Category: Corporate Capture

Extractivism and Cultural Resistance

The challenges confronting our communities and peoples generally are interconnected. They are often analyzed and presented as though they operate in silos. The reality is that they operate in intricately connected webs and must be understood as such. Our lands are grabbed for extractive or exploitative purposes. Extractivism in turn drives climate change. Climate change in turn triggers more extraction as well as land resource actions. The cycle goes on, until we take action to break it.

To unpack the components of the crises, locate the critical nodes and points of vulnerability, and act to propel transformation using cultural tools we need to look at three key things: land grabbing, extractivism and climate change. As already noted, they are interconnected and are not necessarily hierarchical or sequential.

Land grabbing 

Ownership of land in Nigeria was historically in the hands of individuals or communities. Today, through a military decree promulgated on 29th March 1978, communities have been dispossessed of their lands while ownership has been grabbed by the state, euphemistically on behalf of the dispossessed.  By virtue of the overbearing control of the military over the county’s governance structure, that Decree was inserted in the 1999 Constitution and barricaded in as inviolable. In other words, there should be no debate over its operations. The forced supremacy of the Land Use Act can be seen in its section 47 (1) which states that the Act is literally an outlaw and shall have effect notwithstanding anything to the contrary in any law including the constitution.

Clearly the Land Use Decree or Act was designed in a colonial template of resource appropriation that deprives the colonized of the fundamental resource and ensures that it is owned and used to meet the utilitarian needs or other means of enjoyment of the colonizers. Those whose lands are grabbed may only be compensated for loss of economic crops and for improvements on the land. In practice the compensations have been grossly inadequate, if not outrightly insulting. Consider for example a payment of N100 for a mango tree when one mango fruit could go as much and such a tree would bear multiple fruits for several years. 

Lands may be grabbed by different means, and for diverse purposes. By virtue of the Land Use Act, the government can grab any land by declaring that it is required for the public good. The use of such a land would invariably change, sometimes with dire consequences. A forest could be cleared and replaced with a plantation or cash cropping for export. A poor community could be demolished and the people get displaced and then their territory gets replaced with expensive resorts, hotels or gated estates. Wetlands can be sand-filled and taken up for infrastructural purposes. The list goes on.

The Nigerian government claims ownership of minerals and petroleum resources in the subsoil. So our lands can be grabbed for mining or for oil and gas extraction, ostensibly for the common good. Because  this often happens without free prior informed consent, when the people are called stakeholders what it means in fact is that while the company and government share the profits, the communities own the pollution. Which is also why such pollution is hardly ever cleaned up.

Indeed, land can also be directly grabbed through pollution. Two quick examples can show how this happens. A stream polluted by an oil spill becomes the waste dump of the polluter and usage for fishing or potable water is lost. Secondly, dumping of wastes on a parcel of land takes that land out of the control of communities. Often pollution is not an accidental exercise. It is used to dispossess communities of their land and creeks and for the exploiter to assume ownership without accountability, responsibility or sense of respect of the owners.

Our quest for development without questions also permits lands to be grabbed for infrastructural development. Often such lands are taken without prior informed consent 

Our culture and language are tied to our land and our liberation is connected to both.  Our culture nourishes and empowers us to stand against commodification of Nature and of life. It helps us to defend what belongs to us. It draws boundaries that no one must cross. Our culture is our power!

Extractivism

Extractivism as a concept covers a complex of self-reinforcing practices, mentalities, and power differentials that promote and excuse socio-ecologically destructive modes of organizing life through colonialism, militarization, depletion, and dispossession. It is a mode of capitalist exploitation…

Although extractivism is used mostly in terms of mining and oil it is also present in farming, forestry, fishing and in the provision of care. According to an entry in Wikipedia, “Extractivism is the removal of natural resources particularly for export with minimal processing. This economic model is common throughout the Global South and the Arctic region, but also happens in some sacrifice zones in the Global North in European extractivism.” Extractivism destroys lands, pollutes the ocean and destroys water bodies and wetlands. It results and feeds on land grabs, sea grabs and is aiming at sky grabs with a rise in space enterprises. Extraction also happens with regard to data and labour.

Climate change

The fact that climate change is driven by dependence on fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal — is well known. The main challenge is that the world keeps a blind eye to what communities suffer in the oil fields and focuses on mostly chasing carbon molecules in the atmosphere. This lack of focus on both ends of the pipeline has left communities destitute by damaging their lands and water bodies and thereby destroying their food systems, economies and cultures. 

The gradual agreement to terminate the petroleum civilization, and Yasunize the world,  implies that the time to remediate and restore lands damaged by oil and gas extraction has come. This remediation and restoration must be accompanied by reparation.

Our communities have suffered multiple impacts from climate change, extractivism and land grabbing.  Persistent pollution has been the lot of our communities. Studies such as the UNEP assessment of Ogoni Environment and the recently published Bayelsa Environment and Oil Commission’s report titled Environmental Genocide all show the dire situations. Some communities have their soils contaminated with hydrocarbons to depths exceeding 10 meters. Waters are polluted with benzene and other carcinogens. The air is grossly polluted with a cocktail of noxious gases through gas flaring. These pollutions do not readily disappear on their own. They must be consciously tackled and cleaned up. And the time for that is now. 

Other impacts of climate change include sea level rise, costal erosion and salinization of the ocean. These affect local livelihoods and equally provoke conflicts or displacements of communities.

Cultural resistance 

Our lands are healed when extraction and land grabbing are challenged and overcome. Cultural tools are essential for successful resistance is our happiness. They are the sources of people power. A happy community cannot be easily defeated. 

Another key tool is our love. Our love for one another and our love for our land and culture. Love reinforces solidarity. Beyond love, we must build stubborn hope as an antidote to despondency. Hope empowers action. It emboldens.

Boldness empowers telling of truth, including the reportage of destructive extraction and land grabbing. The oppressed must remain emboldened by the knowledge that while the rich worry about the end of the world, workers and exploited communities worry about the end of the day and have deep stakes on what happens tomorrow. 

To resolutely stand against land grabbing and extractivism and also build resilience against climate change our communities need Care and Repair Teams (CARTs) as key agents for overcoming trauma, stressors and illnesses. These teams can also be agents to press for remediation, restoration, repairing and reparation. These demands and their attainment require the use of every tool of cultural resistance. 

COP28 and the Evasion of Climate Justice

The foundation for voluntary emissions cut by nations was laid in the Copenhagen Accord (2009) and consolidated in the Paris Agreement (2015) under what is known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). The voluntary mechanism essentially blunted the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR), a cardinal justice principle of the UNFCCC. Whereas in the past, rich, industrialized and polluting  nations were grouped as Annex 1 nations and had binding emissions reduction requirements, under the NDCs, there are no binding obligations. Nations simply have to do what is convenient for them to do and report back on what they have done to the COP. Such submissions were made for the stocktake at COP28. 

