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Environmental activists under the aegis of the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA) has dismissed Shell’s proposed Net Zero, through which it is campaigning for the end of flaring by 2050, describing it as climate change deception.
To group opposed the corporation’s Net Zero mantra in a peaceful protest to Shell’s Head Office in Lagos, adding that it organised the rally to coincide with the oil giant’s Annual General Meeting (AGM), which was held yesterday at The Hague, Netherlands.
Speaking during the protest, Executive Director of CAPPA, Akinbode Oluwafemi, who was accompanied by Associate Director, Aderonke Ige, Director of Programmes, Philip Jakpor and other environmental activists, described Shell’s Net Zero as climate deception!
He said: While Shell continues to flaunt its net-zero pledge to end flares by the year 2050, communities across the African continent on the frontlines of the climate crisis, are saying enough to false solution to climate change.
“They are demanding real action including Shell’s greenwashing and abuses. The communities are saying Shell must be held accountable for its climate crimes. As the intensifying climate crises make clear, global governments must wake up and urgently prioritise real climate solutions to address the crises.
“We cannot afford to fall for the same tricks that Shell and the fossil fuels industry have been playing for decades with their deceptive greenwashing schemes, now being dressed in Net Zero climate pledges.”
He noted that in the 1980s Shell’s internal documents showed that it knew about the climate-damaging effect of burning fossil fuels, but the company continued to deny it and fund researches to the contrary.
Speaking, Jakpor revealed that Shell and fossil fuel industry trade associations, particularly the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), have been instrumental in blocking progress on climate policy for decades and continue pushing Big Oil’s corporate agenda at the UN climate talks and in national policy.
He cited the Conference of Parties (COP25) meeting held in Madrid, Spain in 2019, where IETA allegedly sent over 140 people, more than the entire delegation of the European Union (EU) and host country to steer the discussions away from real solutions.
Jackpot pointed out that at the COP24 in Poland, a Shell executive even went as far as bragging about the corporation’s influence in shaping the Paris Agreement, which showed the extent of their power in climate policy.
He also stressed that the Net-zero pledge that Shell is bringing before its shareholders for an advisory vote is being used to greenwash business-as-usual as corporations scale-up fossil fuel extraction, burning and emissions.
On her part, Ige cautioned that Net-zero pledges would overwhelmingly rely on either emissions offsets or nonexistent carbon capture technologies that are not viable and will not keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees.
CAPPA, therefore, demanded that there was the need for African governments to keep fossil fuels in the ground; End of handouts for polluting corporations; the need to Make Big Polluters pay for decades of deception and abuse and the need to Make Big Polluters pay for decades of deception and abuse and the need to hold corporations like Shell accountable for their actions.
