically prohibited habitat modification or degradation. Agence France-Presse reported that US environmental groups sued the Trump government over the move, arguing that it had violated “common sense, biological science and federal law”.
OPEN SEASON: Reuters reported that the change “limits the reach of the 50-year-old Endangered Species Act” (ESA), which is a “key regulatory consideration” when granting permits for “oil and gas, mining, electric transmission and other operations on federal lands and water”. Legal scholars told the New York Times the US government “was acting without conducting scientific research into the impact” of the change, while the National Mining Association “applauded the announcement”.
News and views
- INTERNATIONAL WATERS: After a significant delay, the UK ratified the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty. Oceanographic detailed how this will allow for “marine protected areas across international waters for the first time”, but also stressed that the “hard part” starts now.
- SCOPE-FREE: The world’s largest meat supplier JBS “scrapped a key climate goal” in its net-zero plan that accounts for its suppliers’ emissions, “which make up the vast bulk of the company’s environmental footprint”, reported the Financial Times. The company told the paper it was difficult to control these “indirect” emissions.
- DEEP TROUBLE: Pacific gray whales are facing a “catastrophic die-off” as sea-ice loss threatens their food sources, said the Guardian. Separately, conservationists warned that more than half of all molluscs that “cluster around underwater vents” could face extinction from deep-sea mining, reported Reuters.
- ETHANOL PUSHBACK: India’s new rules to promote 100% ethanol fuel and make ethanol-blended fuel mandatory at pumps “triggered a political row”, reported the Times of India. While the Indian government defended the push to automobile owners, a Hindu editorial and an Indian Express comment warned against incentivising fuels made from “water-intensive” sugarcane and rice.
- AMAZON ACTION: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon fell to its lowest level in a decade, but president Lula’s plans to “end illegal deforestation by 2030” could be hampered if he is not re-elected, reported Al Jazeera. Meanwhile, Colombia’s outgoing environment minister warned of greater environmental and climate risk under the incoming government, said the Associated Press.
- WAR WORRIES: The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned of the impact of the Iran war on Africa’s clean cooking efforts as disruption in the strait of Hormuz has stunted supplies and increased prices of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), explained Climate Home News.
Spotlight
UK ‘discards’ Congo rainforest funding
Amid worldwide cuts to aid spending, Carbon Brief explores how the UK is backtracking on funding for the Congo basin – the world’s second-largest rainforest.
The UK has abandoned projects worth tens of millions of pounds that were meant to help protect Congo rainforests and support local people.
Together, these initiatives would have made up half of the £200m that the UK pledged to support forest conservation in the Congo basin.
When it hosted COP26 in Glasgow, the UK led a new initiative to end forest loss, which included a collective pledge of “at least” $1.5bn (£1.1bn) for Congo rainforest nations by 2025.
Development minister Jenny Chapman revealed last week that, as of 2024, the UK had only provided £39.8m towards this goal.
COP pledge
At COP26, the UK – led by then prime minister Boris Johnson – launched the “Glasgow leaders’ declaration”, with a goal to “halt and reverse forest loss” by 2030.
The UK also made various regional funding pledges, including £200m for the Congo basin, £350m for tropical forests in Indonesia and “up to £300m” for the Amazon.
All of these rainforests face major forest loss. The Congo basin is the planet’s largest forested carbon sink, but its six host nations are among the poorest in the world and face significant funding barriers.
This has global ramifications. An official UK assessment warned that “degradation or collapse” of the Amazon or Congo rainforests “threaten UK national security and prosperity”.
Forest cuts
Following successive aid cuts introduced by both Conservative and Labour governments – tracking a global trend – the UK’s Congo funding is under threat.
The Congo basin forest action programme (CBFA) was explicitly set up to provide “roughly half” of the UK’s £200m Congo pledge.
Now, after reporting delays, the UK has slashed the CBFA as part of the Labour government’s aid cuts. Its £90m budget has been “quietly reduced by 79% to £18.8m”, according to the Times.
