This past week, just days before the UN climate negotiations in Glasgow, religious groups in Tanzania, Uganda, and France called on TotalEnergies — the massive French oil and gas multinational — and their governments to end their support for the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop), and to commit to universal clean energy access.

This courageous, multi-faith resistance deserves support from religious communities around the globe. Here’s why.

Governments and corporations first learned about climate change more than 40 years ago. Over time, the science has become clearer. The climate crisis now poses an existential threat to Africa. A World Meteorological Organisation report released last week indicated that within a decade, more than 100 million people living on less than $1.90 a day “will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa if adequate response measures are not put in place.”

In other words, this is no time for the world’s largest heated crude oil pipeline to pass through two of the world’s climate-vulnerable countries — financed by a multinational corporation associated with a former colonial power.

The misguided nature of this project becomes even clearer on further examination. If it becomes operational, Eacop would transport 216,000 barrels of oil a day. Burning this oil will produce more than 34 million metric tonnes of carbon annually — more than the current combined emissions of Uganda and Tanzania.

Barely 25 percent of Ugandans and under 35 percent of Tanzanians have access to modern sources of energy. Eacop will not improve these figures, because nearly all of the oil flowing through the pipeline will be exported.

Furthermore, Eacop threatens to displace thousands of families and farmers from their land. It would place at risk vital water sources that millions of people rely upon for drinking and food production. It will destroy some of the world’s most important elephant, lion and chimpanzee reserves — which are also an important source of eco-tourism revenues and jobs — and open up critical ecosystems to even more oil extraction.

Uganda and Tanzania need investments to help them ensure universal access to clean, affordable energy — not a fossil fuel pipeline that will accelerate climate change.

That’s why religious groups in France, Uganda and Tanzania came together on October 18, as part of Faiths 4 Climate Justice, a global multi-faith mobilisation. At more than 500 grassroots religious actions in 43 countries coordinated by the GreenFaith International Network, thousands of people of faith called on political and financial leaders to meet ambitious climate demands.

Stopping Eacop is among those demands. As Dr Martin Kopp of GreenFaith, the sponsor of the Paris action, put it while marching in front of TotalEnergie’s global headquarters, the moral logic behind this project does not exist.

Religious groups in Uganda and Tanzania organised public demonstrations to oppose Eacop while calling for universal energy access for their citizens. In response to their peaceful activities and eminently reasonable demands, some faced harassment and threats.

Clearly humans do not want to be killed and do nothing about it. We must not sacrifice lives for money; there will not be no one left to spend it. This is the naked truth.

Fletcher Harper is GreenFaith’s executive director