For over a decade, I have worked alongside communities impacted by oil developments in Uganda. I have heard from farmers whose farmland has been acquired; women whose gardens and small enterprises have been disrupted; and community leaders intimidated simply for asking how oil projects would affect their communities’ lives.
I have learned that the cost of oil development falls first and hardest on everyday people and its benefits are far from certain.
This is what makes a recent move by Ugandan farmers so significant. Last week, four farmers from Bunyoro and Greater Masaka regions filed a case against East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) Ltd at the high court of England and Wales.
They are asking the court to apply Uganda’s constitutional, environmental and climate laws to the UK-registered company. They have also requested a ruling that stops oil being transported via the pipeline, which officials say is 80% complete. Project developers predict Uganda will begin its first crude oil exports in October.
The farmers argue that the company’s role in developing and operating the pipeline breaches Uganda’s own legal protections for people, nature and the climate, including the right to a clean and healthy environment. The case brings Uganda’s environmental and climate laws – or, more precisely, the alleged failure to enforce them – before a foreign court.
For years, the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (AFIEGO), the organisation I lead, and other civil society groups have petitioned, advocated and litigated within national and regional courts. We have raised alarms about land rights, compensation delays, biodiversity and climate-related risks of the 1,443-km heated pipeline. Unfortunately, the cases filed were dismissed on technicalities or buried under procedural delays. As for the farmers and the affected communities, they observe that the systems meant to protect them have not listened enough or acted fast enough.
The size of the EACOP is often described in barrels and length: 1,443 km long and with the capacity to transport 246,000 barrels of oil per day. But the true metric is the human lives affected because the project’s footprint extends across many communities and has caused drastic social and economic changes to thousands of households.
In Uganda alone, land acquisition for the project has impacted 3,648 households containing about 24,744 people. Including other related projects, such as the Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields which will feed the pipeline, the number of affected persons from land acquisition and resettlement is more than 10,000. These are not numbers but real people – families, farmers and small business owners who have had to adjust their lives around a project they did not choose.
The farmers’ concerns are widely shared. AFIEGO’s 2023 study on the impacts of EACOP found that 78% of respondents considered the compensation they received to be inadequate, unfair or delayed. Even more striking, 97% of those who received cash compensation and attempted to purchase replacement land between 2022 and 2023 were unable to acquire land comparable to what they had lost. For rural households whose lives revolve around agriculture, this goes far beyond a financial setback. It translates into reduced food production, declining household incomes, greater vulnerability to poverty and uncertainty about their future.
The farmers’ fear extends beyond the soil beneath their feet. They see the floods stemming from the Tilenga oil and gas processing facility, the human-elephant conflicts fuelled by oil-related activities in Murchison Falls national park, and the looming threat of the world’s longest heated pipeline crossing ecologically sensitive and critical areas. They will keep asking the question: “Who bears the cost?”
If our national and regional courts cannot or will not protect these citizens, then the high court of England and Wales must.