Category: Policy

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.

Rejecting Food Colonialism

According to a popular adage, “when solving a problem, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves”. The challenge of food insecurity in Nigeria/Africa requires a deliberate pause and critical thinking about the factors that have created it and a concerted effort at addressing them. Overlooking the root causes of food insecurity (including farmer-herder clashes, banditry), poor support for local farmers, poverty, inequality, inflation, climate change and others shows the lack of readiness to solve the problem.

The gates for the entry of GMOs into Nigeria were flung open in 2015 with the enactment of the National Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) Act. This act was further expanded in 2019 to allow for gene editing and synthetic biology. Sadly the biosafety Act was preceded by the creation of National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), an agency created to promote modern biotechnology. It was later christened National Biotechnology Research and Development Agency NBRDA). To be clear, this agency was established at a time there was no biosafety law in the country. The cart was clearly put before the horse and this seriously injured any effort to regulate the sector and ensure biosafety in the country. This is particularly so because the promotion agency has a deep embryonic connection with the agency that ought to regulate it. This warped governmental approach has made it impossible for policy makers to see biosafety as an existential issue.

These two agencies of government can be excused for seeing themselves as infallible and even as being the government itself. They see GMOs as a one size fits all solutions. They virtually forget other areas of modern biotechnology and set their eyes only on gutting our agricultural and food  systems,  Solutions such as the genetic engineering of plants/animals do not address these root causes and we should be worried that there is such an adamant push to entrench them in our food systems by the producers and their allies in government. There is obviously an open conspiracy to counter our best interests while locking in colonial controls over our agricultural and food systems.

GMOs are promoted in Nigeria on the premise of addressing food insecurity. However, after almost three decades since their introduction in the world, they have not eradicated or reduced hunger. Rather, they lock in the system that promotes hunger by degrading soils and poor harvests (case of Nigerian cotton farmers in 2024), reducing biodiversity, disregarding the knowledge of local food producers, and concentrating power in the hands of a few market players. 

GMOs ride on the wave of global fetishization of technology by which technology is considered a silver bullet. Besides the generally poor regulatory frameworks, GMOs directly impact on human as well as socio-economic rights of our peoples. The complex threats including environmental degradation, and loss of our food heritage make it expedient that we examine the push for GMOs on the continent more critically. We must debunk the notion that resisting GMOs is akin to opposing science or technology. Reject GMOs is also not a matter of fear, except the fear of being colonized with its attendant exploitation and humiliation.

It is important to stress that GMOs represent a paradigm shift in agriculture; they are not just an option or solution. We must think beyond the mythical temporary relief that is imagined or promised and consider what long term impacts they portend. GMOs are plants, animals, or microorganisms that have undergone fundamental changes at the cellular level and can no longer be considered natural. Most of them are engineered to withstand dangerous herbicides which kill other organisms except the engineered ones. Other crops are genetically engineered to act as pesticides aimed ostensibly to kill identified pests that would otherwise attack the crop or seeds. Examples include Bt Cotton and Bt Cowpea or beans approved for commercial planting and consumption in Nigeria.

GMOs represent the subversion of Africa’s food systems which was intentionally constructed through the colonization of thought — a phenomenon concretized through persistent coloniality of knowledge and power. You may wonder why anyone would subvert another’s food system. The reasons for this are many. The colonizers think and act in their own interests. This subversion covers every area of production and  ensures that labour is not invested for meeting local needs while expanding and consolidating labour to meet the needs of the colonizers. By emphasizing a cash economy, for instance, farmers are forced to neglect their own nutritional needs, and are derided as subsistence farmers, and are made to offer their labour in exchange for meager wages. When the exploiting colonizers are kind, they turn the farmers into mere out growers who own nothing, are given seeds to cultivate and are thereafter given a fraction of the harvests. The colonial powers scored double on this count by introducing slavish plantation agriculture which grabs lands, displaces communities and offers locals menial jobs as farm hands or guards. 

Colonial agriculture thrived not only by producing crops for export, but it also benefited from altering the appetites of the colonized. These changes did not happen only through advertisements; the indigenous foods were denigrated as uncivilized and sometimes simply forgotten due to a chronic absence of the crops or ingredients for preparing the foods. Today, the erosion of varieties is exacerbated by many related factors including genetic manipulations, hybridization of crop varieties, prevalence of junk foods and hostile seed laws.

