Category: Corporate Capture

Yasunize and Ogonize the World

On this Earth Day, we call on all people, all movements, and all communities of conscience to rise up and reclaim power from the toxic and exploitative grip of extractive forces that continue to assault peoples, communities and our Mother Earth. We stand with peoples and communities who are resisting the violent operations of a global economic system that exploits, pollutes, and dispossesses without care or limit. 

As we mark this year’s Earth Day, we must not forget that while corporations celebrate with green logos and hollow pledges, millions of communities are living the realities of poisoned air, dead rivers, stolen lands and a stolen future. Our communities are bleeding. And while the machinery of capitalism and warped geopolitics try to make us believe we are powerless, we know better. Our people are not defeated. We are rising. 

For too long, transnational corporations have treated our lands as sacrificial zones, our waters as waste bins, and our lives as collateral damage. But Earth Day is not theirs to co-opt. It belongs to the people. And today, we reaffirm that the theme Our Power, Our Planet is a call for resistance as a duty, and as the path to justice. We are children of the Earth. We are neither disposable nor discounted.

The crisis we face is not just an environmental crisis. It is a crisis of power. Capitalism, especially in its neoliberal, expansionist form,has long waged war on the planet. Wars over oil, food, forests, water, and rare earth minerals are frontlines of a global assault on our Mother Earth. These are not isolated events; they are the inevitable outcomes of a system built on the notion of endless growth, domination, and extraction. The cost is incalculable: ecological destruction, climate chaos, mass displacement, food insecurity, and cultural annihilation. The victims of this global assault are overwhelmingly the poor, the Indigenous, and local communities. On this Earth Day, we stand in fierce solidarity with all peoples resisting the corporate plunder of nature, from the Amazon to the Congo Basin, from Standing Rock in North America to the Niger Delta and Okavango Delta.

Our work has always centred on grassroots power. We work with communities to monitor pollution, defend their territories, and demand environmental justice. We promote food sovereignty through agroecology and seed autonomy. We push back against GMOs and the biotech takeover of our food systems. Through our School of Ecology and Sustain-Ability Academy, we cultivate radical political education and ecological consciousness. We reject the capitalist myth that the Earth exists to be exploited or to be recklessly transformed. We reject the lie that development must mean destruction. 

We insist on Eti-Uwem, on Ubuntu — highlighting our interdependencies and interconnectedness. Thus, we reject the notion that a small elite can poison the planet while the rest of us pick up the pieces. We call for a decolonisation of nature and a restoration of balance, rooted in solidarity, equity, and justice. We join cross-border campaigns for climate justice. We organise against land grabs and water theft. We build autonomous local alternatives, from community energy systems to collective food production. We defend the commons, challenge patriarchy, oppose militarism, and reject the imperialist logic that turns nature into a battlefield.

To mark this Earth Day, our vision is clear – a cooperative, decentralized society powered by community-controlled renewable energy. An economy where land, water, and seeds belong to the people, not to profit-hungry corporations. A politics where those most impacted by environmental destruction lead the way in healing and restoration. We are calling for the closure of expansionist projects like the EACOP pipeline in East Africa and the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline in West Africa. 

We demand the halting of efforts to divest by polluting oil companies that masquerade as agents of development while destroying ecosystems and communities. We demand that they bear full responsibility for close to seven decades of atrocious pollution on the Niger Delta as well as payments for remediation, clean up, restoration and reparations for decades of plunder. Our Power, Our Planet calls for a total transition from fossil fuels, rejection of false solutions including carbon markets, geoengineering, corporate “net zero” lies and stand for real climate. The transition away from fossil fuels and dirty energy isn’t simply an environmental imperative, it is a moral obligation that we owe the future generations and it is one that must be undertaken without delay. We make this moral demand on an increasingly shameless immoral world. 

We lean on heroic, even difficult, struggles of communities and territories who have insisted on keeping fossil fuels in the ground. We salute the courage of Ogoni people who halted crude oil extraction in their territory in 1993 and remain resolute on this reality to date. The Ogoni struggle has been an inspiration to communities across the world that real

Real power is Peoples’ Power. Today we call on all to stand with the Ogoni people, to Ogonize and reject any attempt to reopen the oil wells of Ogoniland.

