Despite years of opposition, a 900-mile crude oil pipeline through East Africa is about to be completed, and its environmental and social risks are coming into focus. Campaigners in Uganda and abroad are making a final push to halt the project before the oil starts to flow.

An eleventh-hour legal effort is underway to halt the completion of a 900-mile oil pipeline through key African wildlife habitats. The East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) is weeks from being ready to operate, but the full range of ecological impacts from the pipeline and the two oil fields in Uganda that it will serve are only now becoming clear.

A key concern is the likely threat to Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park, where the French energy giant TotalEnergies is set to begin producing oil in October.…