Considering

 The daily transportation of 18 000 tons of crude oil through 891Km of pipeline in Cameroon;

 The rate of handling (loading from ship to ship) which is unavoidable and imposed by oil transfer operations;

 The vital, ecological, cultural and scientific importance of waters and forests of Cameroon;

 The setting convention between the Cameroon Government and the Cameroon Oil Transportation Company (COTCO);

 Law N° 99/013 of December 22, 1999 on the code of oil;

 That oil exploitation is one of the most destructive industrial activities of our planet;

 That all the different phases of oil processing : exploitation, refinery, transport and utilisation have very bad consequences on the environment as well as on people living in areas influenced by these activities;

 That tropical regions are particularly vulnerable to oil activities given the fragility of their ecosystems, their great richeness in biodiversity, their importance in water cycle and the regulation of earth’s climatic cycle;

 That Cameroon is the second most rich country in biodiversity of the Congo Basin;

 That the Chad-Cameroon oil and Pipeline project was presented by promoters as a developmental project;

 That Cameroon is found among the poor heavily indebted countries;

 That the diagonal crossing of 891Km pipeline on the Cameroon territory constitutes a permanent threat for the security and peace of national and international communities;

 That benefits generated by the Chad-Cameroon oil and Pipeline Project will be essentially destined for the payment of Cameroon’s Government external debts;

 That the economical, social and environmental risks are highly superiour to the possible benefits that Cameroon could gain;

 That the intervention plan in case of oil spill is one of the most important documents of this project;

Pre-occupied by :

 Objective estimations of the oil spill of 2000 to 3000 tons every 5 to 10 years not including major spills;

 The traumatism of Cameroonian families after the Nsam catastrophy (a quarter in Yaounde), brougth about by a transport accident of oil products on February 14, 1998;

 The lateness accused by the Cameroon State to produce its general oil spill response plan, plan on which COTCO’s specific plan has to trim;

 Severe dammages caused by oil spill in Northern countries despite their advanced technology (Exxon-Valdez and Prestige cases);

 The little interest manifested by the oil companies to the preservatioin of survival means of vulnerable populations (Ogoni people, Pygmies, Bororos, etc.);

 The low financial income that Cameroon will draw from the Chad-Cameroon oil and Pipeline project;

 The negative high rate potential impact of the Chad-Cameroon oil and Pipeline project on the Cameroonian people;

 The weakness of national measures taken so far in order to deal with accidental oil spill and catastrophies in general (Nsam catastrophy, Lake Nyos catastrophy...);

 The inexistence of application texts of the frame law on the environment;

Ascertaining

 That the provided interventions in COTCO’s plan concern only its employees, meanwhile the situation of neighbouring populations remains unclearified;

 That COTCO’s plan provides no compensations as concerns the properties of the populations that can be dammaged by these spills;

 That the environment and the populations have incurres many prejudices during the construction phase, as testify the different cases of non conformity noted by independent monitoring groups, including the Environment Conformity Monitoring Group (ECMG D’APPOLONIA, a monitoring committed by the World Bank), which has never been corrected;

 That COTCO’s specific plan, especially its critical aspects remains very global as regard references of competent organisms that could bring him some help;

 The absence of an exhaustive basic studies worthy of their name on the distribution and abondance of living species in the marine and coastal regions, the absence of which, is very upsetting, as it was impossible in the case of HIV/AIDS to measure its progession with the project due to the lack of a basic study as noted by the ECMG group.

Recalling

 That the Government of Cameroon has not signed all oil conventions that COTCO mentions to safeguard good intervention in case of accidental oil spill;

 That COTCO provides some training for its employees to face any future accident, but nothing is being done to prepare neighbouring populations to such situations;

 That the exploitation and transportation of oil through pipeline is a recent enterprise in Cameroon and that there exist only low technical capacities to figth against pollution and to safeguard organisms living in the country in case of accidental oil spill;

 That the priority of the Cameroon Government is to figth against poverty.

Recommend :

1. To the Consortium

 To produce an intervention plan which has sufficient details (scenarios inventories, the due budget...);

 Basic studies, sufficiently exhaustive that will permit to measure future dynamics including the study on the distribution and abondance of coastal and marine species;

 The training of populations neighbouring the pipeline on the behaviour to have in case of accidental oil spill.

2. To the Government of Cameroon

 To cross check the convention signature as regard the actual deal;

 To elaborate and publish application texts of the frame on the environment;

 To produce an oil spill response plan in the Chad-Cameroon oil and pipeline project (Cameroonian part).

3. To the World Bank

 To revise the actual monitoring system as regard multiple insufficiences registered during the preceeding phase of the project.

Demand

 To all active stakeholders (Consortium, Cameroonian Government and the World Bank)

 To clearly define the responsibilities of each part in case of accidental oil spill;

 To shift the exploitation starting date if all appropriate responses to the problems further underlined are not brougth.

Yaounde, February 13, 2003