A group of politicians, academics and NGO leaders called in a statement on Monday to “halt” the TotalEnergies mega-oil project in Uganda and Tanzania, which they say will lead to “climate change and the deadly disasters that accompany it,” according to the data. AFP.

In February, TotalEnergies announced a US$10 billion investment deal with Uganda, Tanzania and China’s CNOOC, which includes the construction of a more than 1,400-kilometer East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) that will connect the Lake Albert oilfields with the western Uganda near the coast of Tanzania.

In a report published last week, two French associations warned of “unacceptable” human, climate and environmental costs in Uganda and Tanzania from this project by the French group Total.

As TotalEnergies prepares to start drilling in one of Uganda’s most beautiful natural parks, according to a report published in Le Monde, signatories are calling on the public to say “no to Total’s giant gas pipeline in East Africa”.

Among the signatories are dozens of personalities, including MEPs and French MPs, non-governmental organizations from Uganda and Tanzania, the coordinator of the international coalition “StopEacop” Omar Elmavi, the president of the Socialist Party of Belgium Paul Magniette, the first secretary of the Socialist Party of France Olivier Fauré, representatives of Youth For Climate Paris, Greenpeace France, France Nature Environnement, Friends of the Earth France.

The president of the Commission of the Episcopal Conference of the European Union, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, also signed the document, as well as several climate scientists, including the French geographer and meteorologist Jean Juselle and the French sailor and writer Isabelle Autist.

“In Europe, as in the whole world, the summer of 2022 was deadly,” the message reads.

“But while millions of us want to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, others continue to want to extract more and more oil,” the statement continued.

This infrastructure “threatens access to water and food security for more than 40 million people,” the letter said.

“If we don’t stop this project, up to 34 million tons of CO2 will be emitted every year for 25 to 30 years, leading to climate change and the deadly disasters that accompany them,” the document warns.

The signatories call on “TotalEnergies and its shareholders to abandon the Eacop project immediately” and the European Union “to finally implement the idea of ​​a financial support plan for countries that abandon the exploitation of fossil fuel reserves and invest in renewable energy sources”.