Voluntary emissions reduction can work in a situation where there is no crisis and no urgency for action. However, the world has already progressed from global warming to global heating and the prognosis for the future shows very dire situations. The evidence of the trend are presented in the various IPCC reports as well as in UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report (EGR). The EGR issued just before COP28 showed that rather than reducing, global greenhouse emissions increased by 1.2 per cent from 2021 to 2022 to reach a new record of 57.4 Gigatonnes of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent. In addition, an aggregation of the NDCs proposed by nations showed that the world was heading for a 2.5 to 2.9C temperature increase above pre-industrial level. At that temperature level,  there will be a spike in freak weather events and the overall conditions will make parts of the world uninhabitable. 

The reliance on NDCs lock in inequality and injustice in the entire climate negotiation process. With this understanding, my initial conclusion is that COPs conducted on an unjust basis will continue to yield hollow outcomes that at best scratch the surface of the climate crisis.  

Fossil Notice

COP28 had three significant accomplishments, but around each are bubbles of uncertainties and loopholes. The three highlights are the adoption of Loss and Damage Fund mechanism, the agreement to triple renewables capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030, and the agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy. Yet, in all, the real winners are the army of fossil fuels lobbyists and the petrostates. 

After kicking and screaming for decades, the COP finally agreed to acknowledge that burning of fossil fuels must end. The phrase of transitioning from fossil fuels for energy was so carefully crafted it leaves an ocean-wide space for the fossil fuel industries to keep on prospecting for, and extracting the resources. The restriction of the open-ended transition to renewable energy gives the industry the space to keep drilling for production of plastics, petrochemicals and diverse products. In other words, that celebrated clause does give a life line for the petroleum civilization to trudge on. 

Carbon Wordsmiths 

The wordsmiths of the COP play with the imaginary of the world and it is time to wake up to this fact. At COP26 the phrase “phase down” instead of “phase out” was introduced. A phasing down of coal, for example, simply indicates there would be some efforts to tinker with production and consumption volumes of the hydrocarbon. It does not by any stretch suggest halting dependence of the dirty energy source.  A lot of energy was spent at COP27 and COP28 to push for the “phase out” language in the outcome documents. The draft outcome document of COP28 particularly gave a number of options on how the language for “phasing out fossil fuels” could be couched. While negotiators and politicians tried to wrap their heads around the clause, which would remain a clear ending of the fossil fuels age, the wordsmiths came out with “transitioning from fossil fuels in energy.” So, there is the phase down, phase out and then a partial transition. Strikingly, the document also highlights the continued role of transition fuels―a clear reference to fossil gas. Fossil fuels moguls must lift up glasses to that. 

Carbon Speculators 

Whereas there was no agreement on adopting a UN sanctioned mechanism for carbon trading, aspects of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement opened the floodgates for carbon capture and utilization and storage, carbon dioxide removals and variants of geoengineering. Carbon capture introduces the notion of pollution abatement, an interesting term. Whilst it is clear that the best action is to stop pollution at source, the COP says keep polluting, but capture the pollution before it escapes into the environment. If it doesn’t work, all the polluter needs to do is to show that it is sucking or removing the errant carbon from the atmosphere. The cheers that accompanied the closure of the COP has always reminded some of us of the same reaction we see when bells are rung at the stock exchange. Carbon polluters anonymous unite!

The carbon market business has been a speculator’s paradise, with scant transparency or integrity. This state of play allowed carbon cowboys and dealers to trade in phantom carbon or even forests, leaving investors in limbo. With the matter now rolling over to COP29, observers now wonder if the tide of land and forest trading desks across Africa would be stemmed. In the run up to COP28 there were reports of deals aimed at selling off huge swathes of African territories to be utilized as carbon sinks. 

There are reports of nations inking memoranda of understanding or agreements to cede huge segments of their territories for carbon credits. Zimbabwe has put 20% of its forests on the chopping block, Zambia and Liberia are extending 10% while Tanzania is said to offer 8 million hectares of forest. Nigeria’s Niger State offered to sell 760 ,000 hectares of land to Blue Carbon, a UAE carbon focused company, for afforestation programme that would see the planting of 1 billion trees. 

The thing to note is that the lands or forests are not sold in perpetuity. The leases have stipulated years over which the investor would find ways of securing the carbon in the land, sea or forest. They could also engage in carbon farming through, for example, clearing the territory and then creating a tree plantation which should be seen as a colonial euphemism for monoculture cash cropping. The investor farms carbon and owns the credit accruing from there.  

The investor can use the carbon to offset his polluting activity at home and can even sell off some to help others offset their polluting activities. The investor can count a carbon sink in Africa as part of their Nationally Determined Contributions actions. The country that sold its territory may not do so. A question that requires answers in this market environmentalism project is about what happens with the sequestered carbon if a new buyer steps in after the expiration of the lease over a forest or territory. Supposing the new buyer embarks on land use changes, of what value was the carbon offset business beyond being carbon fiction or trading on hot air?

Lost and Damaged

Adopting Loss and Damage on the first day of the COP was a master stroke. After years of demands for payment for loss and damage suffered by victims of climate change, this was a great moment. The slack was that the funds would be warehoused in the World Bank, an institution that has a reputation of being anything but a bank of the world. Seen as a heavy handed neoliberal institution, the bank is loathed by citizens of nations over which it has engineered poverty despite its glossy poverty reduction papers. Aside from keeping the funds with the World Bank, a very instructive lesson was on how much funds were pledged for the fund at that first day. 

Pledges came from the UAE, Germany, USA and others. The $100 million pledged by UAE was a mark of generousity that, nevertheless, blunted the justice principle that requires that those with historical responsibility for the crisis should be the first to step forward. A total of a little over $400 million was recorded on the first day and this climbed to over $700 million by the close of the COP. We note that the annual loss and damage cost is estimated at $400billion. The highlight of the pledges was the miserly $17.3 million made by the USA. The point this made was that the unwillingness of polluters to stop polluting and to financially support climate action including loss and damage is not due to lack of financial resources. To back this assertion, one only needs to look at how much is expended by the rich polluting nations in military action around the world. NATO, for instance, had a budget of $1.2 trillion in 2022. 

Climate Justice

Having climate justice in quotes says a lot about the mindset of the nations with regard to the disproportionate climate change impact on vulnerable communities, territories and nations. The COP26 outcome document did not place climate justice in quotes, but added that it was only important to some. In other words, climate justice is not something of universal concern. COP28 avoided that blatant disregard of the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC), a clear climate justice principle in the climate convention. In keeping with the general wordsmithing approach of the COPs, the principle and reality was now placed in harmless quotes. 

Africa at the COP

African negotiators went to the COP loaded with the outcome of its recently held African Climate Summit. Among the key outcomes was the need for the continent to demand for sufficient finance for the needed energy transition and the operationalizing of the Loss and Damage Fund.

African politicians see the continent as having limitless land and resources, including the so-called green or critical minerals, ripe for exploitation in exchange for cash. The leaders resolved to aim for green development and green industrialization. They also agreed to develop green hydrogen and its derivatives. To a large extent, the highlights of the document may not have influenced the official negations as much as it did bilateral and directional deals. 

