Category: Development alternatives

Ogonize and Yasunize!

(A raging Battle of Words)

We have always been concerned about words. Words are powerful. They help us communicate events that unfold around us. They are building blocks for action. They aid mobilisation. They can be tools for organizing, control, or even of colonization and exploitation. Negotiations at local, national and global levels often enter quagmires due to disputes over words and their meanings. A word can have multiple meanings and with a little inflection a benign word can turn into an insult and ignite a wildfire.

Global actions can be forever delayed due to manipulation of perceptions that make emergencies appear to be less so. An example is the framing of the climate crisis as global warming. If the crisis had been labelled global heating or climate chaos, it would probably have garnered serious attention. Warming can be a nice thing because most people love keeping warm.

For years, climate campaigners have demanded a fossil fuels phase out. Rather than do that, COP26 came up with the idea of a phase down of unabated coal power and phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, not phasing out of fossil fuels. A phase down should have pulled someone’s face down in shame. After kicking and screaming, COP28 in the United Arab Emirates ended up with an agreement to move away from fossil fuels in energy systems with the objective of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. This was the agreement that the UNFCCC characterised as a pointer to the “Beginning of the End” of the Fossil Fuel Era.

With that sort of wordsmithing negotiators and some campaigners came off celebrating that the word ‘fossil’ was mentioned, not caring whether it would be phased down or phase out. To avoid dumping coal, we were told we can have clean coal. Cutting carbon emission at source was suddenly considered an uneconomic way of thinking and the preferred path became carbon offsetting. So, polluters are permitted to carry on polluting provided they can show that an equivalent of their emissions is compensated for by those who pollute less or by mechanisms that can capture or bury such pollutions. Another sleight of hand was played by pushing a concept of net zero down gullible throats even though everyone knows that net zero is not zero.

At another level we have seen how colours have been used to lull the world to sleep while escalating the exploitation and marketisation of Nature. The green economy was quickly followed by the blue economy. There are blue, green, grey, turquoise, and other colours of hydrogen. All these are plied to show that a choice of colour can clear your conscience and allow a particular action to be acceptable or to attain certain degrees of acceptability.

It was in recognition of the potency of words that Oil Companies turned to calling themselves Energy Companies. If oil tends to soil anyone’s hand, certainly what energy does is to strengthen you. So, Energy Corporations swagger into the communities and continue their polluting activities with reckless abandon.

Polluters have not only adopted colours and words to hide their crimes, sometimes they simply subvert the meaning of words that previously provided moorings for a drifting world. A key word in this bracket is sustainability. Truth be told, the meaning of the word is now thrown into the air. The United Nations Brundtland Commission in 1987 defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” That original definition ought to stick to our memories and keep us on guard so that subverted definitions do not become acceptable and thus aid dysfunctions to become normalized. An example is when an oil company issues an annual “sustainability report” while mindlessly engaging in persistent ecological destruction or ecocide. This led Health of Mother Earth Foundation to adopt a hyphenated Sustain-Ability so that we emphasise that anything that does not sustain the ability cannot be termed sustainability. Another hyphenated word is re-source which eliminates the consideration of the gifts of nature as mere commodities but require that we recognize the sources, return to the sources and see them as what they are both tangibly or otherwise.

How about when a military establishment announces that they would carry out an environment-friendly warfare?

The climate arena births many words, besides the ones already mentioned, that we must be wary of. Such words include decarbonisation as a process of moving in a low carbon economy. The wedlock to carbon is so strongly welded by capital that there appears to be no life beyond carbon. This is why the possibility of defossilization appears anathema to carbon moguls.

Most people agree that an energy transition is vitally essential if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. That transition basically refers to a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. There is however plenty of acrobatics over what constitutes green or renewable energy resources. There are pundits who argue that nuclear power is renewable, ignoring its hazardous life cycle — from cradle to its dubious grave. Someone may even argue that hydroelectric energy, hydrogen, nuclear or thermonuclear energy are clean energy modes.