Our farmers saved seeds are falsely deemed inefficient, whereas these seeds are indigenous and have the natural ability to adapt and thrive in prevailing circumstances in which they are grown. It must never be forgotten that our farmers have selected and preserved seeds, crops, and animal varieties over the centuries. They have kept a stock of varieties that both provide food and meet our medicinal, cultural and other needs. They kept the norms that preserved biodiversity. They practiced rotational farming, mixed cropping, strategic pastoralism, and seasonal fishing. They understood the rhythms of nature and maintained the natural equilibrium by being respectful of the Earth.

These practices are being threatened by the genetic modification of seeds particularly those that make up our staple foods. Core concerns about the control of seeds are being ignored by many but these should be confronted head on and now is the time to do so. Our farmers will be forced to depend on corporate seed entities for seeds as productivity of GM seeds typically degrades after the first planting. Overtime, we risk losing our genetic diversity and control of our seeds to these foreign entities who are merely after profits no matter the cost to human life or the environment.

Responsible use of technology in agriculture requires that we keep careful watch on their effect on human and environmental health. We also need to consider the fact that technologies that promote monoculture and erode our biodiversity are not sustain-able and must be avoided in a world that is almost at the brink of ecological collapse. We cannot afford to make a fetish of techno fixes or consider them to be silver bullets. We do not need GMOs to be able to produce enough food for our population. GMOs have not led to an increase of food production since their introduction. In 2025, it was reported that Tanzania achieved food sufficiency by 128% without GMOs and by increasing support for their local farmers and by promoting organic food production. Recent studies have revealed that more than 40% of food produced in Nigeria goes to waste due to lack of proper processing and storage facilities. This needs to be addressed.

We must decolonise our agricultural system. The ways to achieve this include the preservation of crop and animal varieties, rebuilding our food systems, thereby, recovering our culture. A decolonized agriculture invests in support systems for farmers, including by providing extension services and providing/upgrading rural infrastructure. It also means preserving local varieties, ensuring that farmers have access to land and, funding research institutions to build a knowledge base on healthy soils and resilient indigenous crops. It would also mean putting farmers on the driving seat of agricultural policy, elevating and prioritizing the precautionary principle in biosafety issues, and outlawing harmful herbicides and pesticides. It would again mean placing a swift moratorium on all types of agricultural modern biotechnology as this is a key means of eroding species varieties besides threatening outright extinctions.

Nigeria is at a critical point where we must decide on the way forward for food sovereignty. This is not just another symposium. It is a space where we must exert our rights, and demand for the liberation of our food system.

Keynote by Nnimmo Bassey, Executive Director of HOMEF, at the National Symposium on GMOs held at Qualibest Grand Hotel, Utako, Abuja, on 1 September 2025.

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

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.

 

 

 

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. 

Our Right to Safe Food

Nigeria, like many other African nations, stands at a crossroads to her food future. The stark choice is between adopting agricultural biotechnology in line with the industrial agriculture model or agreocology (regenerative agriculture). The former, in the guise of enhancing agricultural productivity, and fostering economic development, locks in monocultures, loss of biodiversity, seed monopoly and seed/food colonialism, while the latter delivers increased productivity and economic resilience and nourishes and revives ecosystems, strengthen local economies, mitigate climate/environmental crises, and promotes food sovereignty.

In this workshop, we will examine the very pressing and complex issues of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and biosafety. As judiciary officials in various capacities, entrusted with upholding the rule of law and ensuring justice prevails in our society, it is imperative that we are well-versed in the intricacies of this rapidly evolving field and risky technology.

GMOs ride on the wave of global fetishization of technology by which technology is considered a silver bullet. Besides posing difficulties to regulatory frameworks, they directly impact on human as well as socio-economic rights of our peoples. The complex threats and attendant risks of this technology makes it expedient that we examine the implications of GMOs through the lens of fundamental human rights. It is important to understand that GMOs represent a paradigm shift in agriculture. These are plants, animals, or microorganisms that have undergone fundamental changes at the cellular level and can no longer be considered natural. Most of them are engineered to withstand dangerous herbicides which kill other organisms except the engineered ones. Other crops are genetically engineered to act as pesticides aimed ostensibly to kill identified pests that would otherwise attack the crop or seeds. Examples include Bt Cotton and Bt Cowpea or beans approved for commercial release in Nigeria. The implication of eating a seed engineered to kill a pest is that you are eating a pesticide with unexamined implications including the microbes in our guts.