The push by OPEC that its members should not accept a fossil phase out and, probably, no mention of fossil at all sat well with African negotiators, including Nigeria. With new oil and gas fields opening up in many areas―including world heritage areas in Saloum Delta in Senegal and Okavango in Namibia; with drilling and pipelines trashing protected forests in Uganda; flashpoints in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique―the mantra is that Africa must use its fossil fuels resources. On this, Africa’s politicians scored a point when the COP document stated that the transition from fossil fuels must be fast but also fair. This suggests that the transition will move on different gears in different regions. Nevertheless, the point is that the fossil fuels industry has been put on notice. The days of fossil fuels are numbered. Rather than talk of decarbonizing, the world will soon be speaking of depetrolizing. Within the coming decades, the global north will halt the production of internal combustion engines and, sadly, Africa will become the cemetery for such automobiles. 

Another point is that over 85% of the infrastructure on the continent are installed for exports clearly showing that they are not extracted to meet the energy needs on the people on the continent. 

The need to rein in fossil fuel extraction and burning goes beyond the climate question. The point that must not be missed is that from extraction to processing and burning, fossil fuels cause havoc on people and the Planet. The oil fields in many parts of the world are veritable crime scenes. Millions of old or orphaned oil wells have been abandoned around the world and remain ticking time bombs that could blow up and cause major spills at any time. 

Mining of so-called critical or green minerals is wrecking communities and biodiversity in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. These have happened irrespective of whether the material is dirty or green. Lack of respect for people living in the territories where these resources are extracted routinely lead to a lack of consultation with the people, a lack of interest in their consent and a lack of care for the people. It is time to reach a consensus on the Rights of Nature to maintain her regenerative cycles without disruptions by humans. Indeed, the climate crisis is tied to our irresponsible relationship with Mother Earth.

Talking points used at a National Resource Justice Conference held in Abuja on the theme: Beyond COP28:Localizing Climate Solutions for Nigeria’s Resilience 18.12.2023

Extractivism’s Ecological Time Bombs

Extractivism is deeply  linked to ecological damage and negation of human rights

Ecological damage because it disrupts ecosystems, from the simple case of conversion of land use to the fragmentation of biodiversity and destruction of habitats. The following Human rights are directly negated: Right to water. Right to food. Right to dignity and the overall right to a safe environment (Art 24 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights). Forced displacements and loss of housing as well as cultural and spiritual freedoms.

We are contending with both human rights abuses, and the rights of Mother Earth. Mother Earth has a right to be free from disruption of her natural cycles. Pollution of water bodies (streams, rivers, lakes, ocean) affects diverse species and has led to extensive extinctions and disrupts the cycles of nature. In the climate change negotiations there are contentious debates over reparations for Loss and Damage for remediation and restoration of extensive environmental and infrastructure harms. Some of these harms are extensive and may be irreparable and constitute ecocide.

Oil and gas

International Oil Companies (OICs)have been divesting and selling their onshore and near offshore assets to Domestic Oil Companies (DOCs) since the Local Cintent Act of 2010. By selling or divesting they seek to avoid;

  1. Decommissioning and removing unused or derelict infrastructure 
  2. Upgrading of poorly maintained facilities
  3. Liability for decades of environmental , socio-economic and human rights violations. We note that both Nigerian and international law hold that, regardless of any subsequent transfer of assets, liability remains the responsibility of those causing the injury. They could equally be held liable for damage that occur post-divestment if such arise from integrity issues that was not disclosed. 
  4. Clean up and restoration of the environment. 

The heavy dependence of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) on IOCs and oil revenue has inexorably entrenched the non-transparent, corrupt, and strategically dysfunctional petroleum sector. This is the core enabler of the sort of reckless corporate behaviour that pervades the sector and by extension the nation. This misbehaviour has rendered  the relevant regulatory agencies either impotent or complicit in the malaise. 

Environmental Timebombs 

There are wellheads, manifolds, flow stations, and pipelines that ought to be decommissioned and removed from communities across the Niger Delta by the IOCs and the NNPC. Nigerian law and regulation requires proper Decommissioning, Abandonment and removal of all unused oil facilities to best international standards, these requirements are often ignored. This happens also in the solid minerals sector as evidenced by the abandoned tin mines of Jos and the coal mines of Enugu. Across the world, there are an estimated 29 million abandoned oil & gas wells, that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to properly secure. 

These derelict facilities constitute threats to ecosystem impacts, groundwater contamination and human health. They are time bombs that have already started to explode. Examples include the blow out in November 2021 of Aiteo’s Nembe/Santa Barbara Well-1 in the Santa Barbara River in OML 29 (Bayelsa State). The Santa Barbara blow out raged for 39 days, and official/industry estimate was that less than 5,000 barrels was spilled. Independent experts estimated that over 500,000 barrels  of hydrocarbon fluids, gas and oil were spilled in the monumental incident.  Numerous well head leaks are recorded across the region. Another notorious incident that occurred in recent times is that of the aged Trinity Spirit FSPO  that exploded and sank in February 2022. 

The Ignored Fire

Ororo-1 is a well located off the Awoye coast, Ondo State, in shallow water Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95. 

The Ororo-1 well has a long and checkered history. This oil well was first drilled by Chevron oil company but was shut off in the 1980s with a steel plug due to pressure issues, according to reports. The well was awarded as a marginal field to Guarantee Petroleum and its partner Owena Oil & Gas Ltd (an Ondo State company) in 2003 but the award was allegedly revoked in 2019 because the company had not developed and brought the field to full production before expiration of an extension period that elapsed in April 2019. Owena Oil & Gas Ltd filled a lawsuit against the DPR over the revocation.

Interestingly, the well was re-entered  by the new “owners” in 2020 and the horrific blowout occurred on 15 May 2020. Note that the well was re-entered decades after it had been plugged by Chevron. The Nigerian government effectively took ownership of (controlling) the fire since it had revoked the rights of Guarantee Petroleum to the field by the time of the disaster.

Experts suspect that the blow out occurred due to a sudden rush of hydrocarbons under high pressure and the failure of both the Blow Out  Preventer (BOP) for the main well bore and the BOP between the pipe and the skin of the well. The blowout which occurred on the Hydraulic Work over rig (Grace-1 HWU) hired by Gaurantee Petroleum has been accompanied by oil spill and a constant inferno since the blow out.

It is clear that the abuse of our environments for economic gains through extractivism translates to trampling on our rights to dignity, to safe food, to potable water and to life. What shall it profit a government or even the people if you own all the petrodollars in the world, all the gold in the vaults, all the coal in the shafts and all the crude oil in the pipes, and yet you cannot breathe?

We demand our right to life. This is why the Ororo-1 well fire must be extinguished. Now!  This is why our environment must be detoxified. Now!

Presentation at HOMEF’s Ororo-1 Documentary Screening & Policy Dialogue on 27 November 2023

Will COP28 Play With Fire?

