On Tuesday 30 May, the Coalition of Environmental Civil Society Organisations called on the Congolese government to abandon the oil and gas development project for which tenders were published last year.
The appeal was made at a press conference in Kinshasa by Jimmy Munguria, permanent secretary of the Ituri environmental civil society consultation framework.
For this coalition, oil and gas are polluting sources of energy.
“Today, the government is presenting oil as an opportunity for development, but many analyses show that oil is not an opportunity for the country’s development. Why not? Because the world is in the process of migrating from fossil fuels to renewable energies, and many targets have been set in this context. Because fossil fuels, particularly oil, gas and coal, are considered to be the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, they are the main source of climate change”, argued Jimmy Munguria Kufoyi.
Many countries, having seen this danger, are in the process of abandoning the oil sector in favour of renewable energies,” he continued.
As proof of this, Jimmy Munguria explained that certain strategic minerals such as cobalt and lithium are in greater demand in this energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energies.