Four Commonalities of Two Distant Pipelines

12,000 kilometers. 

That’s the distance between Appalachia and East Africa. It’s also nearly the diameter of the globe. 

These far-apart lands are each terrorized by proposed pipeline projects: the 303-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in the US states of West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina and the 897-mile East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in Uganda and Tanzania. The two fossil fuel projects have many similarities. Let’s dive into four of them.

1. Climate change

Rehema is the mother of five children. The youngest is five and the eldest is thirteen. They live in Darasalam, the capital of Tanzania.

When Rehema was in university, she developed an interest in defending children’s rights. The deeper she dove into children’s rights work, the more she realized a clear intersection with  the climate crisis. If we don’t urgently address climate change, future generations won’t have a chance of survival, and thus all of their rights will be in peril. So she began to organize for climate justice. 

For the past six years, Rehema has been working internationally to stop fossil fuel projects and train other organizers. Through this work, she found out about the EACOP and began organizing against it.

If completed, EACOP would be the largest crude oil pipeline in the world. It would be constructed during a historic moment — a moment about which  the UN Secretary General António Guterres says the world is running out of options to defuse the “ticking climate time bomb”. East Africa is significantly impacted by climate change; it is worsening droughts, floods, species extinction, and human conflict even though the two nations contribute about two or three percent of global emissions that cause the crisis.

Students in Uganda protest EACOP

On the flip side, the United States is the biggest historic carbon emitter in the world. In the US, the fossil fuel industry has preyed upon the resource rich region of Appalachia, making the region the largest source of US emissions.

If the MVP were to be completed and put into service, the greenhouse gas emissions may be equivalent to 19 million passenger vehicles, or 23 coal plants, and account for at least 1% of all greenhouse gasses from the US energy sector. 

Appalachia has faced and will increasingly face devastating floods as climate change leads to more severe rain storms. The damage to the land left behind by fossil fuel extraction makes the consequences more dire.

Here, halfway across the globe, another mother struggles alongside Rehema to halt environmental destruction in her home at the hands of fossil fuel companies. Mother of three, grandmother of five, and impacted landowner, Becky Crabtree is fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline in order to protect her West Virginian community and preserve the land for future generations. 

Across the regions of Appalachia and East Africa, mothers and grandmothers are waging fierce resistance against fossil fuel projects like EACOP and MVP that threaten the future of their communities.

A mother and her children participate in a #StopMVP training camp in Newport, Virginia, where they are beading together.

2. Sacrifice zones

One of the primary motivators of colonialism is natural resource extraction.

The British colonized Uganda from the late 1800s to 1962. The Germans and British colonized Tanzania from the late 1800s until 1964. The extractive project of colonization and its legacies continue to this day.

Edwin Mumbere, resident of Kasese, Uganda (near the pipeline route) and CEO of Centre for Citizens Conserving Environment & Management (CECIC), says EACOP is a modern form of colonization. He says European powers continue to control resources in East Africa at the expense of its people and environment: “We are just being used. We are not going to benefit from our own natural resources.” Total, the company behind EACOP, is French. France—another colonial empire.

The fossil fuel industry, which stores the bulk of its power in Western nations, is notorious for preying upon under-resourced, rural communities who they don’t expect to fight back. In the Global South, this project is built on the remaining scaffolding of colonialism. In regions like Appalachia, certain places are deemed sacrifice zones, meaning their people and environment are offered up sacrificially in exchange for corporate profit. These places are often rural, poor, and majority elderly populations.

Colonial powers and the fossil fuel industry have made each of these resource-rich communities dependent on them. They perpetuate the myth that continued fossil fuel extraction will help local communities by providing jobs and access to wealth, masking the reality that those extractive practices are in fact destroying their communities, lands, and water.

Rehema, founder and Tanzanian coordinator of Partnership for Green Future (PFG), says that people on the Tanzanian portion of the projected route for the EACOP don’t have access to adequate information about the project. Most people in these communities are not on social media. This population is restricted to state run media, which supports Total and the construction of the pipeline. 