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has again issued an Emissions Gap Report that underscores the fact that the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the linchpin of the Paris agreement is not leading away from the climate precipice but is rather increasing the speed to a catastrophic plunge. While nations offer to do what is convenient, the world has experienced the hottest dark, weeks, months, and years in history. In simple terms, the world is breaking the global heating record daily. The UNEP report shows that if nations do what they offer in their NDCs the World is a reading to temperature increase of 2.5 or 3.0 C. The alarm has been sounding over the years and now we are staring a temperature increase that would be 100% above the sexy 1.5C target by set the Paris Agreement.

COP28 seems set to be a hollow ritual of climate action avoidance while nations hoist scarecrows that are mere totems to indolence. This prognosis may seem harsh, but from the vocations weather events recorded in recent months, increased water stress, desertification, floods and droughts, there is no way to sugar coat the climate vinegar we are serving ourselves.

It is sad that we are forced to attribute agency to all humans when we see climate change as a marker of an anthropogenic age. We should be fair to the millions that are vulnerable to climate impacts but have contributed nothing to the crisis. It has been argued that the climate harming actions were not taken by a majority of humans and placing the blame on everyone is unfair. It can be said that the basic justice principle of the UNFCCC, the Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) attempted to address the fact that everyone is not equally responsible for wrecking the planet. The “common” underscores the fact that there is a causative commonality because no matter how minuscule the contribution may be, every living human exhale carbon dioxide and that most likely ascends into the atmosphere if it is not trapped by the trees, soils, or ocean. Adopting or accepting the principle demands that those who contributed the most to the crisis should also take responsibility for the consequences. To underscore this, the Emissions Gap report sums up that “emissions remain unequally distributed within and between countries, reflecting global patterns of inequality”.

The Emissions Gap report, one of the most appropriately titled reports, shows the chasm between emissions cut pledges and climate outcome prospects. The latest report shows that several points of no return will be reached if temperature increases climb as projected. Some of these changes would include the rapid melting of the ice sheets and the drying out of the Amazon forests. This would mean that, for humans, large parts of the world will be uninhabitable.

COP28 marks the halfway between 2021 and 2030 when the world’s governments should have done enough to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C (or well below 2C) above pre-industrial levels. The COP will thus be a moment for taking inventory of what has been done, not done, or must be done. This inventory is termed a stocktake. A Land Gap Report by scientists from the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Climate Resource examined updated NDC pledges and found that high emitting, high-income countries heavily rely on land use to offset their emissions. Australia, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States of America, account for about 75% of the total land required for this mathematical carbon offsetting. These land use carbon offsetting would require about 1 billion hectares of land mostly for tree planting to implement their mitigation pledges. Pledges of this sort ignore scientific and ecological principles and compounds the multiple crises the world is mired in by the encouragement of land grabbing, displacement of indigenous people, threats to food security as well as livelihoods, and ecosystems disruption.

The agenda for this catastrophe was set by the voluntary approach to emissions reduction adopted by both the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement. The adoption of a voluntary emissions reduction pathway is a direct subversion of both climate science and justice. The logic of science has been used to show the carbon budget as well as the temperature rise trajectory. However, the illogic of geopolitics has seen powerful nations backtracking from serious commitments and actions. This has expectedly driven the gap between equity and fair share wider by the day. Can COP28 afford to ignore the fact that we are hurtling to the precipice or to the canyon, as framed by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres? It will be foolhardy to ignore the call by the Secretary-General that leaders recognize the fact that “We are off the road” and “must reverse course” from coal, oil, and gas.

What does a reversing of course mean? Obviously, the COPs have been bogged down in the rut and reversing the course away from fossil fuels has been made to appear as “mission impossible”. Humans appear to have imaginations that are difficult to change once firmly imprinted on the plates of our minds. Imagination, ease, and greed appear to be three weights firmly placed on the neck of the Mother Earth to ensure that her discomfort is muffled, and our consciences are thus freed to fly over the edges of the climate canyon. To reverse course means turning our backs on coal, oil, and fossil gas. Our affinity to carbon makes this divorce difficult to comprehend or effect. If you do not see that tie, it means that you have forgotten that we are made largely of carbon. 

The Emissions Gap report reveals that temperatures already topped 1.5C for 86 days this year. The report also warns that the chance of keeping to 1.5C limit of the Paris Agreement is a slim 14 percent and will require deep emissions cuts by the big polluters. With this prognosis, it appears that COP28 will be a flaming COP. It may also be an avenue for a ritualistic elegy for a planet whose inhabitants fiddle while the flames leap to the rafters. 

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Decolonize our Waters

Colonialism is beyond the political control and exploitation of one nation by another, it extends to relationship with Nature. The colonisation of Nature sees it being exploited and resources being transformed for economic gain without much regard to socio-ecological impacts. This bent has led to myriad problems including climate change, biodiversity loss and conflict. Terminologies such as Green and Blue economy have been coined as fig leaves to actions that seem good but merely provide cover to negatives activities. 
In the School of Ecology held in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, we looked at two key matters, the first being what it would mean to have Marine Protected Areas (MPA). The second issue was connected to the first, and that is the Blue Economy. We considered why the Blue Economy, such a beautiful name, should be a cause for concern.  The term and concept of “economy” has become so pervasive that it is taken as a given that aquatic ecosystems are for nothing other than meeting the ends of capital accumulation through the business of exploitation.
Although Blue Economy is conceptualised as the sustainable management of aquatic and marine resources and ecosystems, anything  done for other than economic profit or power is seen as unreasonable or as not viable. Our concern is to promote the resilience of our ecosystems and secure them from being grabbed by wielders of power and capital. Some people see the promotion of the Blue Economy as a means of securing life under water as highlighted in the Sustainable Development Goals. However, there isn’t much life under water coated by layers of crude oil and contaminated to outlandish levels above safe limits. What life is under water in Bayelsa State for example where the recently released report by the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission reveals that “the concentration of noxious chemicals, such as Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, exceed safe levels by a factor of  1 million according to some of the samples taken.” 

Environmentalism from below requires that we overturn the notion that environmental concerns are for those who have met their basic needs, are sated, and have the pleasure of thinking of luxuries. We also need to demolish the distorted notion that environmentalism begins and ends with the forcing of citizens to evacuate waste from drainages once a month, only to pike them on the edges of the drainages to be washed back, by the rains, into drainage channels. Environmentalism from below requires those who depend on the environment for their basic needs to stand up to reject attempts for the territories to be appropriated for mindless exploitation by the powerful and connected individuals, governments and corporations. 

Economy ought to be a third or fourth leg of sustainability, but the other legs, social and environment, have been roundly diminished that the table largely stands on one leg. So it is that the Blue or Green Economy are terms that must be taken with a dose of salt. Blue Economy is conceptualised as the extraction of economic value from aquatic ecosystems through deep seabed mining, modern biotechnology, geoengineering, industrial fishing and a variety of other activities. Some of these activities lead to ocean acidification and compound climate change impacts besides outright pollution. This means that after the extreme exploitation of the land, the sea and the sky are the new targets. Just as lands have been demarcated as mining blocs, the same is overtaking the seas. The wellbeing of 200 million Africans who depend on fisheries for food and nutritional security is clearly at risk. 

