Global health? Start with the oil giants next door

The Energy Intelligence Forum took place in London in October 2023. Previously known as the Oil and Money conference, it hosted oil giants such as Shell, Total, and Equinor (the company behind Rosebank, the newly approved UK oil and gas field). Hundreds of climate activists attempted to stop the conference, under the banner of Oily Money Out, a campaign to get fossil fuel companies out of London. In November 2023, British Petroleum’s (BP’s) offices in London were blockaded by protestors in solidarity with Palestine. Amid Israel’s ongoing bombing and siege of Gaza, in which more than 40 000 Palestinians have been killed, Israel granted 12 gas exploration licences off the coast of Gaza to six companies, including BP.12 Activists accused BP of “using genocide as a business opportunity.”3 The oil company Shell, the mining giant Glencore, and the oil company Total all have headquarters and offices in central London. It is clear that the imperialist centre of the fossil fuel machine is on our doorstep.

The climate justice movement has moved away from trying to “convince” an industry set on destruction and is increasingly targeting oil companies directly—for example, through disruption of their operations or protesting against the sponsorship deals that maintain their social licence. Global health advocates in London, Geneva, Boston, Washington, New York, Paris, Berlin, and beyond rarely mention the names of destructive companies on their doorstep. Even the “social determinants of health” discourse is as if the suffering created by environmental injustice is being done by mistake or oversight. By contrast, in recent years multiple communities from the global South have brought their struggle to these companies, which concentrate much of their wealth and power in the global North.

In May 2023, the People’s Health Tribunal heard representations from the Niger Delta, South Africa, Uganda, and Mozambique about how fossil fuel extraction by Shell and Total creates illness and death through military violence, pollution, climate devastation, and displacement.4 This stinging indictment of Shell and Total accused them of “systematic large scale direct and social murder.” The tribunal’s verdict echoed the findings of the Bayelsa commission, which accused Shell of “environmental genocide.”5 The tribunal’s recommendations included an independent health audit, clean up, and restoration, compensation, returning land to communities and the initiation of proceedings at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

In June 2023, a delegation from the Yukpa Indigenous community in Colombia arrived in London, continuing their long struggle against Glencore, whose huge coal mine is causing “imminent physical and cultural extinction,” according to Esneda Saavedra Restrepo, the first female governor of the Yukpa people.6 She survived an attempt on her life in March 2023, which she believes was linked to her campaign against mining.6 Meanwhile, the pollution, diversion of water, and displacement caused by the mine has created a health crisis.7

These extractive companies are a continuation of colonialism—they seize land, transfer resources to the global North and the rich, and their operations perpetuate and rely on the hierarchies of racial capitalism that dictate whose life is valued and whose is not.8 Health justice can and must be used to force fossil fuel companies to repair the harm they have caused in solidarity with all those they have harmed. Health justice is a lens to fight for reparative justice, which is not a singular act, but a broad framework towards healing.8

As stated by Ken Henshaw, executive director of We the People at the People’s Health Tribunal—“The people of the Niger Delta do not come to this tribunal to be pitied. We do not come here for charity. Ours is a demand for justice.”9 For those based in the global North, with such proximity to the perpetrators, working in solidarity with and supporting the demands of communities is more important than lofty platitudes about climate and health.