We equally applaud the people of Ecuador, especially the indigenous communities in Yasuni ITT in the Amazonia who struggled against the extraction of crude oil in their territory. They kept at it for over a decade and a national referendum was held on the matter in August 2023. At that historic referendum, 59% of the citizens of the country voted to keep almost 1 billion barrels of crude oil underground in the Yasuni National Park. They inspire the rest of the world to Yasunize their territories. On this Earth Dat we call on all peoples to rise and Ogonize and Yasunize our world.

While some wish to make Earth Day a festival of greenwashing, others are using the day to mock the drive for climate justice. But we will not allow it. Both groups will fail. This day belongs to those who fight. Our struggle is not only against polluters and profiteers, it is for Mother Earth, for justice, and for the future.

The Future is in our Roots 

Environment is the tangible and intangible surroundings and the complex ecosystem that humans share with all beings, human and non-human, living and non-living. It is both visible and invisible. This includes the land, water, and the air, and all that live in them. It includes everything that aids our wellbeing and that includes our culture, spirituality and identity. Our environment is the source of our knowledge and wisdom. It gives us the strategic keys with which we navigate through life and beyond.

When one part of an ecosystem is destroyed, it impacts or destroys all the other parts. This means, nothing exists in isolation of everything else. Thus, the web of life is the interrelationships that hold everything together – something we often do not think about. As bacteria work in the soil, worms aerate the soils, insects eat the worms, trees grow in soils, birds perch on or live in trees. So, when trees die, and insects and bacteria aid their decay. And the decayed trees fertilize the soil and the cycle continues.

For instance, it is known that more than half of all living things on earth live in the soil and when soils are damaged, the impacts extend to the food web, food production, landscape stability and climate change due to altered carbon sequestration qualities. 

Many of our communities operated solidarity economies. Everyone’s welfare was largely ensured, and the basic rule was that everyone was basically his brother’s or sister’s keeper. Exploitation of labour was rare, as communal efforts were drawn on in farming seasons as well as when homes were being constructed. 

Moreover, farmers engaged in seed development and sharing. There were no patents on seeds and other varieties. If profit was not the driving force in social relations, over exploitation and accompanying pollutions were rarities. We see ourselves as integral parts of Nature rather than as some super being that has Nature prostrate at our feet. Anthropomorphic conception of nature centres actions and considerations on perceived human needs and this has raised many blind spots and birthed exploitative relationships with the land, water, air and the beings we share the planet with.

Other factors that helped healthy living were humility and compassion. Humility opens our eyes to see, that we are not alone on earth and show our dependence through that we are interdependent in a web that cannot be broken. Similarly, Compassion helps us care about the wellbeing of our neighbour by seeing them as our relatives. These values encourage healthy deference to Nature and mandate the roles of stewardship and trusteeship that we must play. 

The very first commandment given to man at creation according to the Bible was:

The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. Genesis 2:15 (NLT). This injunction forbids destructive relations within the webs of life. 

The complex web of life

Environmental protection?

Formal environmental protection laws can be said to have been codified in Nigeria in 1992. The Koko toxic waste dumping in 1988 led to the establishment of Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) by Decree 58 same year and later amended by Decree 59 in 1992.

It must be said, however, that environmental protection or defense has always been an intrinsic part of our culture and tradition. Notably, Conservation was carried out through taboos in the form of social controls about what was acceptable.  and what must not be done. In the same way, Sacred sites were also locations of conservation and species protection. And Our people also use festivals to regulate or mark when certain activities can be carried out. So, Fishing festivals help to prevent fishing and hunting at certain seasons, thus allowing the fish or animals to reproduce and mature before they are caught or harvested. 

Simultaneously, Certain species were taken as totems in particular communities and such species became entwined with the communities and were members of the communities. Generally, there were strict protection and usage of the gifts of nature and of lands, forests and water bodies including streams, creeks, rivers, swamps. 

Wisdom of the Beings

Wisdom in other than humans can be seen in several phenomena. For our conversation, we will reference migrations of beings as signifying wisdom that should humble humans and demand a duty of care towards these webs of life.