This is not the only Congo project that has been dropped due to aid cuts. The Congo part of the biodiverse landscapes fund – worth at least £12.3m – has closed five years early.
Official documents reveal more Congo forest funding is at risk, including the UK’s two largest remaining projects in the region. One initiative, intended to “incubate forest-friendly enterprises” in DRC, faces “reduc[ed] budgets”.
Documents also show the difficulties operating in the Congo, including “complex political economies” and, in Gabon, a military coup – which “complicated matters”.
‘Breaking promises’
Damian Fleming, a senior forests director at WWF International told Carbon Brief:
“Tropical forest countries are making long-term policy and development choices in expectation that international partners will honour their commitments.”
In a parliamentary response, Chapman said that the UK had spent £39.8m towards its £200m Congo target, as of 2024.
Despite being described as the UK’s contribution to the £1.1bn-by-2025 global goal agreed at COP26, the £200m target has a deadline of 2029. Therefore, while the collective goal has been met, the UK’s contribution was relatively small.
Zac Goldsmith, a former Conservative minister who oversaw the forest targets at COP26, told Carbon Brief that, in his view, the UK has “discarded” its regional pledges:
“We have gone from being perhaps the leader on protecting nature internationally to breaking promises to countries around the world.”
The Labour government says it has met its overarching “climate finance” goals and still intends to “prioritise” the Congo rainforest.
However, civil society groups and MPs are concerned about the lack of “ring-fenced” forest funding in the UK’s new aid strategy.
Watch, read, listen
TOXIC TROUBLES: DeSmog unpacked a new report that said Northern Ireland is being turned into a “toxic” pig and poultry farming “sacrifice zone” to satiate the UK’s meat appetite.
NEED TO NOAA: Laid-off scientists from the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched Climate.Us – an independent, public-backed version of the climate information website shut down by Trump last year.
DRY FRUIT: A Dialogue Earth long read looked at how climate change is impacting apricot harvests in the “stark, high-altitude desert” region of Ladakh, India.
READING ALOUD: A London Review of Books podcast discussed Robin Wall Kimmerer’s influential book “Braiding Sweetgrass”, weighing its compelling themes and where it veers into “scientific overreach”.
New science
- Climate change could cause Indigenous peoples in the Amazon to lose 28-34% of their plant species and 18-23% of their associated services | Nature
- Biodiversity in forests can act as a “buffer” against compound extreme weather events | Nature Communications
- Zero-deforestation commitments in Indonesia’s palm oil sector have had “no additional impacts” on reducing forest loss | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
In the diary
- 7-15 July: High-level political forum on sustainable development | New York City
- 13-31 July: Meeting of the International Seabed Authority assembly and council | Kingston, Jamaica
- 16 July: International Energy Agency critical minerals outlook 2026, online
- 27 July-1 August: Scientific and technical subsidiary body meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity | Nairobi, Kenya
This edition of Cropped was written by Jess Milligan, Josh Gabbatiss and Aruna Chandrasekhar. Cropped is edited by Dr Giuliana Viglione. This edition was edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org.
The post Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Cropped 15 July 2026: Uganda starves | Trump opens endangered habitats | UK cuts rainforest aid
Climate Change
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
Climate and environment campaigners have urged the Kenyan government to halt plans for a proposed 700,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery backed by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, warning the project threatens one of East Africa’s most ecologically sensitive coastlines.
The refinery, which is planned to be situated in Lamu County on Kenya’s northern coast, will be East Africa’s largest refining project and is expected to take up to three years to build. Once finished, it would supply refined petroleum products to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, among others, helping to reduce the region’s dependence on imported fuels.
Campaigners are questioning the viability of such a large refinery at a time when renewable energy and electric transportation are expanding rapidly.
Mohamed Adow, director of a Kenya-based climate and energy think-tank Power Shift Africa, said the decision to give Dangote the green light for the refinery is “an extraordinary act of environmental recklessness and economic short-sightedness”, arguing it would tie Kenya to “yesterday’s energy system” just as global demand for petroleum products faces increasing uncertainty.
