The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) between Uganda and Tanzania has long been recognised as a project that will cause massive ecological and humanitarian harm in our countries
Now, a study by the multi-faith organisation GreenFaith has revealed a new dimension to Eacop’s misconduct in our region: disrespect for many of the more than 2,000 graves that are being displaced to make way for the 1,443-km long underground pipeline.
The investigation found that Total, the French oil and gas company leading the project, has caused damages while relocating graves.
It found they had revealed their indifferent disregard for the final resting places of the deceased members of our close families and extended community.
UK aid cuts leave Malawi vulnerable to droughts and cyclones
Often, the company showed a profound disrespect for the cultural and religious burial customs of the communities affected.
A prime example is the one of unmarked graves. These are common in rural East Africa, where some of our religious communities do not customarily mark graves while some
families lack the resources for grave markers.
However, this in no way diminishes the significance of the grave nor erases family memories of the graves’ locations.
Repeatedly, families informed Total or its subcontractors about the location of unmarked graves, urging them to respect the sites and relocate the graves. Their pleas were often ignored.
Offences against dignity
In one case, a Ugandan man was custodian for a site with 60 graves. As is customary there, the Muslim graves are low earthen mounds, while Christian graves are marked with brick or
concrete plinths.
Total refused to acknowledge the unmarked Muslim graves’ existence, despite the custodian pointing out the exact location of each and providing the name of every person buried there.
These offences against dignity would be one thing if it was hard for Total to verify the location of graves. But this is not the case. Corporations regularly use inexpensive, ground-penetrating
radar at infrastructure project sites.
Instead, Total is ignoring these graves and consciously risking desecrating graves during construction.
Another appalling finding was that families received inadequate compensation for the cost of grave relocation. Total underpaid for actual costs and, insultingly, supplied inferior quality
materials inconsistent with local standards.
Compensation has often come after years of delay, during which inflation rates made the original request vastly outdated.
“We bought cement, iron bars, tiles and paid for water when we mixed cement with sand,” said one Tanzanian man. “They have compensated us with a very low amount.”
Total posted a record profit of $36 billion in 2022 by digging into the Earth for oil and gas.
Yet when asked to provide adequate sums to relocate the earthen human remains of people whose descendants they have displaced, they have refused. This is obscene.
Spiritual harm
Families in our communities affected by this violation have suffered painful spiritual and psychological harm.
They feel guilty for allowing loved ones’ remains to be mistreated. They fear for their families and themselves because of the disrespect suffered by their forebears. Their spiritual, traditional, and cultural injuries are traumatic and real.
For centuries, global north countries have frequently devalued the graves in communities which they have colonised, disrupting them without concern as part of the process of cultural erasure.
In recent years, these practices have been more widely recognized as disgraceful. Yet Totals has perpetuated this neocolonial behavior.
The reasonable conclusion is that for Total, grave disruption is an inconsequential part of the construction process.
In other words, they do not care. That is why we are speaking out.
As religious leaders from Africa’s two largest religions, we condemn this inhumanity and are determined not to allow Total’s degrading mindset to stand.
We call on Total to relocate all unmarked graves, with ceremonial assistance.
Stop Eacop
We renew the call, sounded by a diverse coalition of organisations, for Total, the Ugandan and Tanzanian governments, and the project’s financial backers, to stop the Eacop project.
We call on people of diverse religious and spiritual backgrounds to speak out. The climate crisis is a challenge to our fundamental humanity.
We must uphold human decency and justice in the face of suffering due to a hotter climate, which is hitting those hardest who have contributed the least.
To protect our shared cultural, spiritual, and moral dignity, we must denounce the malfeasance of extractive industries and work together to consign behaviors such as Total’s to the past.
Sheikh Kugonza Ashiraf is a Muslim leader along the Eacop route in Uganda
Kamili Stephano is a Catholic who is affected by the Eacop project in Tanzania
In a statement, Total said that tombs are identified by the families or the owners and the locations indicated in the projects.
They added that they are compensated according to values agreed with the Chief Valuer and the grave’s owner can either move the grave themselves or ask Eacop to move it on his behalf. Eacop will cover the costs in either case, they said.
Total added that religious services and rituals take places at the location of the original grave and the new burial location, which is chosen by the grave owner.
The moving of the grave takes places at a time desired by the owners and in the presence of a “competent government authority” like a doctor, they said.
“In all cases, the moving of a grave is carried out in compliance with all different religions or spiritual beliefs,” Total added.
The post Total is disrespecting graves in East Africa as it pursues pipeline appeared first on Climate Home News.
