“If you fund destruction, you’re responsible”: Ugandan activist urges investors to drop TotalEnergies
Ahead of the Total AGM in May Net Zero Investor sat down with environmental scientist Samuel Okulony to find out more about the human and environmental impact of the EACOP pipeline
Last year, Ugandan environmental scientist Samuel Okulony travelled to Denmark, where he and another climate activist met with Nordea’s responsible investment team. In March this year, ahead of its AGM, Nordea announced its decision to effectively quarantine TotalEnergies. Going forward, it will cease purchasing new debt or shares in the energy giant.
A spokesperson for Nordea told Net Zero Investor that as of October 2024, no Nordea funds would be increasing their exposure to the company. The move sends a powerful signal from a major investor.
A key reason for Nordea’s escalation of stewardship efforts is TotalEnergies’ role in the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), a 1,443-kilometre pipeline designed to transport crude oil from Uganda’s Tilenga and Kingfisher oil fields to the Port of Tanga in Tanzania. The US$10bn infrastructure project, more than a decade in the making, highlights the human and environmental costs that come with continued fossil fuel extraction.
We spoke to Samuel Okulony to understand why he, alongside fellow Ugandans, is campaigning for financial organisations to stop investing in TotalEnergies.
Okulony graduated from Kyambogo University in Kampala and spent more than a decade working on various environmental and local government projects in the Ugandan capital before co-founding the Environment Governance Institute. The Ugandan non-profit is dedicated to promoting the sustainable management of natural resources in Uganda and the Great Lakes region. A key aspect of his work is opposing EACOP, he explains.
Uganda’s economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, which accounts for about a quarter of the nation’s GDP and more than a third of its export earnings. The construction of the pipeline has led to forced displacements across ten districts, with severe consequences for the people who live there. “Communities have been displaced with inadequate compensation. And we hold a lot of value in our land,” he shares.
“We depend entirely on agriculture to get food for our households, but also to earn income to meet our needs.”
He adds that the burden of these displacements is often disproportionately borne by women, who now struggle to feed their families: “Children cry – they don’t cry to the father, they cry to the mothers. That has been the characteristic.”
The challenges are compounded by the fact that many communities in the Great Lakes region rely on fishing. When they are resettled on land without access to fishing rights, they lose a vital source of food and income, Okulony explains.
The pipeline also cuts across reserves such as Murchison Falls National Park, affecting biodiversity and tourism, and increasing human-wildlife conflict, he adds. This has impacted safety in the area, with displaced elephants and hippos entering communities and killing people, he shares.
We are asking investors to follow in the footsteps of Nordea – quarantine them [TotalEnergies], ensure they are not able to proceed
Follow the money
Yet opposition to the pipeline is dangerous in itself. While Uganda is officially a presidential republic, in practice it has been ruled by Yoweri Museveni for nearly 40 years. In recent years, environmental protests have been met with increased repression, with the military deployed to crack down on peaceful demonstrations, Okulony says.
“Last week, activists protesting against one of the banks were arrested – not just by police, but by special forces, the SFC, an elite force of the Uganda People's Defence Forces meant to protect the president.”
Campaigners are often held arbitrarily, threatened with abduction, or targeted with deregistration orders, he adds. “They threaten us with arrest, with abduction, deregistration. By the time you get out of detention, you’re mentally and physically broken down,” he says.
Because of the clampdown on civil liberties in Uganda, Okulony and fellow activists decided to follow the money funding EACOP, targeting some of the world’s largest investors to cut support for TotalEnergies. “If you invest in a company that is causing destruction to our lives, you are responsible,” he argues.
“We know that for a company to produce oil, they need three things: licences, insurance, and financing. This is why we launched the insurance and financing campaign,” he explains.
The initiative has already delivered considerable results. So far, 46 banks, 28 insurance companies, and four export credit agencies have committed not to fund the project, Okulony shares, with Nordea’s commitment being the latest success in a long-running campaign. He now hopes the asset manager will commit to selling the remainder of its €44 million investment still held in TotalEnergies.
Next month, Okulony and fellow campaigners will travel to Paris to attend TotalEnergies’ AGM on 23 May, urging other institutional investors to take a stand. “We are asking investors to follow in the footsteps of Nordea – quarantine them, ensure they are not able to proceed,” he says.
“Don’t invest and make profits out of the lives of people,” he appeals.