The implication of the grabbing of our water bodies is that very soon they may be partitioned and claimed as private properties. No doubt once these areas have been claimed, they will become inaccessible to our fisher folks and coastal communities. The partitioning and claiming of aquatic territories may seem far fetched but that is only if we deny that this is happening already. Industrial installations, such as crude oil platforms, command land swathes of territories around them ostensibly as security buffers. Stories from fishers who have tried to move into the high seas in pursuit of their business is that large parts of the continental shelf and beyond are off limits because they have been claimed and literally cordoned off by extractive industries’ installations. Another debilitating factor is that of unregulated industrial fishing in our waters. We have a situation where access to healthy water bodies is becoming more and more difficult by the day due to industrial installations and related pollution. In recent times, we have been witnesses to massive oil spills from blowouts at well heads at Santa Barbara river and at Ororo-1 well; explosion of FSPOs; and the incredibly polluting blowing up of oil laden vessel and burning of bush refineries by the security forces. 

With about 90 percent of sea-based pollution, including plastic wastes, in the Gulf of Guinea traceable to the Niger Delta, it is time for our governments (and ECOWAS) to declare an environmental emergency in the region. We need this in order to ensure that our peoples have a safe environment to carry out their economic, socio-cultural, recreational and spiritual activities. 

One immediate step that must be taken to ensure that our aquatic commons are not enclosed and grabbed is to have community-managed Marine Protected Areas. Such protected areas could cover rivers, creeks, swamps, and continental shelf. The advantages are numerous and deeply connected to the peoples history and socio-cultural outlook. Such people-managed MPAs would see restoration of degraded areas, rebuild biodiversity, revive cultural practices, restore dignity and reinvigorate local economies. In sum, we aim to work together and figure out ways of liberating Nature, from the bottom up.   

Halting Ecological Crimes in Africa

The struggle for environmental justice in Africa is complex and broad. It is the continuation of the fight for the liberation of the continent and for socio-ecological transformation. It is a fact that the environment is our life; the soil, rivers and air are not inanimate or lifeless entities. We are rooted and anchored in our environment. Our roots are sunk into our environment and that is where our nourishment comes from. We do not see the Earth and her bountiful gifts as items that must be exploited, transformed, consumed or wasted. The understanding of the Earth as a living entity and not a dead thing warns that rapacious exploitation that disrupts her regenerative powers are acts of cruelty or Ecocide.  

We bear in mind that colonialism was erected on the right to subjugate, erase or diminish the right to life and the right to unfettered cultural expression of the colonized. In particular, the colonized were dehumanized and literally transformed into zombies working for the benefit of the colonial powers. Ecological pillage was permitted as long as it benefited the colonizers. This ethos has persisted and manifests in diverse forms. Grand theft by the colonial forces was seen as entrepreneurship. Genocide was overlooked as mere conquest. Slavery was seen as commerce. Extractivism was to be pursued relentlessly as any element left unexploited was considered a waste. Anything considered to be lifeless could be wasted with no compunction. So, most things had to die. The civilizers were purveyors of death. Death of individuals. Death of communities. Death of ecosystems. 

Thus, today people still ask: What would we do with the crude oil or fossil gas in our soil if we do not exploit them? In other words, how could we end poverty if we do not destroy our environment and grab all it could be forced to yield? We tolerate deforestation, unregulated industrial fishing and run a biosafety regulation system that promotes the introduction of needless genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and by doing so, endanger our biodiversity and compromise our environment and food systems.

Plunder is presented as inescapable and desired under the cloak of foreign investment. Political leaders in despoiled regions pliantly offer ease of doing business templates, tax holidays, sundry lax rules, and other neocolonial governance policies. The reign of exploitation and consumption without responsibility has driven Africa and indeed the world to the brink. The current civilization of death seeks ready investment in destruction through warfare and extractivism rather than in building resilience and adapting to the environmental changes that result from corporate and imperial misadventures. 

We are in a reign in which condescension is the hallmark of multilateralism. The collective action needed to tackle global warming has been reduced to puny nationally determined contributions that add up to nothing. Rather than recognizing and paying a  clear climate debt, we expend energy negotiating a loss and damage regime to be packaged as a humanitarian gesture. Pray, who negotiates what is offered as charity? 

Today, Africa is facing multiple ecological challenges. All of these have resulted from the actions of entities that have seen the continent as a sacrificial zone. While the world has come to the conclusion that there must be an urgent shift from dependence on fossil fuels, we are seeing massive  investments for the extraction of petroleum resources on the continent. And we must say that this investment comes with related infrastructure for the export of these resources out of the continent in a crass colonial pattern. A mere 1 percent of the labour force in the extractive sector in Africa are Africans. A mere 5 percent of investment in the sector is in Africa. More than 85 percent of the infrastructure for fossil gas in the continent is for export purposes. 

The shift to renewable energy brings the same old challenges to Africa. Extraction of critical minerals for renewable energy is done without prior consultation with and consent of our people. The continent’s environment is being degraded just as it has been with the extraction of oil/gas, gold, diamond, nickel, cobalt and other solid minerals. The array of solar panels and wind turbines could well become markers of crime scenes if precautionary measures are not taken now. 

Are we against renewable energy? No. They provide the best pathway towards ending the energy deficit on the continent. However, this should be pursued through discrete, autonomous and socialized ownership schemes. 

While the world knows that we must rebuild our biodiversity, what we see is the push towards more deforestation in Africa and for monoculture agriculture, all of which are against our best interest and that of  the world. A sore issue, land grabbing has not disappeared with the coming innovations. 

We have a great array of thinkers to lead the conversation at this conference that should move us resolutely towards environmental justice in Africa. As Eneke the bird said in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, since men have learned to shoot without missing, it would fly without perching. For us, until the despoilers of our environment halt their destructive acts, we will intensify our resistance and never give in to their designs. We believe this conference will not only break the yoke of colonialism, it will puncture the hold of coloniality. Our book, Politics of Turbulent Waters is one of the tools towards these ends.

Ten years ago, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) was birthed from a dream. It was a dream to have a think tank focused on approaching knowledge from the basis of diversity and built on a multiversity of co-learning and co-knowing tools. For ten years, with a team of vibrant and committed young activists, we have pursued knowledge and unearthed the roots of exploitation and despoliation of communities and nations on our continent. We have collaborated and stood with fishing, forest, farming, mining and oil field communities. We have worked as part of networks and movements for environmental and climate justice across the continent and the world at large. Ten years. And we are just starting!

Permit us to conclude with some recommendations and points to ponder. Every African nation should:

1. Commit to issuing an annual State of Environment Report to lay out the situation of things in their territories.

2. End destructive extraction no  matter the appeal of capital.

3. Demand climate debt for centuries of ecological exploitation and harms.

4. Require remediation, restoration of all degraded territories and pay reparations to direct victims or their heirs.

5. Support and promote food sovereignty including by adopting agroecology.

6. Adopt and promote African cultural tools and philosophies for holistic tackling of ecological challenges and for the healing and wellbeing of our peoples and communities.

