[Le 1er mars s’ouvre le One Forest Summit de Libreville, au Gabon, avec l’objectif de préserver les forêts tropicales]
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to rage, TotalEnergies is playing sorcerer’s apprentice, with the blessing of the government. Its EACOP project (East African Crude Oil Pipeline) threatens to cause the emergence of infectious outbreaks, a risk that is completely ignored by the multinational and its banking and institutional supporters. The company is preparing to drill 400 oil wells in Uganda, including 132 in the Murchison Falls nature reserve, which hosts ecosystems like no other.
To transport the hydrocarbon to the Tanzanian coast, it plans to build a 1,443 kilometer heated pipeline that will cross global biodiversity hotspots, such as the Albertine Rift. In December 2022, in Montreal, the COP15 on biodiversity confirmed the urgency of taking measures to stop the sixth extinction of life: the EACOP project will only accelerate it!
AIDS, Ebola, chikungunya
Massive deforestation and road construction threaten the survival of many animal species. In addition, EACOP is expected to generate up to 34 million tonnes of CO2 per year, which will contribute to climate change and affect the fauna and flora in the long term. And it is not the trees that TotalEnergies promises to plant that will compensate for this irreversible damage!
The health impact of EACOP also promises to be enormous. Hundreds of scientific studies show the link between the destruction of biodiversity and the emergence of infectious diseases. This is particularly true in tropical areas, which are rich in animal and plant diversity, but also in micro-organisms, since viruses, bacteria and parasites are part of biodiversity.
For forty years, the list has continued to grow: AIDS, Ebola, chikungunya, Zika virus, MERS, Nipah, West Nile virus, Lassa hemorrhagic fever, SARS-CoV1, Covid-19: these new diseases infectious diseases are zoonoses, that is, they have been transmitted from animals to humans.
Scientists have clearly demonstrated that deforestation – practiced to exploit mines and timber or develop ranching and monocultures of oil palms and soybeans – causes fronts of contact between wildlife and humans; moreover, it disrupts an ecosystem service provided by biodiversity, called “the dilution effect”.
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