GRAAFF-REINET NEWS - Local socio-environmental justice organisations Support Centre for Land Change (SCLC) and Green Connections (GC), together with a small group of local climate activists, joined in on a national protest against Shell on Saturday 11 December.
South African organisations and activists staged these peaceful protest actions at Shell stations across the country calling upon members of the public, fuel distributors and other businesses to boycott Shell and their products until they cancel their seismic surveying of the waters along South Africa's pristine Wild Coast.
A seismic survey involves firing high-powered compressed air guns towards the seafloor to assess oil and gas deposits beneath by measuring the reflected sound. These blasts are due to occur every ten seconds for five months and the sound generated can penetrate 40km into the seabed.
The noise from these airguns can raise background ocean noise levels by 100 times for the duration of surveying, which has devastating impacts on marine life.
In addition, beyond the issue of seismic surveys, oil and gas companies have a terrible socio-environmental track record throughout Africa and the world.
According to Amnesty International, with information based on reports from Shell itself, Shell leaked over 55 million litres of oil in the Niger Delta alone - a figure which Amnesty International calls "a massive underestimate."
Just 1 litre of oil can contaminate 1 million litres of water. This has obvious impacts on livelihoods and ecosystems in the affected regions.
In his press conference, Gwede Mantashe attempted to justify the continued exploitation of fossil fuel resources by international corporations as a means towards a just transition. Mantashe appears to deliberately misuse both the word "just" and the word "transition."
It is an international scientific consensus that to avoid the most severe impacts of the climate crisis, undiscovered fossil fuel deposits must remain just that: undiscovered.
In a 2021 report published by the International Energy Agency, it categorically stated that "no new oil and natural gas fields are needed," if we are to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and provide humanity with a 50-66% chance of limiting climate change to 1,5 degrees.
Limiting climate change to 1,5 degrees is still not ideal by any measure since we are already observing the devastating impacts of climate change in South Africa and the world with the current global warming average of 1.1 degrees.
The impacts of climate change will be most devastating to under-resourced people and communities. To allow Shell and other oil and gas companies to continue with the destruction of our shores, particularly with their poor track record of such activities in other countries, is to willingly ignore the voices of the people in South Africa.
It can be considered an active endorsement of a colonial attack on our country, both through the direct impact of seismic surveying and fossil fuel extraction and through the unfolding impacts of the climate crisis, particularly since our country warms twice as fast as the global average.
Hereby the SCLC and GC are calling on Karoo communities to support the campaign against Shell to put an end to the exploitation of our people and the ecosystems within which we exist, and which we are dependent on, by petrochemical profiteers.
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