7. Promote and provide renewable energy in a democratized manner.

8. Recognize our right to water, treat it as a public good, halt and reverse its privatization.

9. Recognize the rights of Mother Earth and codify Ecocide as a crime akin to genocide, war crimes and other unusual crimes.

10. Ensure that all Africans enjoy the right of living in a safe and satisfactory environment suitable for their progress as enshrined in the African Charter on Peoples and Human Rights.  

Welcome words by Nnimmo Bassey at Health of Mother Earth Foundation’s 10th Anniversary Conference with the theme ‘Advancing Environmental Justice in Africa’ held on 19 June 2023 at Abuja, Nigeria. 

Choked by Convenience

Convenience and Greed

The two thieves between whom

We are nailed. 

Shall we forgive them

Seeing they know exactly what they are doing?

Held high as cheap

Hoisted aloft as efficient

We got enarmoured

Denuded

Spat upon

Slapped

Our dignity dragged in oceans of crude

Our pride roasted on the fiery furnaces of oily companies 

Convenience and Greed

The two thieves between whom

We are sacrificed.

We drown in mountains of plastic

As plastics swallow the world

Whales, crocs, hippos, and the tiny ones

Cattle, sheep, rabbits, goats, antelopes, and hapless kids

Feast on the sheets of their last suppers 

And lie prostrate fed on fatal plastic lies 

Postmortems denied 

Funerals delayed 

Hired mourners weeping tearless howls 

Convenience and Greed 

The two thieves between whom

We are trapped. 

But here lies the deaf generation

Wedded to the catwalks of lies

Who denied the shouts from Mother Earth 

Addicted to efficient destruction

Bedeviled by ease

Addicted to speed

A world on a mad dash to the tipping point

Roaring temperatures

Ragging floods

Maddening droughts

Desertified deserted lands

Oceanified polluted swamps

Convenience and Greed 

The two thieves between whom

We refuse to be wrapped. 

Eyes open, arms linked

We build the barricades

We hurl flaming passions

Together we refuse

Recycled jokes.

Together we demand

A sharp kick on plastic guts

A moment for erasing greed

A time to embrace the inconvenient

And save the children of Mother Earth

(Read at School of Ecology on Climate Change: Arts, Culture and Wellness

World Environment Day 2023). Illustration by Mike Asukwo

Decolonizing Our Energy Future

This reflection is coming at a critical moment with climate change alarm bells are ringing loudly and clearly. According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), global near-surface temperature rise may between 2023 and 2027 exceed the threshold of 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Although they say that this rise would be temporary, it is also agreed that there is no certainty over whether this scenario is true.

The point is that although 1.5C is given as the best-case scenario in the Paris Agreement, catastrophic impacts of extreme climate events are already being experienced with temperature rise below that threshold. Droughts, water stress, coastal erosion, desertification, and related conflicts are well documented. We have seen such events in Nigeria and in Africa generally. Floods have led to the deaths of thousands of Africans in recent years, and the intensity of cyclones has been on a high trajectory, especially on the southeastern seaboard of Africa. Higher rainfall and floods have been predicted for Nigeria in 2023.  

The climate alarm bells may be sounding what has already been the experience of those least responsible for climate change. The point must also be made that Africa suffers about 50% higher temperature increases than most other regions worldwide.

What have all these got to do with the shift from corruption to sustainability and the critical need to energise Nigeria’s future? Many things. The concept of sustainability itself has been corrupted and is limping on two legs when it should stand on at least three. The traditional three legs of sustainability are social well-being, economic growth, and environmental care. Without a doubt, in practice, economic growth trumps environmental care and social well-being. The focus of governments on economic growth has blindsided the fact that development, and social well-being, cannot be attained without ecological care. Lineal economic growth and sustainability are contradictory on a finite planet.

With massive revenue from crude oil and gas, Nigeria has allowed decades of ecocide on her environment and permitted operators in the sector to ride roughshod over the social and even cultural wellbeing of communities unfortunate to have these resources in their territories. The Niger Delta, comprised of wetlands, swamps and forests, is crisscrossed by 21,000 km of oil pipelines and has 5000 oil wells.  The extreme degradation that has rendered this region one of the top ten most polluted places on earth has been attested to by UNEP’s assessment of the Ogoni Environment and recently by the reportof the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission aptly titled “An Environmental Genocide: Counting the Human and Environmental Cost of Oil in Bayelsa, Nigeria.”

Besides the word ecocide and what the Bayelsa Commission has termed genocide, the other word to describe the situation in the oil fields is corruption. 

According to the 2014 OECD Foreign Bribery Report, one in five cases of transnational bribery occurs in the extractives sector. Research confirms Studies a correlation between corruption and increased carbon emissions particularly as this had been a key for extending the life of carbon-intensive industries, through corporate capture, alternative truths and sometimes outright deception.

It is estimated that Nigeria has suffered a financial loss of more than 11 trillion Naira from corruption in the electricity sector from 1999 and this May rise to over 20 trillion Naira by 2027.

Nigeria’s Energy Future

It is not easy to figure out what government policy would be and how it will shape Nigeria’s energy future, seeing that the nation is in a critical moment of political transition. The electioneering campaigns should have presented robust ideas on energy or about the environment. The town hall on environmental issues, hosted by a coalition of CSOs, including HOMEF, was unfortunately shunned by the front-running political candidates. From public statements, the parties are all enamoured with rent-seeking from the murky oil and gas sector. However, we suppose that the incoming government will implement the Nigeria Energy Transition Plan and other policy templates, such as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) from the outgoing government. In that case we can surmise that there will be a need for intensified campaigns at both practical and pedagogical levels. The alternative will be to allow a reign of muddling through half-hearted policy formulations.

Among other things, Nigeria’s NDCs pledge to end gas flaring by 2030 and to reduce fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas by 60% by 2031. To put this in perspective, The NDC indicates that fugitive emissions represent 36% of energy sector GHG emissions, accounting for 60% of the country’s total GHG emissions.  This means a 60% reduction would represent about 13% of total GHG emissions for Nigeria. The International Renewables Energy Agency (IRENA) states that Nigeria can produce 60% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2050. The report projects that 47% could be reached by 2030 and 57% by 2040. These projections may appear less than plausible for a fossil fuels dependent country with scant investment in renewable energy.

As for the Energy Transition Plan, the aim is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, with key focus areas being power, cooking, oil and gas, transport, and energy. The plan discusses replacing fossil fuel-powered electricity and deploying decentralised renewable energy to achieve universal electrification goals by 2030. The same plan interestingly states that “there will be an initial ramp-up of gas generation before 2030.” It also mentions the “deployment of centralised RE-solar PV and corresponding storage with Hydrogen starting from 2040.”

There are concerns about Nigeria’s energy future due to embedded contradictions, and lack of political and economic clarity hinged on a complex of factors, including ongoing divestments by international oil companies, the marriage to fossil gas and the proposal to deploy centralised solar power and production/storage of hydrogen. Despite the enormous amount of oil and gas extracted in Nigeria, the nation suffers perennial power outages, boasting of poor social infrastructure and massive poverty levels.

