In a highly anticipated judgment, the Paris judicial court dismissed the opponents of the infrastructure, which includes 130 boreholes in a national park and a 1,400 km oleoduc.
By Laurence Caramel
Frustration is up to the emblematic place taken by the totalergia project in Uganda in the public debate on the responsibility of oil majors in the fight against climate change, for respect for the environment and human rights : Almost four years after the formal notice deposited by the six NGOs – Friends of the Earth, survival and four Ugandan associations – against totalnergies for non -compliance with his duty of vigilance in the context of Tilenga and East African Crude Oil megaprojets Pipeline (Eacop), the Paris judicial court dismissed the complainants, Tuesday, February 28, judging their requests “inadmissible”.
The judges of the summary proceedings mainly support their decision on a procedural point accused of NGOs for having made “substantially” evolve their “requests and their grievances” between the start of their action in 2019 and the December 2022 hearing, Without having explicitly notified it to totalness by a new formal notice.
Basically, the question of knowing so totaling respects its duty of vigilance as defined by the law of 2017 is not decided, and the magistrates, for the first time seized on the application of this new obligation made to multinationals with regard to their subsidiaries, refer to “an in -depth exam” which, according to them, exceeds their powers.
NGOs, who had initiated their action in summary proceedings, considering the urgency to act to force the multinational to guarantee populations threatened by its project with expropriation conditions in accordance with international standards that it affirms Follow, are not surprisingly “disappointed”. “The central objective of the law is to prevent the violation of human rights as well as environmental degradations before they arise. We had placed ourselves within the framework of a summary proceedings for the lack of compensation and the prohibitions Make the populations to cultivate their land, noted at the beginning of the expropriations are not repeated on a large scale. This is what happened, “deplores Juliette Renaud, friends of the earth, recalling that Totalenergies A, from the start , sought to save time by contesting the jurisdiction of the Nanterre court initially seized.
100,000 expropriated people
The Tilenga production site and the heated oil pipeline of more than 1,400 kilometers that will cross Uganda and Tanzania, to the port of Tanga, on the Indian Ocean coast, cause total expropriation or Partial of nearly 100,000 people as well as the realization of more than 130 boreholes in the Murchinson Falls National Park, renowned for its exceptional biodiversity.
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