Total is disrespecting graves in East Africa as it pursues pipeline
Doubts over whether governments will maintain ambitious targets on boosting the use of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are a threat to the industry’s growth and play into the hands of fossil fuel companies, investors warned this week.
Several executives from airlines and oil firms have forecast recently that SAF requirements in the European Union, United Kingdom and elsewhere will be eased or scrapped altogether, potentially upending the aviation industry’s main policy to shrink air travel’s growing carbon footprint.
Such speculation poses a “fundamental threat” to the SAF industry, which mainly produces an alternative to traditional kerosene jet fuel using organic feedstocks such as used cooking oil (UCO), Thomas Engelmann, head of energy transition at German investment manager KGAL, told the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Investor conference in London.
He said fossil fuel firms would be the only winners from questions about compulsory SAF blending requirements.
The EU and the UK introduced the world’s first SAF mandates in January 2025, requiring fuel suppliers to blend at least 2% SAF with fossil fuel kerosene. The blending requirement will gradually increase to reach 32% in the EU and 22% in the UK by 2040.
Another case of diluted green rules?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, CEO of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies Patrick Pouyanné said he would bet “that what happened to the car regulation will happen to the SAF regulation in Europe”.
The EU watered down green rules for car-makers in March 2025 after lobbying from car companies, Germany and Italy.
“You will see. Today all the airline companies are fighting [against the EU’s 2030 SAF target of 6%],” Pouyanne said, even though it’s “easy to reach to be honest”.
While most European airline lobbies publicly support the mandates, Ryanair Group CEO Michael O’Leary said last year that the SAF is “nonsense” and is “gradually dying a death, which is what it deserves to do”.
EU and UK stand by SAF targets
But the EU and the British government have disputed that. EU transport commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas said in November that the EU’s targets are “stable”, warning that “investment decisions and construction must start by 2027, or we will miss the 2030 targets”.
UK aviation minister Keir Mather told this week’s investor event that meeting the country’s SAF blending requirement of 10% by 2030 was “ambitious but, with the right investment, the right innovation and the right outlook, it is absolutely within our reach”.
“We need to go further and we need to go faster,” Mather said.
SAF investors and developers said such certainty on SAF mandates from policymakers was key to drawing the necessary investment to ramp up production of the greener fuel, which needs to scale up in order to bring down high production costs. Currently, SAF is between two and seven times more expensive than traditional jet fuel.
Urbano Perez, global clean molecules lead at Spanish bank Santander, said banks will not invest if there is a perceived regulatory risk.
David Scott, chair of Australian SAF producer Jet Zero Australia, said developing SAF was already challenging due to the risks of “pretty new” technology requiring high capital expenditure.
“That’s a scary model with a volatile political environment, so mandate questioning creates this problem on steroids”, Scott said.
Others played down the risk. Glenn Morgan, partner at investment and advisory firm SkiesFifty, said “policy is always a risk”, adding that traditional oil-based jet fuel could also lose subsidies.
Asian countries join SAF mandate adopters
In Asia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Japan have recently adopted SAF mandates, and Matti Lievonen, CEO of Asia-based SAF producer EcoCeres, predicted that China, Indonesia and Hong Kong would follow suit.
David Fisken, investment director at the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, said the Australian government, which does not have a mandate, was watching to see how the EU and UK’s requirements played out.
The US does not have a SAF mandate and under President Donald Trump the government has slashed tax credits available for SAF producers from $1.75 a gallon to $1.
Is the world’s big idea for greener air travel a flight of fancy?
SAF and energy security
SAF’s potential role in boosting energy security was a major theme of this week’s discussions as geopolitical tensions push the issue to the fore.
Marcella Franchi, chief commercial officer for SAF at France’s Haffner Energy, said the Canadian government, which has “very unsettling neighbours at the moment”, was looking to produce SAF to protect its energy security, especially as it has ample supplies of biomass to use as potential feedstock.
Similarly, German weapons manufacturer Rheinmetall said last year it was working on plans that would enable European armed forces to produce their own synthetic, carbon-neutral fuel “locally and independently of global fossil fuel supply chain”.
Scott said Australia needs SAF to improve its fuel security, as it imports almost 99% of its liquid fuels.
He added that support for Australian SAF production is bipartisan, in part because it appeals to those more concerned about energy security than tackling climate change.
The post Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn appeared first on Climate Home News.
Doubts over European SAF rules threaten cleaner aviation hopes, investors warn
Climate Change
Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
After decades of recovery from commercial whaling, climate change is now threatening the whales’ future.
Southern right whales—once driven to near-extinction by industrial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries—have long been regarded as a conservation success. After the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in the 1980s, populations began a slow but steady rebound. New research, however, suggests climate change may be undermining that recovery.
Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
Climate Change
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
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