First let us consider the monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies migrate from Northern America to California or Mexico during winter. Although the butterflies migrate back at the year it is their great-great-grandchildren that make that return journey, not the same butterflies that Chad made on the earlier trip. They can fly over distance of 3000 miles and end up in the exact areas they usually stay in. How do these tiny beings carry out such precise expeditions? Compare them to humans who need a compass or a google map to navigate their way to the next neighbourhood.

And how about the turtles that have specific spots in Lagos for laying eggs. These turtles lay eggs at Elegushi beach, Lagos and can rightly call that area their home. Species found here include endangered turtles’ species, such as the Leatherback Sea Turtle, the Green Sea Turtle and the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. They come to lay their eggs between October and April yearly. Upon hatching the youngsters would leave and return after four years to lay eggs. The conditions that made Elegushi a desired destination have changed in recent years. Land use and seafront changes have made the area inhospitable. The coconut trees that provided shade are largely gone, and plastic wastes pose peculiar risks. Besides these, persons hunting for sea meat are on the prowl.

Colonial Environmentalism and the Breaking of the webs of life

When the web of life is broken the act overlooks justice considerations and takes down both resilience and dignity. One of the big forces disrupting the webs of life has been colonialism. Colonialism often entails the invasion, annexation of territories and outright stealing of land and resources. Our notion of land is complex because it is more than territory. Land is our history, our culture and that which connects us with our ancestors, our spirituality and our stories. Colonialism is not a mere historical phenomenon, but one that is ongoing in a diversity of modes.

Secondly, the notion that pollution is permissible up to certain “carrying capacity,” or threshold, of soils, rivers, the air and the earth has been very harmful. Although such ideas have been projected as science and provide platforms to certain forms of environmentalism, we believe that they are patently wrong, ignore the right to a safe environment and are intrinsically colonial. The notion of the threshold of pollution has benefitted polluters and exploiters as it offers them the license to pollute.

We all hear about standards measured by levels of contamination and pollution. When it is said that the ground water at Ogale, Ogoni, has benzene, a known carcinogen, 900 times above the World Health Organization’s standard, it simply means that the WHO permits certain amounts of the carcinogen in potable water. The same with the amount of carbon in the atmosphere which is measured by parts per million. This led to the computation of carbon budget that informs that the planet can tolerate up to 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere and that beyond that concentration we risk catastrophic climate change. Following standards of permissible pollution of this sort scientists have produced charts that show where limits have been overshot. Meanwhile entrepreneurs of pollution use the thresholds to promote ideas such as carbon offsets and carbon trading. 

What is less considered is the fact that extractivism and accompanying pollution have harmed our soils, swamps, water bodies and the air, generally disrupted the webs of life, displaced, impoverished and killed peoples. In computing pollution thresholds, humans care very little about the heavy impacts on the webs of life because the measure of permissible or assimilative pollution is considered regarding humans and no other than humans.

The promise that pollution can be eliminated through recycling, just like carbon trading, numbs society into thinking that an equilibrium is being maintained in the use of natural resources whereas they lock the world on an imbalanced pathway of multiple overshoots. 

The idea of circular economy falls in this same pathway when it comes to overproduction for consumption. The push for capital as a driver of transformation of nature upends any sense of balance, beats consumption rates and yields waste that ought to erase the profits if producers were responsible for the whole of life cycle of their products. Inbuilt obsolescence as well as the concealment of the costs of waste and pollution are political actions. 

Pollution in the Niger Delta and Nigeria generally has become so pervasive and has trumped containment. It can be said that there is a pollution epidemic. And it must be political for this level of pollution to be tolerated. Setting thresholds before pollution can be said to have occurred is a dangerous concept of accepting contamination by assuming that it is acceptable to be damaged to such levels.

The Future is in our Roots 

Bringing back environmental sanity requires a resurgence of African environmentalism through cultural and political action. This is a subject we will dwell on in a subsequent conversation. The web of life is quite resilient, but persistent degrading actions by certain humans and corporations are testing that resilience to the limits. The School of Ecology aims to waken us to the dangers of further disruption to the webs of life and the need for everyone to be an environmental defender if we must build resilience and ensure socioecological justice.

