It has been a tense road for the small-scale fishers who took Shell to court back in December 2021 in a bid to stop a marine seismic survey offshore of the Wild Coast – these communitites now have cause to celebrate.
“Civil society, traditional communities, and small-scale have once again been vindicated by the courts. Well done to our comrades for staying the course of this fight against Shell, to protect our oceans and the rights of those communities who will be affected.” This is the message from The Green Connection, an eco-justice organisation opposed to offshore oil and gas exploitation.
It has been a tense road for the small-scale fishers since first hearing about the imminent arrival of Shell’s seismic testing vessel the Amazon Warrior at Cape Town harbour. It was a move by Shell that was to snowball into a national outcry. This issue finally comes to a head, in an historic moment for civil society and small-scale fishers in particular.
Today the Makhanda High Court ruled that the decision to grant the exploration right is set aside, as well as the decision to grant the renewal of this right. The decision to grant a further, second renewal, has also been set aside.
In December 2021, local communities and environmental justice organizations took Shell to court, first to request an urgent interim interdict to stop the seismic testing the company had started in the Wild Coast, a few weeks earlier. Then, in May 2022, the applicants were back, this time asking the court “to review and set aside the 2014 decision by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) to grant an exploration right to Shell and Impact Africa to conduct seismic surveys off the ecologically sensitive Wild Coast of South Africa.”
Click the link below to sign The Green Connection’s petition to stop offshore oil and gas, as part of its Who Stole Our Oceans campaign – https://www.change.org/p/imagine-a-world-with-oiled-up-beaches-without-living-ocean-are-we-running-out-of-time
For more information about The Green Connection’s Who Stole Our Oceans campaign, go
to www.thegreenconnection.org.za or follow them on social media: Facebook and Twitter.
The clip below shows celebrations at the ruling.
