Putting an End to New Fossil Fuel Infrastructure: Confronting EACOP, the World’s Largest Heated Crude Oil Pipeline
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the development and exploitation of new oil and gas fields must end now to avoid exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming and dangerously destabilizing the global climate system. In spite of this clear finding, however, governments and corporations around the world are still developing and building new fossil fuel infrastructure.
One particularly egregious example of this is the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which is slated to run between Tanzania and Uganda and would be the world’s largest heated crude oil pipeline. Given the climate, human rights, and environmental harms that the pipeline would generate, litigators have decided to bring a case to the East African Court of Justice, challenging the Ugandan and Tanzanian governments’ role in approving the construction of the pipeline as well as the pipeline’s inconsistency with domestic, regional, and international law.
This webinar will discuss the features of this case, focusing on both the scientific and legal aspects of the litigation. This case stands out in the climate litigation landscape: it offers important lessons for the effort to fight the development of the infrastructure supplying the fossil fuels driving the climate crisis.
Panelists:
- Richard Heede, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Climate Accountability Institute
- Mark Odaga, Senior Programme Manager at Natural Justice