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Campaigners argue the refinery risks coming online just as transport – the largest market for petrol and diesel – is beginning to electrify across the continent.
Kenya launched a National Electric Mobility Policy earlier this year to speed up the uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) and reduce the country’s roughly $5 billion annual fuel import bill. Ethiopia has already banned imports of non-electric vehicles and now has more than 100,000 EVs on its roads, while Rwanda is expanding its electric mobility programme with plans to convert its fleet of around 100,000 motorcycles to electric.
Adow said the project risks billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure that could become obsolete as the world moves away from oil.
“Building a refinery today assumes decades of robust demand for fuels that much of the world is actively trying to phase out,” he said in a statement.
Ecological concerns
Lamu – the proposed site for the project – is home to the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Lamu Old Town and an archipelago containing extensive mangrove forests, coral reefs and seagrass beds that support fisheries, tourism and coastal livelihoods.
Locating the refinery in Lamu would “place one of Africa’s largest fossil fuel developments in one of the continent’s most ecologically sensitive and culturally significant coastal regions,” Power Shift Africa said.
Major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed
Sherelee Odayar, oil and gas campaigner at Greenpeace Africa, warned that a refinery of this scale could increase the risk of habitat destruction, marine pollution, oil spills and air pollution in one of East Africa’s most fragile coastal ecosystems.
She said the risks stem not only from the refinery itself – including storage tanks, pipelines and fuel handling facilities – but also from the large volumes of crude oil that would need to be shipped into Lamu and refined products exported by sea. Increased tanker traffic and fuel transfers, she said, would raise the likelihood of accidents in ecologically sensitive coastal waters.
Odayar added that Lamu’s low-lying, flood-prone coastline could compound those risks by damaging infrastructure and carrying contaminants from storage facilities into nearby fishing grounds and marine ecosystems.
“Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass beds are not expendable; they support fisheries, livelihoods and coastal protection,” Odayar added.
She said Kenyan authorities should suspend any approvals until an independent environmental and social impact assessment is completed, with genuine public participation and transparent scrutiny of the long-term economic, health and ecological risks.
“Any review must assess cumulative impacts on Lamu’s mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds and fishing livelihoods, alongside the wider economic risk of locking Kenya into costly fossil fuel infrastructure as the global energy transition accelerates”.
Dangote Group declined to answer questions from Climate Home News when contacted by phone.
Technological change threaten project’s future
The Kenya refinery would replicate Dangote’s 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Lagos, currently Africa’s largest, which has plans to more than double capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028.
Adow of Power Shift Africa said projects like this represent “a breathtaking failure to recognise where the global economy is heading”, pointing out that the East African refinery risks arriving when Africa is experiencing an unprecedented clean energy boom.
Referencing Africa’s solar boom, global electric vehicles uptake and the International Energy Agency’s projection that global oil demand is set to enter a decline later this decade, the think-tank founder said African governments risk anchoring the continent’s future to an industry facing mounting economic uncertainty.
Loss and damage fund delays first project approvals as needs dwarf resources
The organisation said the project faces a bigger threat aside from environmental opposition and that is technological change. “The danger is not simply that the refinery will pollute, it is that it will become obsolete long before it has paid for itself,” he added.
Kenyan President William Ruto said the project will create about 60,000 jobs for Kenyans and supply refined fuel to eight East and Central African countries.
GreenPeace Africa’s Odayar said the promise of ‘thousands of jobs’ cannot be used to hide the true cost of the investment which is that large fossil fuel projects often create temporary jobs while undermining existing livelihoods in fishing, tourism and small-scale local economies.
“The enormous capital required for a project of this scale could instead help accelerate Kenya’s renewable energy future through solar, wind, geothermal, storage and better energy access,” she added.
The post Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Campaigners oppose Dangote’s planned Kenya refinery over climate and ecological risks
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Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
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Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
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Renewable Energy9 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
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Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
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Greenhouse Gases1 year ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测