Edwin says the situation in Uganda is similar. People don’t have access to information from sources other than the key beneficiaries of the pipelines: the Ugandan government and French company Total. He says the company distributes information in English, which is difficult for many local people to understand.

Fossil fuel companies target rural, under-resourced communities so they can get away with hasty, cheap construction methods —increasing the danger posed to impacted people, who the companies see as expendable. Total uses the dangerous and cheap method of open cut trenching for most water crossings. Similarly, MVP has accrued hundreds of water quality violations for their faulty construction practices. The profits outweigh the punishments for these violations, and the practices persist.

Both pipelines cross many water bodies, which endangers the living beings that depend on them. Nearly a third of EACOP would run through Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake which more than 40 million people depend on. On average, MVP has a water crossing every mile of its 303-mile route.

A protester sits in front of the Virginia Attorney General’s office asking him to take action on MVP with polluted water from the pipeline route in her hand. Shaban Athuman / VPM News

Both of the pipelines also traverse earthquake prone areas. EACOP crosses a seismic zone that regularly experiences earthquakes. MVP crosses earthquake prone areas and 74 percent of the pipeline crosses high landslide risk terrain. This increases the danger to surrounding communities and ecosystems should the pipelines rupture.

3. Risks to organizers

Not only are people on the ground encumbered by a lack of information about EACOP, those who choose to stand up are also subject to government intimidation and personal safety risks. 

Police restraining students who are protesting EACOP

Edwin says pipeline resistors are labeled as anti-growth and anti-government by the government. Rehema says it is difficult to do on the ground organizing because of safety concerns for activists. Because of this, she directs her activism to the international stage.

Environmental defenders in the Global South face increasing safety risks in the form of intimidation, threats, and murder. This reality is intensifying in the United States as well; Tortuguita, an environmental defender opposing the Cop City project in Atlanta, was murdered by state police, while other Atlanta activists are being charged with domestic terrorism. Police violence towards pipeline resistors has risen drastically, including at Standing Rock. A growing number of states are escalating charges against anti-pipeline protestors. 

Protesters opposing Senator Joe Manchin’s Dirty Deal and demanding President Biden stop MVP while cops surveille them in front of the White House

MVP is attacking activists’ right to protest and filing egregious charges in civil and criminal courts. Community members have accused MVP of malicious prosecution and intimidation. The company has also worked to find out the identities of pipeline resistors online.

4. Fierce opposition

When EACOP was first proposed, some Ugandan communities were open to the project. They were told they would receive compensation for their land. However, years passed and they never received the money promised to them. They realized the company did not have their interests and wellbeing in mind. As they learned about climate change, their opposition to the project grew. 

In Uganda, the movement against EACOP emerged from impacted communities. It has grown into an international movement, which  Edwin helps lead. The #StopEACOP campaign has dozens of international partners and maintains sustained international opposition to the project.

When the MVP was first proposed, some activists like Becky Crabtree of West Virginia were open to learning about the project. However, when they observed the bad behavior and false promises of the pipeline company, they turned against it. The campaign to #StopMVP began in the hollers of Appalachia and has grown into a powerful national movement. 

Activists in both struggles are fighting tenaciously for their communities, their water, and their planet.

Students in Uganda protesting EACOP

Edwin believes in a better future for his country: “Uganda is blessed. We have so many rivers. We have sun almost 365 days of the year. If the project stops, [we can] invest in clean technologies that don’t impact the environment.”

Should the nation increase their investment in solar programs, Edwin says they could reduce energy poverty, which would secure cooking and lighting needs for many people.

Edwin and Rehema say people in Uganda and Tanzania feel disempowered. They see their land being taken from them without compensation. They see their home being victimized by projects like the EACOP. If they are presented with meaningful solutions and investments, the people of these communities will be empowered to look beyond their immediate needs and toward a self-actualized future. 

Many activists in Appalachia are similarly trying to build a brighter future for their region, away from fossil fuel dependence and towards a renewable energy transition. 

Both groups of pipeline resistors face wealthy, powerful opposition. Strengthening unity across their countries and the globe is the key to their future wins.

Students in Uganda are risking their lives to stop EACOP and they need our support.