The necessity of a shift from dirty to renewable energy has triggered a rush for the minerals required for the process. The extractivist mindset that drives capitalism, and violence threw up a powerful word to numb the sensibilities and permit destructive mining of the minerals. That word is “critical”. The key resources needed for renewable energy components are thus termed critical minerals. The connotation is that if you stop or slow down the extraction of these minerals you can be accused of being against the transition to renewable energy. This subtle label permits violence, displacement and environmental genocide in many nations and territories, but especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nothing is clean or “renewable” if it reproduces patterns of territorial exploitation and degradation epitomized by fossil fuels extraction.

The power in the use of words and the subversive twist of meanings requires epistemic challenges, including the creation of new words and phrases. New words are birthed so regularly that older people sometimes have difficulties understanding the language of youths. In Nigeria words creep into common vocabulary through music, movies and street yarns. Such new words include japa and kpai. To japa means to emigrate out of one’s country, while kpai means to die, and to kpai something means to kill that thing.

The call for epistemic reclamation of the true meaning of certain words is an anti-colonial enterprise. We also see this in the concept of thingification as espoused by Aimé Césaire in his  “Discourse on Colonialism,” where he characterized thingification as a situation where a colonized subject is reduced to a thing, objectified along with the land and resources, and used as a commodity. Our reading here is that we can forfeit our very being when words are used to invisibilize us or our territories.

In our struggle to have community-centered just energy transition we believe that the primary focus must be to keep fossils in the ground. To do this requires bold actions and a robust challenge on our imaginaries. One approach is to learn from the David and Goliath battles that communities and territories have successfully waged against corporate giants and their allied political structures. We propose a learning from the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta, Nigeria and the Waraoni people in the Yasuni territory of Ecuador. With due deference to their rugged resistance to the claws of fossil fuel extraction machines we call this resistance Ogonizing and Yasunizing. The clarion call is for the world to Ogonize and Yasunize.

As a working definition we see Ogonize and Yasunize to mean “a call for the protection of territories with natural or cultural diversity threatened by serious environmental impacts such as from oil and gas extraction, open cast mining, and other mega-projects.”

Here is the background to the birthing of these words. Yasuni is a territory in Ecuador where the people voted in a national referendum in 2023 to keep the oil in the ground. Over 59% of voters chose to end oil extraction activities in the Ishpingo, Tiputini, and Tambococha (ITT) oil fields, located inside the Yasuni Park. Ogoni is a territory in the Niger Delta where the people halted oil extraction in 1993 by declaring Shell a persona non grata. This move led to the militarization of Ogoniland and the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa who was the leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and eight other Ogoni leaders on 10 November 1995. Because the people have remained ogonized (and are not agonizing) they have stood their ground and rejected efforts by colonial extractors to return to the oil fields of Ogoniland.

To Ogonize and to Yasunize is to reject the culture of poverty and death and to stand for the wellbeing of Mother Earth and her children. It is to stand for Ubuntu, Etiuwem and buen vivre.

It is a decolonial struggle against authoritarian extractivism and other socioecological misbehaviours.

Needed Socioecological Cohesion

The fabric of the social and environmental conditions of Nigeria are literally stretched to the limit. The threats emanate from local and global strands of the polycrisis wracking the globe. Exploitation, displacements, conflicts, climate chaos, socioeconomic inequities combine to threaten the tenuous fabrics holding our nation and peoples together. Desertification, deforestation, extreme water and air pollution, deadly floods, coastal and gully erosion, insecure farms and diverse ecological devastations all merit a declaration of national environmental security state of emergency? The widespread environmental challenges also provide clear platforms for collective work to salvage the situation in ways that political coalitions may not.

Waiting before acting is a luxury the people cannot afford. The clarion call for action is urgent and critically existential. This reality inspired the Nigeria Socioecological Alternatives Convergence (NSAC). Regrettably at this second outing the conditions remain dire. We remain undaunted because we understand that the struggle for the change we need cannot be a sprint because it has to be a comprehensive overhaul of a system entrenched by indifference and lack of accountability. The socioecological alternatives we propagate must overturn the current predatory system of destructive extraction and shredded ecological safety nets. Our charter has to construct a Nigeria that is decolonial and post extractivist.

In the maiden national convergence, we collectively agreed to a national charter for socioecological justice.  Even as we achieved that major milestone we had hopes that at a future date, we would have participants from other African countries. That future has come faster than we expected. At this convergence we have participants from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. We also have other international partners. The reality of having an African Socioecological Alternatives Convergence (ASAC) is drawing near. 

