Hello and welcome to this issue of our newsletter. Every week, Ariel and Khalil, writers based in Mauritius, investigate the impact the oil spill is having on the country and its people, politics and nature.
From environmental activism to feminism, it’s no overstatement to say that Mauritius is going through a period of radical change after the Wakashio oil spill.
And we don’t have to wait until the general elections of 2024 to get a feel of how the ramifications of the spill will play out.
The country’s village elections were held last weekend, and Jonathan Dardenne won the most votes in Trou d’Eau Douce, securing his place on the council. Jonathan and his brother Josué are boaters who helped clean the oil in the lagoon. On August 22, they were arrested without a warrant and spent the night in jail. A man close to the Minister of Fisheries had reported being shoved by them in an informal protest earlier that day in Mahébourg.
In this issue
Wakashio: the curse that keeps on giving
The ship was damaged before it even hit our reef
The latest
⚫ Mauritius suffers two oil spills in a year, both possibly related to the Wakashio
A leak in an oil pipeline may have spilled as much as 30,000 gallons of fuel into the Les salines area of Port Louis in the week of November 13. Officials are issuing muddled, ambiguous statements regarding this new disaster. Joanna Berenger, a member of the Opposition, has criticised the authorities for not doing enough to help – so far, it is claimed that only 3,000 gallons have been cleaned from the site – and for not properly evaluating the spill’s impact on the communities who live nearby.
The two spills are probably connected, writes Nishan Degnarain for Forbes. The pipeline that leaked was connected to storage tanks, which could have been storing oil from the Wakashio.
Beyond the communities who live around the Salines, the oil could also threaten the Terre Rouge River Estuary Bird Sanctuary that lies about a mile away.
More: Read Forbes’ investigation here.
⚫ MV Wakashio shouldn’t have been at sea
With 96 critical safety violations to its name, one wonders why the hell the MV Wakashio was allowed at sea in the first place. The ship was the highest risk vessel in Nagashiki Shipping’s fleet.
Forbes, which broke the story, added that “several serious flaws” in the report “[were] identified with ‘Safety of Navigation’ risks.”
More: Read the story here and read the report here (you need to register first, though).
That's it from me for this week. – Ariel