pressure from NGO’s put into place an Oil Revenue Management Plan with a Committee for the Oversight and Monitoring of Oil Revenue to ensure that Chad would channel oil revenues into public health, education and development expenditures. A similar revenue management plan was not put into place in Cameroon, thereby giving the Cameroon government independent control over Cameroon’s estimated $25 million dollars in pipeline revenue per year.

ii. Pipeline Construction and Environmental Assessments

In Cameroon, the pipeline construction was carried out by COTCO (Cameroon Oil Transportation Company) a conglomerate with shares owned by the government of Cameroon, Esso and Chevron. Prior to actual construction, COTCO was also responsible for carrying out the environmental assessments of the project. While the government of Cameroon does have a legislative framework enacting an environmental assessment procedure, the actual laws governing such assessments have not yet been defined. In any event, the Convention of Establishment signed between the government of Cameroon and the Oil Consortium governing the pipeline project and construction included a provision allowing the pipeline project legislation to supersede any applicable Cameroonian environmental legislation. As a result, assessments were undertaken according to procedures established by ESSO with monitoring by the World Bank’s International Advisory Group (IAG). Early concerns about the project resulted in the World Bank listing the project as a Category ‘A’ development, thereby requiring a full environmental assessment and management plan. The World Bank required COTCO to produce an additional 29 volumes of environmental studies and requested that the pipeline be rerouted away from the biologically diverse Deng Deng region and into the Atlantic Littoral forest. The pipeline was further shifted to avoid the core of the Mbere-Rift Valley.
Since construction of the pipeline, however, significant concerns have been raised about the quality of COTCO’s environmental assessments. In September 2002, CED (Centre for Environment and Development) , issued a complaint to the World Bank’s Inspection Panel regarding the environmental assessment procedure in which CED alleged, inter alia, that COTCO had failed to take adequate baseline data. The failure to obtain adequate pre-construction data on issues ranging from resources use and water quality to the location of indigenous burial sites and HIV rates was resulting in inadequate compensation and resource conflicts which might otherwise have been avoided. In 2003, the Inspection Panel released a report in which it affirmed the concerns of CED and stated that COTCO

Figure 2 - Oil pipeline trucks are a major cause of dust pollution on rural roads

III. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE PIPELINE

i. Increased Forest Access
One of the environmental impacts resulting from pipeline construction was the enhanced forest access provided by the creation of new roads and the cleared pipeline corridor. Easier access to already pressured areas, such as the Pangar-Djereme Reserve Area, makes it more difficult to prevent illegal forestry and the illegal bushmeat trade. In recognition of this problem, the Oil Consortium established an Access