According to the ‘Who Stole Our Oceans’ environmental and social justice campaign, fisher-folk communities of the Northern Cape coastal villages and the West Coast are bearing the brunt of fracking and drilling in the ocean by big corporate companies.
By Amber Julius
THE ‘Who Stole Our Oceans’ campaign is an environmental and social justice campaign launched by The Green Connection in 2020, in a bid to protect oceans for future generations, with a particular emphasis on opposing offshore oil and gas exploration.
The Rural Action for Climate Resilience (RACR) spoke to Neville van Rooyen, the community co-ordinator of Green Connections, who explained about the campaign. “The organisation has started a campaign, ‘Who Stole Our Oceans’, in an attempt to ban fracking in the ocean, which is the process of drilling, using high-pressure fluid injections to shatter rocks and extract natural gases, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide.”
As part of the campaign, ‘Who Stole Our Oceans’, The Green Connections together with civil society organisations oppose seismic surveys of the West Coast.
According to Van Rooyen, the livelihoods of the fisher-folk communities in the Northern Cape coastal villages and the West Coast are bearing the brunt of fracking and drilling in the ocean by big corporate companies. The fish are becoming scarcer with every day that passes.
He told the RACR that the fishermen are required to sail deeper into the ocean to acquire an adequate number of fish to make ends meet. They do not always have the appropriate equipment to fish deeper in the oceans.
“We believe our ocean must be kept clean and safe for our people because our cultural association with the ocean runs deep and has for many years.” said Van Rooyen.
“Our fisher-folk communities know nothing other than fishing and their lives are built thereon,” said Van Rooyen. He further stressed that an oil leak in the ocean would not only negatively affect the fisher-folk community but also the biodiversity.
“An oil leak does not only affect the quality of marine life but can also be lethal,” he said.
The Green Connections co-ordinator believes there are alternative development methods, that are not harmful to the environment and do not negatively impact people’s livelihoods. He adds that renewable energy is an alternative to oil and gas, which is detrimental to the environment and contributes to climate change.
“These massive oil companies dump their toxic chemicals into the oceans, destroying marine life, the ecosystem and the livelihoods and well-being of the fisher-folk communities,” Van Rooyen told RACR.
Green Connections oppose offshore oil and gas exploration. “Shell has tried to carry out seismic surveys along the biodiversity-rich Wild Coast, where many coastal communities depend on the ocean for their livelihoods,” said Van Rooyen, adding that Green Connections has successfully taken legal action to interdict searchers from starting seismic surveys on the West Coast.
Devine Witbooi, a resident from Lutzville on the West Coast, told RACR that many people from Lutzville rely on the fish trade as a source of income. “Losing this source of income, increases poverty in the community and leads to many social ills,” said Witbooi.
“Greed drives many of these companies. They exploit and destroy biodiversity and the people who bear the brunt of the harshest conditions of climate change, are people in rural communities,” Witbooi added.
* This story was produced through the Youth Citizen Journalism Fellowship, an initiative of the Rural Action for Climate Resilience project, which is co-funded by the EU and the Heinrich Boll Foundation.