Guiding thoughts at HOMEF’s School of Ecology on Ecological Justice and Resilience held at Oronto Douglas Hall, HOMEF, Benin City, Nigeria on 24 March 2025

COP29 and Climate Geopolitics

Activists in an action at COP29

As COP29 dragged into overtime the expected climate finance target of at least $1.3 trillions of dollars shrunk to an offer of $250 billion per year from 2035. After much bickering  the rich countries decided to raise its offer from $250 billion to $300 billion.  This does not indicate that there is a consensus about the urgency for developed nations to pay up for squandering the carbon budget and bringing the world to the brink of climate change catastrophe. Additionally, by pushing the date for providing needed funds a decade down the road, it does appear that there is no consideration about what the scale of the climate disasters may be by 2035 and what would be the value of $250 or $300 billion then. Developing, vulnerable and poor nations have rightly insisted that whatever funds are made available must not come as loans or instruments that would increase their already huge debt burdens.

 Another sad fact is that any offer made is basically nothing more than an offer as the pledges are not enforceable by law. In 2009 the pledge was to pay $10bn dollars yearly from 2010 to 2020 and raise that to $100bn from 2020. Those targets never materialized. The polluters never want to accept responsibility for the climate crisis, or to support the poor vulnerable nations financially at scale. The COP is an arena for geopolitical games, with polluters arrogantly making it seem they are doling out charity to climate victims. When negotiators throw out statistics and speak of temperature and finance targets the tendency is for us to forget about climate change affects real people and not mere numbers. Little consideration is given to the victims, and the billions of dollars they are already investing on their own in their desperate struggles to survive the onslaught of floods, droughts and destruction. 

 COP29 ended on a whimper, and as a big disappointment on many fronts. It had opened with a broad acceptance of Article 6.4 thus literally opening the floodgates for carbon markets and other elements of carbon market environmentalism. Rather than cutting emissions at source, nations and carbon speculators had a field day raising the banners of false solutions including those promoting carbon colonialism through carbon trading and geoengineering. Some even projected nuclear and fossil gas as clean energy pathways. 

 Whereas at COP28 there was a decision to transition away from fossil fuels for energy, at this COP that reference is completely off the table except by merely referencing “article 28” of the UAE outcome document. That must have ranked as a huge success for the petrostates and the over 1750 fossil fuels lobbyists at the COP who do not mind burning down the planet if there is a chance of inheriting the ashes. However, there was a strong presence of civil society and indigenous activists calling for a Yasunization of the world. Their cry, Yasunize the World, echoed the decisive vote of Ecuadorians to keep crude oil in the soil at Yasuni ITT oil field.

 The COP, labeled a Climate COP, crawled on divergent tracks towards achieving a level of climate finance with parties marching without moving, regarding levels of climate action ambition. Talks of loss and damage and other instruments of climate finance became largely muted. In their place emerged a contentious concept of New Collective Quantified Goals (NCQG) – a phantom possibly aimed at erasing the justice base of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) by requiring that everyone contributes to the finance pot in the same thought pattern that birthed the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), the hallmark of voluntary emissions reduction according to convenience.

 Perhaps an extension of the NCQG logic made a Nigerian minister to contentiously claim that China and India are not developing countries. This claim aligns with the assertions of some developed nations intent on breaking the solidarity within developing nations and thereby avoiding doing their fair share regarding climate finance and other actions. Truth is that China and India remain squarely within the geopolitical and economic grouping of developing nations because “developing” cannot be a tag reserved for nations in economic stagnation or regression. Now is a critical moment for vulnerable nations and allies to stand together in the determination that justice must remain the bedrock of climate negotiations and action. Historical responsibility must align with commensurate action and everyone should humbly accept this fact because, although huge investments are being made in intergalactic pursuits, we have only one Earth.

 

 

 

Privatized and Sacrificed

The Niger Delta is a privatized zone by the simple reason that the international oil companies have since appropriated it as a wasteland suited only for dumping of toxic wastes, oil spills, gas flares and produced water.  The privatization of the region began in 1956 when the first commercially viable oil well was drilled, and has continued unabated. The privatization has been so obnoxious because since the creeks, streams, rivers and swamps became waste dumps, they have been fit for no other purpose than to serve the private needs of the polluting corporations.