With an energy future hooked to fossil gas and centralised renewable infrastructure from 2040, Nigeria seems unable to escape the trap of rent-seeking from fossil fuels.  It will step into rent-seeking from solar power by producing “Green Hydrogen” for export. Thus, energy will likely be available for export, but unavailable for use at home.

To avoid this bleak prognosis, the incoming government, and others after it, must take decisive steps to invest in research, production, and socially moderated distribution of renewable energy to meet the national and regional needs.  Regular corruption risk mapping will help the process of grasping how corrupt practices operate in the sector. These are important because the extraction of minerals for renewable energy equipment can easily replicate the dastard realities associated with fossil energy resources.

The temptation to get trapped as the perpetual storehouse for colonial exports of oil, gas or Hydrogen must be halted. 

For Justice and Dignity

We have just had elections in Nigeria and by 29th May 2023 new persons will step into the saddle of political leadership. Considering the nature of our political system where the major parties are indistinguishable in terms of programmes and organizing ideas, it is a major duty for citizens to make clear demands on the system and to ensure that leaders are held to account based on their promises, declarations, and the constitution.

The Niger Delta Alternatives Convergence (NDAC) as a forum for the fusion of voices on the multi-layered socio-ecological crisis confronting the region provides a platform for the promotion of actions to address the problems. It is our hope that this convergence will not be a hand wringing exercise garnished with a long list of regrets. This must be an agenda setting convergence, and that agenda must include both what we expect of our political leaders and what we must do as citizens on the back of whose votes they have ridden into power.

Socio-ecological issues hardly take the forefront in political discussions in Nigeria. We had to push this with a different kind of presidential Town Hall we co-hosted on the 7th of February 2023 at the University of Abuja. Four presidential candidates participated and brought discussions about the environment to the spotlight highlighting why our environment must no longer being brushed aside in policy circles in Nigeria and Africa.

The challenges of the Niger Delta are well known and have been catalogued in the Willink Commission Report of 1958 and the activities of various agencies set by government with some exhibiting a poor focus on solving those problems but gaining a dubious reputation of being cesspits of corruption. Such agencies include the Niger Delta Development Board (1960), the Oil Minerals Areas Producing Development Commission (1992), Niger Delta Development Commission (2000) and the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs (2008).

The key outcome of NDAC 2022 was the Niger Delta Manifesto for Socio-Ecological Justice. The manifesto outlined eight (8) key demands that remain germane as the outgoing governments did not appear to hear the call of the peoples of the region. The Manifesto will again be examined at this convergence as a reminder, and to both reinforce and convey our core demands.

These core demands include the following:

  1. An immediate comprehensive audit of the entire region Niger Delta covering health, livelihoods, social and economic impacts of crude oil and gas extraction.
  2. Remediation and restoration impacted territories and reparations for the damage suffered.
  3. Drawing up a clear policy framework for divestment of international oil companies from the oil fields and communities they have exploited for more than six decades.
  4. Comprehensively address the issues related to artisanal refining of crude oil, stop all forms of oil theft, and hold accomplices to account.
  5. Legislators to ensure the review of the Petroleum Industry Act, to eliminate the criminalisation of communities and removing vestiges of colonial authorities given to oil companies to determine who the host communities are and to rig the arrangement for developmental supports of the communities. The earmarking of 30 per cent of profit of the NNPC for exploration of oil in so-called frontier fields should be deleted from the Act and a definite deadline to end routine gas flaring should be set.
  6. Immediate review of the NDDC Act and the release of the forensic audit ordered by the outgoing government. The administration of the 13 percent derivation fund should also be designed to be transparent, inclusive, and fair to impacted communities.
  7. Urgent responses to climate change impacts including by setting up mechanisms for emergency response to floods, shoreline protection, restoration of mangrove forests, halting of deforestation and proper urban and rural planning.
  8. Adequate protection of our coastal communities and continental shelf for the security of maritime transportation as well as fishing activities by our peoples. 

Other items that must be on the top burners of incoming governments include a comprehensive energy transition plan that ensures popular ownership and control of such clean energy systems. 

Politicians should have zero tolerance for uncompleted and abandoned projects. The drive to embark on so-called legacy projects must be halted. The region will remain a basket case if new players in governments refuse to complete projects commenced by their predecessors and instead chase after projects that may not address the critical socio-ecological and economic needs of our peoples.  Completion of projects started by previous administrations should be a cardinal principle.

Finally, permit me to recommend that the Nigerian government should take steps to recognize ecocide as a crime and ensure the prosecution of offenders going forward. Ecocide in simple terms is the destruction of one’s home, the Earth. Any person or entity engaged in activities that lead to large scale and long terms or irreversible destruction of our home, the Earth, should be held to account as an incentive for others to be of good environmental behaviour.

We must regain our dignity as a people. We must rebuild our devastated region. We can do it. And the time to do this is now.

COP27, the Loss and the Damage at Injury Time

The recently concluded 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, went in the way of rituals and did not rise beyond the low bars set by previous editions. Well, maybe it rose above the bar in one aspect which could be considered, more or less, the brightest glimmer of hope, appearing in the extended time of the conference. For those who were keeping vigil on the deliberations, it was a roller coaster session. Hope glimmered when many nations unexpectedly rose to say that fossil fuels, all of them, should be phased out, not just the phasing down of unabated coal as was cockily suggested at Glasgow. Recall that Glasgow only talked of phasing down (not phasing out) of unabated coal (not all coal). Observers gasped and yelped as some nations notorious for blocking any attempt to name fossil fuels as the driver of global heating in the official negotiations shifted positions. However, the flickering candle was snuffed and smashed at the final plenary. So it came to pass, that a handful of nations, including Saudi Arabia and China, threatened to scuttle the entire COP if fossil fuels were called out and their obituary announced. 

Why is the COP playing the ostrich and burying its head in the sand by being unwilling to accept that fossil fuels are literally burning the planet and that the real climate action is to phase out the polluters? How come everyone knows that up to 89 percent of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere emerged from the burning of fossil fuels but the COP choses to ignore this truth? How come even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) which is the COP’s thinking hat says that fossil fuels must be addressed, yet the COP plays deaf? The simple answer is that the swarm of over 600 fossil fuel lobbyists   at the COP, with some on official national delegations, simply would not allow reason to triumph over profit. And, as expected, African nations asserted their right to use fossil fuels as the means towards developing their nations even if the dangerously polluting pathways that the industrialised nations used brought the world to where we are now. That argument sounds more like the swan song of a fossil fuel industry desperate to keep itself on life support. And, of course, there is no shared understanding of what the development the African leaders speak of looks like.