There are sources to learn from in efforts to overhaul environmental governance in our nation.

  • In Africa, Kenya and South Africa have constitutional provisions for environmental rights that we can learn from.
  • The South American countries of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela have constitutional provisions for the rights of Nature.
  • The Rights of Nature includes the right for Nature to be free from pollution. It also places obligations on human at a number of levels. The Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth is yet to be universally adopted[1].
  • There is a strong campaign for the recognition of ecocide as a crime in the Rome Statute in line with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, etc.
  • We already have outcomes of litigations as well as reports that show evidence of ecocide in Nigeria and these could back up the urgency of the crisis . Two of such reports are the UNEP Report ( Environmental Assessment of Ogoni environment, 2011) and the Bayelsa State Oil and Environment Commission Report (Environmental Genocide, 2023). 
  • Delta State House of Assembly is working on a bill to recognize the personhood of River Ethiope. The 2014 National Confab had recommendations for justiciability of human and environmental rights 

According to the NSAC Charter, ‘Our vision is of a Nigeria where ecological integrity, social justice, and economic wellbeing coexist. We must birth a Nigeria where the rights of nature are respected, where communities have control over their resources and enjoy resource democracy, and where everyone has access to clean air, water, and a healthy environment.’

The key demands of the NSAC Charter include 

·       Access to water as a human right

·       Recognise the Rights of Nature

·       Inclusive policy development 

·       Just energy transition from a polluting and epileptic dirty energy model to renewable energy

·       Job transitioning

·       Transition to agroecology

·       Ensure biosafety and biosecurity, ban genetically modified organisms  

·       Halt deforestation, promote reforestation 

·       Protect our wetlands and halt indiscriminate land reclamation 

·       Invest in flood control infrastructure 

·       Enforcement of mining regulations 

·       Decommissioning of mines and oil wells at end of life 

·       Compensations for job losses and reparations for ecological damage to affected communities

·       Ecological audit — State of the Nigerian environment 

·       Environmental remediation 

·       Accessible and affordable clean energy. Energy democracy

·       Revamped emergency response mechanisms 

·       Reject false solutions to climate change, including carbon offsets, geoengineering, etc

·       Halt gas flaring

·       Halt and reversal of divestments by IOCs

·       Declare no mining zones

The environment supports our life and exploitation of nature’s gifts must be conducted in manners that do not disrupt or breach the cycles of nature.  As part of nature, humans have responsibilities and obligations regarding how we interact with our environment and other beings we share the planet with. Human activities contribute to the squeezing we are experiencing from desertification in northern Nigeria and the erosion washing away our communities on the coastline. Sixty-eight (68) years of extraction of fossil fuels has rendered the Niger Delta a disaster zone. Climate impacts and environmental genocide leave festering sores on the territory. Uncontrolled solid mineral extraction is poking holes across the land, and these combined with long abandoned but non-decommissioned mines are scars that we cannot ignore. 

Let us together ‘Yasunize’ and ‘Ogonize’ by demanding the protection of communities and territories with natural or cultural diversity against activities that cause serious environmental impacts, such as from oil and gas extraction, open cast mining, and other mega-projects. We must wake up and demand a change of mentality. Our leaders must Arise and be true compatriots, not lords or emperors, even if that anthem has been placed on the shelf. Oil for development has placed Nigeria on a treadmill surrounded by voracious and insatiable forces of exploitation, expropriation and extermination. 

The major focus of this Convergence is Examining Relevant National Policies and Frameworks for Addressing Environmental, Climate Change and Socio-ecological Challenges. We have an erudite professor and climate change expert to set the tone for our deliberations. We look forward to learning about those critical planks for addressing the subject. We will also hear how the policies and frameworks which he has helped formulate and frame over the years are faring.

NSAC is a space for the convergence of ideas, sharing of wisdom and passion. We note the critical role of communities in nation building and believe that any nation that sidelines communities is on a very slippery slope. This is why we must do all we can to stand with our peoples, build cohesion for socioecological transformation and ensure communities are embedded as key players in defining the direction of a truly just energy and social transition.