The UNEP report (August 2011) on the assessment of the Ogoni environment and the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission (BSOEC) report (May 2023) attest to the fact that the region has been wholly grabbed.

The total dispossession of our peoples of their environment, disconnection from their roots and despoliation of what is left is worse than slavery and colonialism. Indeed the nearest label that can be placed on the situation may be environmental racism. Colonialism could plunder and mete inhuman treatment to its subjects, but environmental racism normalizes the treatment of both the people and their environment as non-living, subhuman and fit for nothing but to be trashed.

Kwame Nkrumah wrote spoke 0f exploitation without redress in his book titled Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965):

“Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress. In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad. In the colony those who served the ruling imperial power could at least look to its protection against any violent move by their opponents. With neo-colonialism neither is the case.”

This gives an apt explanation of why the Niger Delta has become a sacrificed zone with ostensible acts of defense actually turning to acts of indignities and degradation. It is clear that we cannot escape or reverse the perverse situation unless we reboot our imaginaries, recreate our mindsets and reconnect ourselves to our environmental and sociocultural milieu. We need to rediscover our indigenous sovereignty as the core plank in the struggle for political as well as for socioecological liberation. Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952) touched on this when he declared, “Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

It is hard to find anywhere else in the world that has been so insidiously trampled underfoot than the Niger Delta and other hotspots of mineral extraction in Nigeria and also in Africa generally. In this regard we note that the tin mines of Jos have been sacrificed abandoned. The same can be said of the coal mines of Enugu and other rising zones of plunder ruled by bandits and so-called unknown gunmen. Indeed, neocolonialism would probably not have progressed the way it has without the compromise of our elites in all spheres of human endeavour. These traitors gladly take the place of slave drivers and colonial masters and ensure the privatization of our commons and our commonwealth through devious legislation and through pure elite capture of the socioeconomic systems. 

The BSOEC report titled An Environmental Genocide tells of Bayelsa State as having a per capita hydrocarbon pollution of 1.5 barrels. Pause to think of that. 

Between 2006 and 2020, Bayelsa State had 3,508 oil spill incidents or 25% of all oil spills in the Niger Delta according the data from the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA). It suffers an average of 234 oil spills per year. Figures from NOSDRA are notoriously unreliable as it under reports even in comparison to reports from NNPC. 

One bizarre example of a sacrificed zone is the Awoye community of Ondo State which has Ororo 1 well at Oil Mining Lease (OML) 95 in its immediate offshore. That oil well blew up in a fiery inferno in May 2020 and has been burning and spilling till date. In other words, Ororo 1 oil well has been burning and spilling crude oil for 4 years non-stop with nothing being done to halt the crime. The ongoing sacrifice has impoverished the people in the coastal communities by decimating their livelihoods — farming and fishing. 

Zones of sacrifice are dotted all over our continent with all having roots in extractivism incubated by colonialism. Here we can mention the gold mines of Ghana and South Africa; the diamond, cobalt and lithium mines of Democratic Republic of Congo; the diamond mines of Liberia and Sierra Leone; the oil fields of the Albertine Graben in Uganda,  Okavango basin  in Namibia and Botswana, the Saloum Delta of Senegal, the Sudd in South Sudan; the coal mines of South Africa; the gas fields of Cabo Delgado in Mozambique; the phosphate fields of Togo and Western Sahara, to mention a few. 

When our territories are sacrificed, it is not just that our land is debased, we are the ones being sacrificed. This becomes clearer to us when we realize that, for a fact, rather than being owners of the land we are actually the land. To liberate ourselves from this exploitative cul de sac, we must know that environmental action is an investment, not a cost. Every action we take today towards ending the sacrifice of our territories is an investment towards reinventing an environment that does not eat us up.


Welcome Words by Nnimmo Bassey at School of Ecology on Recovering Oil Sacrifice Zones  by HOMEF @ Niger Delta University, Amasoma, Bayelsa State, Nigeria, on 2nd  August 2024

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.