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.
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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
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.