German rights group pleads for 'world's largest' swamp
A German church-backed human rights organization is pleading for action to save the Sudd, one of the world largest swamplands, located in southern Sudan, which the group says is threatened by oil extraction activities.
Klaus Stieglitz, the vice chairperson of Sign of Hope, which is backed by Roman Catholic Church organizations, said his group had seen evidence of remarkable pollution by companies drilling for and extracting oil. Stieglitz asserts this has put the lives of thousands of people at risk.
"The oil companies responsible are about to destroy the Sudd, the world's largest swampland, by discharging their waste practically untreated," Stieglitz told a press conference in Nairobi on 16 November, after a six-day visit by a Sign of Hope team to the Unity, Al Nar and Toma South oilfields in southern Sudan. "We strongly condemn these practices … and urge the companies to change their environmental behaviour," Stieglitz said.
He added that his organization's team had seen an environmental disaster in the oil fields, with the actions of the companies reducing the capacity of the swampland to clean the waters of the Nile as they head north, which is one of the swampland's functions.
"If the Sudd is destroyed it will be an environmental disaster," Stieglitz warned.
He noted that the lives of more than 550 000 people are at risk due to the oil companies' extraction activities. The Sign of Hope team claimed that the failure of the oil companies to put plastic lining in the swampland's ponds means that oil and poisonous chemicals are seeping into the ground and reaching the area's upper water level, which is an important source of drinking water for local communities.
"The Khartoum government must take immediate steps to establish a systematic supervision to make sure that companies fully comply with the provision of the Sudanese drinking water standards," Stieglitz said.
Sign of Hope says that since February 2008 it has conducted several assessment trips to the oilfields of Thar Jath and Mala, near an area called Bentiu. It claims to have discovered drilling pits and the water discharged from them to be the main source of contamination in the swampland.
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