It is our collective space. It is our time. Welcome.

Welcome words by Nnimmo Bassey, Director of HOMEF, at the 2nd Nigeria Socioecological Alternatives Convergence held at Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, on 14 July 2025.

[1] https://www.rightsofmotherearth.com/declaration

Our Ocean and Human Rights

Today we are considering the state of our ocean—not as a commodity to be exploited, but as a common good that sustains life, livelihoods, our culture and spirituality. Our ocean is under siege, and the communities that depend on it bear the brunt of pollution, displacement, and human rights abuses.

 Across the coastline of Nigeria, community folks are being forced from their territories, deprived of their resources and left to grapple with the consequences of laxly regulated natural resource exploitation.

The economic forces driving this destruction prioritize profit over people, extracting resources beyond the ocean’s capacity, and leave behind a trail of ecological devastation. The infrastructure of Nigeria’s economy begin at our shorelines and extend to the deep waters where resources are extracted— and coastal communities who bear the pressures from the land and the sea remain trapped in poverty. We cannot ignore the countless oil well blowouts that have polluted our waters: Akaso Well 4, Atanba, Bonny Terminal, Buguma Wellhead 008, Santa Barbara, and the ongoing inferno at Ororo Oil Well 1 at Awoye, Ondo State, which has been raging for close to five years now, among others. These disasters are ecological crimes that contribute to climate instability, and a worsening scarcity of land and water, placing entire communities and livelihoods at risk.

We live with the struggles of fishermen and women who set out each day with their nets and baskets, only to find empty waters—enclosed and sacrificed for industrial dredging, multinational oil companies and corporate fishing. A Community like Aiyetoro with its history of well organized governance and industrial strides is now a ghost of its former self, bashed and washed by unrelenting waves and left to grapple with unrelenting impacts of global warming and possibly heading for complete displacement unless we act.

We acknowledge the plight of Makoko’s communities, whose rights to housing, food, and health have been trampled by forces that would be happy to have the people displaced so the waterfront can be grabbed by speculators. Overall, the destruction of marine biodiversity disproportionately affects fishing communities, making them the most vulnerable to environmental degradation.

Our fight to defend the ocean is inseparable from the fight for human rights and justice. We must resist the unchecked advances of transnational polluters in our ocean and demand accountability. We must protect our biodiversity, our land, and our water from the destructive forces of exploitative capitalism seeking to privatize the commons. It is time to rethink our relationship with nature—to take only what can be replenished and respect the delicate balance that sustains us all.

Governments must act—not as enablers of destruction, but as stewards of the environment, ensuring that decisions about natural resources are made with the full participation of the communities who rely on them. Nigeria has signed so many conventions and treaties regarding the wellbeing of marine ecosystems.We even have designated Marine Protected Areas whose protection is disputable. Our constitution may be said to have a tilt towards ensuring the right to life, but there can be no right to life without the right to a safe environment.

This workshop is more than a gathering—it is a platform for us all as oceanographers, marine scientists, government agencies, civil society organizations, and community leaders to reflect, strategize, and commit to the urgent task of defending our ocean. Coming on the heels of the International Wetlands Day, we use this opportunity to take a stand against so-called land reclamation which should rightly be named aquatic ecosystems conversion and grabbing. We have seen wetlands and dependent economies destroyed by urbanization and diverse speculators. We are also seeing swaths of the ocean and public beaches being converted into fenced housing estates or so-called superhighways. These disregard the fact that the state of the ocean directly affects the climate, reflects on the quality of our lives and the capacity of the Earth to maintain her cycles and support all beings.

Let us seize this moment to build a future where our ocean is protected, our rights are upheld, and our communities thrive.

——-

Nnimmo Bassey’s Opening Comments at the State of the Ocean Workshop held at the NIOMR on 3 February 2025

Books, Imaginations and Ecological Liberation

“…all classical traditions of world literature are fostered by environments where there are intensive struggles against great evils for the restoration of human dignity.”

