Climate change begins when fossil fuels are taken from the ground and commodified, a process run by some of the most profitable corporations in the world. While we often focus on the effects of climate change on populations worldwide, the extractive practices that cause climate change often wreak unimaginable damage on nations of the Global South that already suffer the worst impacts of intensifying natural disasters and weather extremes.

Scrambling to escape debt traps caused in part by a need to rebuild following natural disasters, as discussed in our recent Earth Week feature article, gas-rich countries are often forced by economic circumstances to allow the oil industry to turn natural resources on their land into profit that benefits corporations at the cost of local livelihoods. The carbon emitted by the very oil extracted from these nations’ territories fuel the increasing disasters that further plunge these nations into debt, exacerbate existing conflicts, and perpetuate growing inequities. 

No where else in the world is this voracious cycle that profits off of destruction exemplified more than in Mozambique, the seventh poorest country in the world. Mozambique has suffered massive losses in recent years following Cyclones Idai and Kenneth in 2019, and Cyclone Eloise earlier this year. Collectively, they have left nearly 2.75 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and as recently as this past March, more than 100,000 people reside in resettlement sites following their displacement by these disasters. 

While the nation struggles to rebound following relentless cyclones, violent conflict in the northern province of Cabo Delgado has intensified in recent years, likely exacerbated by the destabilizing effects of disasters, and possibly, by the oil industry. This happens to be the same region where Al Jazeera reports a host of oil companies including Exxon Mobil, Total, BP, Shell, Anadarko (whose assets were purchased by Total in 2019), ENI, and CNPC swooped in following the discovery of gas reserves in 2010. A province whose people were exploited en masse by the practice of human slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries now faces environmental exploitation by corporations. 

Promised job opportunities, many locals in the area have instead been displaced by these companies’ operations. A report released by one of the oil company’s admits that 550 families would have to be relocated, while close to 4,000 would lose access to the agricultural land and fishing grounds that sustain them.

Of those relocated, many were moved to plots of land far from the sea, cutting them off from their source of food and income. Even for those who still have access to the sea, offshore oil drilling infrastructure has led to declining fish stocks and the deaths of other marine animals. 

More displacement and environmental degradation is the last thing this battered region needs. On top of the cyclones that have upended millions of peoples lives, organized terrorist groups including Al Shabaab have been committing complex campaigns of violence against the national government. As of April 2021, more than 700,000 people have been displaced by violent conflict in the Cabo Delgado region. A culture of fear and opacity pervades as journalists reporting in the area have been arrested and disappeared.

Local communities have benefitted very little from the billion dollar oil operations in their backyards. The Mozambican government pledged to protect the oil project’s development, leading to an influx of hired soldiers working for private security companies into the region to fight the insurgents. Fears abound that increased militarization of the region on both sides of the conflict will further harm locals, as reports come in that civilians have been harmed by both the insurgent and counterinsurgent forces. 

Mongabay reports while prevailing insurgent groups in the region emerged as a result of complex political and religious factors, it is likely that the benefits of the oil industry’s presence to the local community were oversold, resulting in widespread frustrations. Paolo Israel, a historian at South Africa’s University of the Western Cape writes, 

“While resentment over the gas deposits is unlikely to be the sole or primary cause of the insurgency, the region’s history of exclusion from its natural resource wealth provides the group with an easy narrative and opportunities for recruitment.”

Daniel Ribeiro, a researcher with the Mozambican environmental watchdog group Justicia Ambiental echoes this theory, adding that there is evidence from the experiences of civilians exposed to the terrorist organizations recruitment strategies that these groups point to state greed and corruption as justifications for their violence. Ribeiro adds, “you have this notion that the government’s the target, and therefore anything that’s important to the government becomes a target.” 

This certainly includes the oil industry. In late March of 2021, the violence inched closer to its operations during a sophisticated attack centered on a hotel in Palma, a town in the Cabo Delgado province where many foreigners, including contractors on the gas project, were staying. Up to 50 foreigners were killed, an event that led the French oil company Total to announce on April 26, 2021 that they would be withdrawing from the region, declaring force majeure on their multi-billion dollar project. 

Total has not abandoned the project, but plans on delaying it while other energy companies remain in the region. However, escalating violence might jeopardize oil drilling projects in Mozambique. While the gas companies can simply draw out of the province and evacuate their personnel, locals who call the area home face more to lose than profit. Violence, stoked in part by instability caused by natural disasters and extractive industries imperils locals’ lives, and livelihoods.

While the presence of the oil industry has been destructive for the region, and the effects of releasing the billions of dollars worth of oil in the ground are disastrous for our planet’s well-being, Mozambique will suffer economically if the industry leaves. Mongabay notes that the Mozambican government could be blamed for not upholding its agreements to secure the drilling project’s from violence, and have to pay back money that the companies have lost on their investments in the country, further entrapping the nation in debt. Already, the World Bank projected that the Covid-19 pandemic alone would devastate Mozambique’s economy, plunging 850,000 people into poverty.

Much promise was held in the economic boost that the gas industry would have on the country, but hope in its powers to alleviate instability appear to have been misplaced. It is not surprising that the same industry that has wrought destruction on the places where their extractivist activities are based, and on the world’s climate as a whole has not helped the region, but may have worsened the problem.