{"id":51492,"date":"2022-06-08T14:34:27","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T14:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/?p=51492"},"modified":"2022-06-08T14:42:06","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T14:42:06","slug":"reacting-to-the-german-governments-announcement-of-its-intention-to-develop-offshore-gas-in-west-africa-by-dr-aliou-ba-senior-oceans-campaigner-at-greenpeace-africa-and-andree-bohling-poli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/publications\/51492\/reacting-to-the-german-governments-announcement-of-its-intention-to-develop-offshore-gas-in-west-africa-by-dr-aliou-ba-senior-oceans-campaigner-at-greenpeace-africa-and-andree-bohling-poli\/","title":{"rendered":"Africans are fighting to protect our oceans, food and jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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PROTECT THE OCEANS – PROTECT FISHING COMMUNITIES<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

What a difference six months makes. Last December, there was a surge of environmental optimism when Olaf Scholz became Germany\u2019s Chancellor after pledging to \u201chalt man-made climate change\u201d<\/a>. Germany has also been one of the key countries to sign the COP26 statement on clean energy<\/a>, committing itself to ending public support for foreign fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.<\/p>\n\n

But last month the same Olaf Scholz offered to help develop offshore gas production<\/a> in Senegal \u2013 a project developed by British Petroleum<\/a> that would destroy a giant coral reef, use up to 1% of the world’s 1.5C carbon budget and degrade West Africa\u2019s already vandalised marine environment.<\/p>\n\n

Why the change of heart? Scholz says it\u2019s because Germany wants to become independent from Russian gas. But the only genuine way to end dependence on fossil fuels and advance democracy is by reducing their consumption altogether.<\/p>\n\n

In Senegal there is enough sun and wind to share with the world, and those clean and sustainable energy sources are the only way to protect it from more climate disasters. If Senegal and other governments on the continent focused on that vital task, rather than handing over dirty gas and oil contracts to European big business, then those sustainable industries would also create millions of skilled, well-paid jobs<\/a> across Africa.<\/p>\n\n

Last month the former heads of the African Development Bank and the World Trade Organisation described how Europe and Africa would both benefit from EU investment in African green energy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

But instead, the EU is enabling the German government\u2019s scramble for Senegal\u2019s gas. After lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, the EU Commission has made the anti-science decision to label fossil gas<\/a> \u2013 which is the single most polluting fuel<\/a> in Europe \u2013 as \u201csustainable\u201d.

And whatever the EU offers to buy, Macky Sall \u2013 Senegal\u2019s President and current chair of the African Union \u2013 is enthusiastic to sell. That is dangerously short-sighted.<\/p>\n\n

Every single Euro that goes into fossil fuel energy is sponsoring the next drought, flood, or heatwave, and this extreme weather is expected to affect Africa faster and more severely<\/a> than the rest of the world. The likely consequence of this environmental degradation will be people losing their livelihoods and emigrating illegally, and dangerously.<\/p>\n\n

This kind of exploitation is horribly familiar. Right now, fish from seas where Scholz and Sall want to drill for gas – fish that should be the basic foodstuff of West Africans – are being plundered, and sold as food for farmed fish, animals and pets<\/a> in Europe, the US and China.<\/p>\n\n

The number of jobs this industrialised fishing sector creates is tiny. Meanwhile the number of jobs it destroys and threatens by ruining fish stocks is enormous, and the human impact of how it forces up food prices<\/a> is devastating.<\/p>\n\n

And on top of that, the Scholz and Sall offshore gas exploration now threatens the sealife that West Africans depend on in whole new ways. Seismic blasts and deep-sea drilling operations could impact catch rates<\/a> by exposing the increasingly threatened fish of the region\u2019s seas to extreme noise levels and pollution.<\/p>\n\n

But Africans are fighting to protect their ocean, their food and their jobs. On 8 June – World Ocean Day – fishing communities and civil society groups across West Africa united in a day of protest against the fishmeal and fish oil industry and the politicians that have enabled it. This movement has already forced governments in Mauritania<\/a> and Senegal<\/a> to make political concessions – though only time will tell how real those were – and the issue is now a vital one across society and the media. If European big business now starts ravaging their seas with offshore gas platforms, West Africans will fight back against them too.<\/p>\n\n

In South Africa the message is the same: our oceans are not for sale. There, Greenpeace and others are waging a battle against Shell<\/a> to stop its plans for offshore seismic blasting. <\/p>\n\n

Will Scholz and Sall get the message? The former may think his gas plan is an easy answer to a complex geopolitical puzzle, but he\u2019s just created a whole new problem for himself, while in Africa we\u2019re fighting back against the new colonialism of fossil fuel extraction and climate catastrophe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a difference six months makes. Last December, there was a surge of environmental optimism when Olaf Scholz became Germany\u2019s Chancellor after pledging to \u201chalt man-made climate change\u201d. Germany has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":51493,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"p4_og_title":"","p4_og_description":"","p4_og_image":"","p4_og_image_id":"","p4_seo_canonical_url":"","p4_campaign_name":"not set","p4_local_project":"not set","p4_basket_name":"not set","p4_department":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[28,29,50],"p4-page-type":[45],"class_list":["post-51492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-protecttheenvironment","tag-oceans","tag-biodiversity","tag-senegal","p4-page-type-publications"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51492"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51496,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51492\/revisions\/51496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51492"},{"taxonomy":"p4-page-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/p4-page-type?post=51492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}