GMOs are promoted in Nigeria on the premise of addressing food insecurity. However, after almost three decades since their introduction in the world, they have not eradicated or reduced hunger. Rather, they lock in the system that promotes hunger by degrading soils, reducing biodiversity, disregarding the knowledge of local food producers, and concentrating power in the hands of a few market players. 

The hope of Nigeria dominating the international market and generating billions of US dollars is a pipe dream as nations who do not endorse genetically modified crops will not accept our products unless we wish to further make capital on the opacity in the handling and trading of these and other seeds.

The truth, distinguished participants is that we don’t need GMOs to feed our population. This technology threatens the lives and rights of our local farmers who have selected and preserved seeds, crops, and animal varieties over the centuries, who have kept a stock of varieties that both provide food and meet our medicinal and other needs. 

In a country like Nigeria, consumers are unable to exercise the right to choose whether to consume GMOs due to the peculiar way food is sold and consumed. We cannot label the foods and seeds largely sold on the roadside, in the traffic, and in an assortment of our informal markets. This is if labelling were to even be successfully enforced.

To enhance food production in Nigeria what is needed is the provision of supports to our family farmers and the adoption of farming methods that enhance the health of our soils. Healthy soils build ecosystem resilience to environmental stressors and build biodiversity instead of encouraging monocultures which help pests to thrive. We need a system that supports farmers with needed access to credits, land, infrastructure, and access to markets. We have a moral obligation to steward the Earth’s resources responsibly and to preserve the integrity of our ecosystems for present and future generations. These and more are what agroecology does.

As guardians of the law, it is pertinent to ensure that the Precautionary Principle is strictly applied when anyone wishes to introduce any genetically modified organism into Nigeria. The fact that there is a requirement for risk assessment during the application stage affirms that this is a risky technology. It should be considered unconscionable that public opinion is ignored or that promoters of the technology are also saddled with regulating same, or vice versa. 

The introduction, cultivation, and trade of GMOs at a minimum should adhere to robust regulatory frameworks that prioritize biosafety and safeguard the public interest. Nigeria, like many countries, has enacted legislation and established regulatory bodies to oversee the assessment, approval, and monitoring of GMOs. The National Biosafety Management Agency Act 2015 (as amended) is however froth with loopholes that prevent the legislation from adequately safeguarding the health and interest of the Nigerian people. Not withstanding, GMOs are approved for use in Nigeria in a way that does not conform to the provisions of the Act or global best standards. 

It is incumbent upon us to interpret and apply the provisions of the law judiciously, balancing the interests of innovation, agricultural sustain-ability, and public welfare. We cannot afford to turn our people into guinea pigs or deceive our farmers into believing they are given improved seeds when in fact they are trapped into planting seeds of dubious safety claims.

Furthermore, we must recognize the importance of transparency, public participation, and informed decision-making in matters concerning GMOs. The processes of approvals of GMOs so far do not recognise these elements as the responsible agency – the National Management Agency has gone ahead to approve GMOs despite objections based on scientific, and ethical concerns. 

As judges, we play a crucial role in adjudicating disputes, ensuring due process, and upholding the rights of all stakeholders, including farmers, consumers, and environmental advocates. Adjudicators should resist heavy pressures and influence of vested interests and ensure that decisions regarding GMOs are guided by the precautionary approach, ethical principles, and scientific evidence.  While technological advancements hold out promises, we must not compromise the safety of our people or the integrity of our ecosystems.

In conclusion, we note that it is imperative to approach the issue of GMOs and biosafety with the utmost diligence, impartiality, and commitment to upholding the principles of justice. It is our hope that this training will deepen our understanding, encourage meaningful dialogue, and resolve to promote the common good and sustain-able development.

Welcome.

Welcome Words by Nnimmo Bassey at HOMEF’s Training for Judiciary Officials on GMOs and Biosafety Held in Abuja on 22ndMarch 2024

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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