Although there are positive impacts of the development of oil resources while carrying out exploration and extraction, there are various negative impacts on the lives and livelihoods of people living in the Albertine Graben region of Uganda revealed by residents.
Grassroots women have decried the increased food insecurity and gender-based violence that have been escalated by the ongoing oil and gas operations pointing mainly to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and other related feeder oil pipelines.
The Women have urged the government and relevant stakeholders to seek solutions to the negative impact that the oil and gas projects are already inflicting on the residents where they are operating.
This call was revealed during interviews with various group leaders of the EACOP project affected women under their umbrella community group known as the Grassroots Women Movement spearheaded by the National Association of Professional Environmentalists (NAPE).
The women expressed dismay over the continued compulsory takeover, evictions, and land grabbing have sparked food insecurity with lost livelihoods and reduced farmlands and also increased gender-based violence due to poverty and unfair compensation.
One Joyce Kadogoli, a resident of Kakindo village in Buliisa town council said that since the start of the extractive activities of the oil and gas projects, they have experienced continuous environmental and household challenges including evictions, and reduced farmland, poverty among others leading to domestic violence, and limited access to food.
“Our land, which has sustained us for a long by growing food for consumption and selling for income is now hosting oil fields, new roads, and pipelines. We are suffering from accelerated food insecurity, climate change effects, and ecosystem depletion,” said Joyce Kadogoli.
Another resident from Kigaaga in Hoima district, says that the communities are feeling the pinch of the negative impacts of extractives including increased cases of violence against women, girls and children, gender-based violence, food insecurity, and violation of human rights due to the massive infrastructure development for oil and gas.
“Now that women have lost their livelihoods, we are suffering from poverty which has forced many women into prostitution for survival leading to family breakups, increased school drop-outs, early marriages, and child-headed families,” said Anna Basiima.
However, the women say their efforts to bring the issues to the limelight have been received with threats and intimidation from the government.
Beatrice Rukanyanga, the coordinator for Kwataniza Women’s Group in Hoima says they have continuously been stifled by the government for defending the rights of people affected by crude oil activities.
She commended Community Green Radio for amplifying their voices and giving them a platform to speak up and collectively resist the negative impacts of oil and gas extractives.
“My group was among the 54 organizations that were suspended by the government for 4 months. But even in suspension, I was using community Green Radio to talk about issues affecting women.
Community Green Radio has been helpful in putting our voices on the airwaves so that we can talk about the issues affecting us,” said Rukanyanga thanking partners such as the 11th Hour Project who are supporting the Green Radio Outreach Advocacy Work.
The women called on Community Green Radio journalists to make more frequent visits and coverage of oil and gas injustices amidst economic hardships noting that their remote and hard-to-reach locations quite often put them at a disadvantage making them suffer in silence against negative impacts of the many oil and gas infrastructure hosted in their localities singling out Oil well pads, oil pipelines, central processing facilities and oil roads.
Rajab Bwengye, the coordinator of projects at NAPE said the Green radio aims to strengthen the voices of grassroots women and youths, give them an advocacy platform and shape interventions on issues affecting them. He pledged for continued coverage of their issues and putting their voices on the airwaves.
“Women are the experts of their own lives. They know better the issues affecting them than anybody else and that’s why as Community Green Radio, we have created safe spaces for them to be heard and be part of the conversation on oil and gas injustices,” said Bwengye.
The impacts of the oil and gas projects according to Tom Ogwanga, a Researcher from Mbarara University said that they are both impacts are both positive and negative and include; employment opportunities; infrastructure development; project induced displacement and resettlement; in-migration and influx; inflation; reduction of food security; restrictions on access to fishing, firewood and herbs for cooking and medicinal purposes; inadequate compensation; land grabbing; prostitution; environmental degradation; annoyance and inconvenience; fear and anxiety; and changes to their communities, livelihoods and landscape.
He said that to address the above, there is a need to have a concerted effort to dialogue and come up with solutions to negative challenges.
“We argue that there is a need for all stakeholders – especially the government of Uganda, oil companies, the local communities, the Bunyoro Kitara Kingdom, and civil society organizations – to collaborate to address the deficiencies in the development of oil resources and the region, and to create the conditions needed to avoid the resource curse and associated Dutch disease and Nigerian disease, and instead to achieve a social license to operate for oil development in the region,” he said
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