Some of us expect leaders in the Global South to demand the payment of the climate debt and a stoppage of accumulating further debt by halting dependence on fossil fuels. The jinx and allure of the fossil age must be broken. It is time to quit denial and accept that fossil fuels must be fossilized. African nations are right to be concerned by poor levels of energy penetration on the continent. However, it is essential to point out that this cannot be solved by allowing fossil fuel corporations to get away with murder, ecocide, and human rights abuses just so that you have fossil fuels to export. Do the leaders not realise that 89 percent of fossil fuels infrastructure in Africa serve export purposes and that Africa’s extractive sector employs less that 1 percent of Africa’s workforce? Moreover, only 5percent of the investment in the sector is done in Africa. Testimonies from oilfield or minefield communities are tales of woes, pains, poverty, and death. With the scramble for new fossil fuels development on the coastline of the continent and virtually all the deltas the continent is the last ditch stand by the fossil fuels speculators and companies. 

Assault on the Deltas

The deltas under assault in Africa include the Zambezi Delta in Sofala and Zambézia Provinces of Mozambique; the notoriously ruined Niger Delta in Nigeria; Okavango Delta in Namibia/Botswana and the 

Saloum Delta in Sénégal. Add to that the lakes and rivers in the Albertine Rift Valley and the Virunga Park and the continent and the world are set to lose major biodiversity hotspots, protected areas and UNESCO world heritage sites.

The resistance by communities, fishers and knowledge holders in South Africa and elsewhere clearly show that the industry is unwanted by the people and that their persistence is nothing but a waging of war against the people and planet. We should add, too, that militarization, violence, and conflicts are the templates on which the industry constructs its ever-rising inordinate profits.

Considering the above, it should be clear that fossil fuel extraction in Africa has little to do with employment, energy supply or boosting local economies. It is all about meeting the appetite for inordinate profits and of fossil fuels addicts. It is time to rethink the hard-headed marriage with the polluters.

A Harsh Reality

Just before COP27, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued an Emissions Gap report that aggregated the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that countries have made under the Paris Agreement and concluded that the puny pledges would do nothing to ward off impending catastrophic global heating. In fact, the report highlighted that the world should prepare for a temperature rise as high as 2.8 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by the close of this century. The report emphasised that the window to avert climate catastrophe was rapidly closing and that the world needs urgent transformation and deep actions to cut emissions by at least 45 percent by 2030.

The first jolt of COP27 was the release of a concept note on carbon removal activities under the Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement. That document defined carbon removals thus: Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) refers to anthropogenic activities that remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and ensure its long-term storage in terrestrial, geological, or ocean reservoirs, or in long-lasting products. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) can be part of CDR methods if the CO2 has been captured from the atmosphere, either indirectly in the form of biomass or directly from ambient air, and stored over the long term in geological reservoirs or long-lasting products. 

Two things among others in the concept note raised concern. First, the reference to storage in ocean reservoirs. While it is not clear what these reservoirs would be, it signals a huge threat to ocean ecosystems. This was roundly denounced by groups such as the FishNet Alliance because using the ocean as carbon reservoirs or for any other geoengineering experimentation could sound the death knell for their livelihoods, cultures and spirituality. The notion of long-term storage suggests that there will be a terminal point or a time when the storage would cease to work. That means that the proponents of such measures are laying a load of trouble on future generations. Secondly, carbon capture and utilisation and indeed the entire paragraph reads like something lifted from the playbook of the fossil fuels industry. Before geoengineering entered the climate debate, oil companies had been capturing carbon and reinjecting into wells to push out more crude oil for burning and releasing of yet more carbon. If this specious definition is accepted, fossil fuel companies would be earning credits for committing more climate crimes by pumping more and more carbon into the atmosphere. It would again illustrate the hypocrisy of the carbon trading non-solutions and the net zero propositions, keep dirty fuels in business and allow the planet to hurtle to cataclysmic climate impacts.

For many nations and the fossil fuels lobby COP27 was a huge carbon trade fair. However, for civil society groups, indigenous groups, youths, women, and people of faith, it was a great space for interactions, networking, learning and actions. Real and actionable climate solutions were offered while the negotiators were largely busy wordsmithing and birthing non-solutions. 

Lost and Damaged

The shining light of COP27 was the decision to have Loss and Damage. The Parties decided “to establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, in responding to loss and damage, including with a focus on addressing loss and damage by providing and assisting in mobilizing new and additional resources, and that these new arrangements complement and include sources, funds, processes and initiatives under and outside the Convention and the Paris Agreement.” The COP came to this decision after acknowledging “the urgent and immediate need for new, additional, predictable and adequate financial resources to assist developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in responding to economic and non-economic loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events, especially in the context of ongoing and ex post (including rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction) action.”

Having Loss and Damage is indeed historic. However, the nitty gritty of the mechanisms to bring it to life is yet to be negotiated. Already there are signals that the USA and some others do not see the decision to have Loss and Damage as having anything to do with reparations or liability. What this portends is that unless those who have already been damaged by global warming speak up and insist that the unfolding crisis has both historical and systemic roots, this may be another tiresome ritual of quirky charity. Another bone that will have to be picked, will be how this relates to the already existing Green Climate Fund and how rich nations who have not met pledges made since COP15 will cross the hurdle to Loss and Damage. This may well be the pivotal time to go beyond celebrating the possibility of payments for loss and damage and demand the payment of a Climate Debt accumulated over centuries of exploitation, despoliation, imperial and colonial plunder. Loss and Damage cannot be charity.

An African COP?

Some had called COP27 the Africa COP but that was mere wishful thinking. Although the COP was held in Africa it did nothing to assure that temperature increases will not burn or cook the continent. Except for the acceptance of Loss and Damage there is no hope that more financial flows will come to the region. With our leaders insisting on digging up more fossil fuels, the hope of rescuing our environment continues to dim. The answer to the question as to what was gained at Sharm El Sheikh is thus blowing in the wind.

Seeing the Red Sea

Sharm El Sheikh is quite a peculiar place. While some could not gain accreditation to attend the COP, the hospitality businesses in the city squeezed all the profits they could from those who could. The people were generally friendly, and the taxi drivers were routinely kind enough to put out their ubiquitous cigarettes as a mark of courtesy.  A ride on the Red Sea in a glass bottomed boats was a delight as one could see the state of the coral reefs in the area. Those who found time to visit Mount Sinai came back with tales of getting to the location of the Burning Bush that radically altered the trajectory of the life of Moses in the Bible. For this writer, the highlight of the two weeks in the Sinai Peninsular city were three guys. The first was the guy who took care of my hotel room and was lavish in the display of his artistic creativity. One day he used the towels in the room to create a heart and decorated it with bougainvillea flowers. On another day he used an assortment of items to create a baboon and hung it over the head of the bed. Swans were routine designs. The one that was an overkill was when he used my pyjamas, sandals, hat and pillows to create a full-bodied human form on the bed. It was not a good omen as it spoke to me of a dead or damaged COP. I was happy it was the day to leave and head home!

The other guys who made the stay exciting worked in a panoramic restaurant. They were jolly good fellows who offered excellent service and would get you to enjoy the delicacies they offered until your wallet wept for mercy. Medhat was one of the guys and was popularly known as Mike Tyson, because people said they had a resemblance. The other guy was Rabea, a very engaging guy who paid close attention to what you needed. And they often tried to make us dance, but the music in my head was a sombre climate negotiations elegy. Next time perhaps.