“Watersheds, protected forest areas and biodiversity are severely threatened by the planned oil and pipeline. We are especially worried about water pollution since the pipeline will cross several of our largest rivers, which are used by local communities for their daily needs.”

—Louis Djomo, African Forest Action Network (AFAN)

Stop World Bank Funding for Oil Pipeline / Chad-Cameroon - Archived

The World Bank’s official mission is to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable (environmentally sound) development. That’s what the world’s citizens have a right to expect for the tax dollars we contribute to this powerful international institution.

In October the World Bank is expected to award loans totaling at least $225 million so that Exxon, Shell, and Elf oil companies can build a pipeline to carry oil from southern Chad through Cameroon’s rainforests to the sea. The World Bank should reject this project on the basis of its own two stated purposes:

1. Poverty alleviation: The main beneficiaries of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline are multinational oil companies and governments so corrupt that there’s little hope of adequate environmental protection and "trickle-down" economic benefits for needy people.
   
   Transparency International rates Cameroon the world’s most corrupt government. There is no guarantee that Chad and Cameroon will use revenue from the oil development and pipeline to improve the health and well being of the poor, who suffer high rates of malnutrition, infectious disease and illiteracy. "What we need are small-scale programs that respond to local aspirations," says Samuel Nguiffo, director of the Center for the Environment and Development in Cameroon and recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
   
   With limited funds available for each developing country, the World Bank should finance projects that have direct, positive impacts on nutrition, health, education, and environmentally sound development for African people - not for Exxon (whose annual profits are 40 times the budget of Chad).
   
   
2. Sustainable development: Further exploitation of fossil fuels contributes alarmingly to global warming and climate change. The World Bank acknowledges that climate change is disastrous for poor nations, and that energy efficiency and renewable resources such as solar power are the best ways to serve the two billion rural poor worldwide who have no electricity.

The 600-mile underground pipeline is to originate in Chad’s "breadbasket," the fertile region where most of the country’s food crops are grown. Inevitable oil spills and groundwater contamination would threaten food security nationwide.

In Cameroon, the pipeline will pass through ecologically fragile rainforests, including a region where indigenous nomadic Baka and Bakola peoples (often referred to as Pygmies) rely on hunting and gathering. Existing seasonal roads will be upgraded and new roads built along the pipeline route. On these roads, loggers and "bushmeat" hunters will rush into previously inaccessible forests, accelerating the rate of deforestation and imperiling the survival of endangered chimpanzees, gorillas, forest elephants and black rhinos.

Environmental and human rights organizations in Central Africa ask Global Response to help prevent the irreparable damage this pipeline will cause. In Chad, security forces have killed over 200 people and jailed the single Parliamentarian who dared voice opposition to the pipeline (he was released after 10 months thanks to international pressure.) World citizens who face no such consequences must speak out against this project.

Without World Bank funding, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline will almost certainly fail to attract other investors. The World Bank is the key.

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