– G. G. Darah, “Revolutionary Pressures in the Literature of the Niger Delta”

The Community and Culture Programme of Health of Mother Earth Foundation seeks to underscore the foundational role that literature plays in our culture. Our stories, poems, theatre, songs and dance often aim to educate, correct through the sharing of information and through naming and shaming. These cultural practices conducted in the public, are for public consumption and demand action. The overall aims include keeping a record of happenings, envisioning what should happen and providing keys towards attaining preferred ends.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigeria’s hero of the environment, was many things in his lifetime. He was a socioecological activist, a politician, educator, businessman, playwright, novelist and poet. He used his resources and talents in the service of the Ogonis and by extension his nation. While he laced his writing with humour, he was dead serious about the rejection of marginalisation, ecocide, exploitation and oppression. He fought for socio-ecological justice. It can be argued that through his artistic production he woke the consciousness of his people and used the cultural tools at his disposal to ingrain in them a sense of commitment to the Ogoni cause and along with that a determination to fight for justice. It can also be argued that without his prodigious cultural and literary outputs the Ogoni struggle would have burned out by this time.

Books are the vehicles for building sustainable struggles and retaining a heightened sense of humour while doing so. Literature can and should be an ideological and confrontational tool to reclaim the social mandate of the oppressed. 

While books meet the aesthetic needs of the people, they also shape their imaginations. Undoubtedly, we are shaped by our imaginaries. Writers like Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ngugi Wa’Thiongo, Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimun, Tanure Ojaide, Christopher Okigbo, Helon Habila, Chimamamda Ngozi Adichie, Nduka Otiono, Chigozie Obioma and a host of others challenge oppressive systems and the imaginaries that acquiesce to such situations. 

Our community and Culture programme aims to use the tools offered by authors, poets, playwrights, storytellers and singers to build environmental consciousness, offer pictures of alternative futures and promote resistance to the horrendous environmental exploitation and damage happening around our nation and continent.

Today is the first in our series of Book Days. As we get ready to digest portions from the book A Walk in the Curfew, there is another book we should peep into. 

This other book is The Great Ponds by Elechi Amadi. It is a book that pictures the disruptions of society through fights over natural resources and mirrors the destructive extractive activities that has numbed our sense of the fact that the environment is our life.

Two key characters in the book are Olumba of Chiolu and Wago of Aliakoro. These two communities engage in protracted wars over fishing rights to Wagaba Pond. In the tale we see Chiolu warriors defeating those of Aliakoro, and thereafter members of Chiolu claimed Wagaba Pond and fished in it without hindrance. Aliakoro villagers, however, began to poach in the pond, and Chiolu sent a war party to catch the poachers. We note that these two communities were from the same clan. They were family torn apart by a natural resource.

Over time the two communities were plagued with wars, kidnappings, and an epidemic akin to COVID-19 which is the pivot around which the stories in A Walk  in the Curfew are spurn. 

Wago was emblematic of Aliakoro’s superiority over the other villages. His power got magnified in stature by those most troublesome desires of humans: honour and praises. Yet being a proud man Wago decided to blow out his own candle, to commit suicide in the contentious pond. The elders in Aliakoro knew suicide to be a great sin but they also knew that for Wago to choose to do so in the pond was a tactical and overly insensitive gesture. Personal interest had disregarded the communal good.

The Great Ponds is a testament to the power of literature to reflect, shape, and challenge societal norms. Amadi’s work continues to resonate with readers, offering valuable insights into the complexities of human nature, community, and tradition. It also offers a cautionary tale that we should not allow natural or other resources to divide us and lead to needles destruction and deprivations.

Now, let’s turn to the writers of A walk in the Curfew and other pandemic tales, some of whom are here with us today. By writing the stories in the time of the pandemic, the writers show that emergencies are excellent moments for reflection on life. They also hold up the light on how to build resilience and overcome the most dire situations.

The stories remind us of the power of human connection, solidarity, and creativity in the face of adversity. The writings not only capture the complexities and challenges of the pandemic but also offer hope, insights, and inspiration for a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.

The authors’ contributions to this collection are a gift to humanity, and there is no doubt that these offerings will resonate with readers worldwide.

Congratulations Onome Etisioro, Mfoniso Antia (Xael) and Kome Odhomor. Thank you for offering your creativity and for opening this journey on our Community and Culture highway.

Comments at HOMEF’s maiden Book Day held on 31 January 2025 in Benin City, Nigeria

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

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.