Posted on 29 August
2013 | British oil company Soco International
PLC has been criticized for an alleged “failure
to conduct a proper human rights due diligence
before it started its activities” in an
African World Heritage Site. In a newly
released paper, the International Peace
Information Service (IPIS) says the company
should have taken into proper consideration
the impacts local communities may experience
due to its oil development activities in
Virunga National Park.
According to a paper
by IPIS researcher Gabriella Wass, Soco
has “not yet been able to present convincing
evidence of a systematic attempt to consider
human rights impacts upon [its] initial
engagement or thereafter.”
The company’s activities
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) park have been protested by local
communities and are the focus of a global
outcry by European lawmakers and conservationists,
the paper says. It notes Soco’s argument
that its operations are legitimate because
it is in DRC at the “express invitation”
of the government.
IPIS challenges the
company’s assertion, however, stating that
“when operating in a country like DRC where
the human rights record is so traumatized,
it is not acceptable to maintain that the
government is behind you and it is no one
else’s business.”
“The UN’s Guiding Principles
on Business and Human Rights stress that
human rights due diligence is the key way
in which businesses can ensure that they
respect human rights during their operations,”
the paper says. Adding that “strategies
should be put in place to ensure that risks
are mitigated, results tracked, and the
lessons learnt integrated into ongoing practice.”
IPIS is an independent
research institute that focuses on Sub-Saharan
Africa. “Why businesses should assess human
rights impacts from the outset of projects”
was published on 22 August 2013.
WWF is calling on Soco
to abandon all exploration and exploitation
activities in Virunga, which is the most
biodiverse protected area in Africa. The
organization also urges the company to make
a global commitment not to operate in World
Heritage Sites.
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Trap nets in the Okhotsk
sea threaten rare grey whales
Posted on 22 August
2013 | "There’s been numerous accidents
of marine mammals, including grey whales,
caught in fishing nets and later reported
deseased. Observers, based in the area of
the lighthouse on the shore of Piltun gulf,
have already registered cases where grey
whales with calves came dangerously close
to the nets,” writes WWF in an open letter.
Experts on the Okhotsk-korean
population of grey whales agree that trap
nets in those areas constitute a serious
threat to grey whales, so it is necessary
to remove them as soon as possible, as well
as to ban fishing in the feeding areas of
the whales.
"Because of ever
growing activities on the shelf of Russian
seas, there are also more and more threats
tobiological resources and rare species",
says Konstantin Zgurovsky, head of Marine
program of WWF Russia. "To preserve
them and to ensure their safety, a management
system of Russian seas needs to be implemented
as soon as possible. When this system is
established, these issues by the shores
of Sakhalin would be avoided.
Aleksey Knizhnikov,
head of WWF Russia’s program on environmental
policy of the oil and gas sector, underlines,
that threats to grey whales come not only
from the fishing industry, but also from
the increasing oil and gas extraction projects,
as well as more frequent shipping in Sakhaling
waters.
"For example the
operator of project Sakhalin-1 (with participation
of Exxon and Rosneft), plans to build a
modern wharf in the Piltun gulf, which will
bring even more risks to grey whales. WWF
and other NGOs appeal to the project operator
to give up those plans and to use an alternative
way for delivering cargo, as it was done
in previous stages of the Sakhalin-1 project”
– say Knizhnikov.
In their appeal to Kirillov,
ecologists ask him to take urgent action
to cancel the decision about setting of
trap nets in certain locations of the Okhotsk
sea to prevent damage to the population
of important rare species.
