Blood Cattle

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Cattle “grazing” in a garden in Abuja. 01.05.2016. Pix: @TerverGyer

Blood Cattle: With so much blood shed so that cattle may roam roughshod over the land, it does make sense for us to rethink our meat production and consumption patterns.

Violent conflicts have become so pervasive in Nigeria that one could be excused to say that they threaten to become the new normal. Some years ago, no one could imagine that a Nigerian, child or adult, would become a suicide bomber. That thinking was loudly put to rest by the activities of Boko Haram, the group that erected and foisted a bomb-culture on our nation. Today, the horrendous conflicts between farmers and pastoralists must not be allowed to become another normal.

Conflicts in the oil fields, including third party interferences, oil thefts and acts of sabotage led to youths of the Niger Delta being labelled as restive whenever they made demands for ecological or social justice. That adjective gave the oil companies some cover over the poor handling and policing of their pipelines, equipment and other facilities. And then to add cream to the cake, it has become normal for oil companies to scream sabotage at the slightest hint of accidents in the oil fields.

Tango in Bonga

The only time a company like Shell did not plead sabotage was when they had the Bonga offshore spill of 20 December 2011. That spill occurred when the top-ranking oil company pumped thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Ibeno, Akwa Ibom State, instead of pumping it into a waiting vessel. By their admission, they pumped 40,000 barrels of oil into the sea before they knew something was amiss. That speaks volumes of the high standards they maintain in their operations! It may have taken long in coming, but we must applaud the Federal Government of Nigeria for finally instituting a suit against Shell for the damage done to the environment and on our people.

Grazing Times

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After a hard day’s “grazing.” Pix: @TerverGyer

An intriguing cycle of violence that has become worrisome is that of the so-called herdsmen wielding AK47s, brutally attacking, killing, kidnaping and raping citizens in their paths. The atrocious level of killings and destruction has led some to call these livestock blood cattle. Government action cannot be delayed on this matter.

While it is left to our security agencies to say if these attackers are truly herdsmen or a new band of terrorists, the issue of a Grazing Bill before the National Assembly has added more cause for concern to many Nigerians.

For those who may not know, the Grazing Bill seeks to acquire swaths of land across Nigeria, dispossess individuals and communities of their lands. The bill bars land owners from having access to these lands, territories and resources. Trespass by owners of the land could lead to terms of imprisonment and other penalties. The Bill is a perfect of move to legalise land grabbing and internal colonisation using the obnoxious Land Use Act as a cover. It is interesting that the Bill has now been said not to be on the tables of the National Assembly. Phantom or not, the Bill remains a source for concern. Depite the denial of the existence of any Grazing Bill, we read that there are versions of private members Grazing Bills in the Hose of Representatives and that one is expected from the executive arm.

The rich owners of the cattle should set up ranches to support their enterprises. If the nomadic lifestyle is a way of life that cannot be compromised, the range of the movements should nevertheless be controlled. We hear much about value-addition as a way of building our agricultural industrial sector. Is it not time to move meat rather than cattle across the nation?

Meat, Hunger and Climate Change

While many have linked the herdsmen to the Fulani ethnic nationality, it is clear that owners of the cattle that have become the lightening rod of the peculiar violence rocking the nation in recent days may actually range beyond the Fulani. One interpretation could be that what we are experiencing may be the manifestation of a primitive use of power by a blood-thirsty wealthy class using the poor as canon fodder against other poor and helpless citizens.

If this mayhem is not nipped it threatens to set the nation ablaze. In a situation of rising suspicions, there is need to build bridges between our peoples, build a vanguard of the oppressed to keep off the forces of division and annihilation and ensure that the poor among us are not used as foot soldiers in a proxy war they have no business fighting.

The rich owners of the cattle should set up ranches to support their enterprises. If the nomadic lifestyle is a way of life that cannot be compromised, the range of the movements should nevertheless be controlled. We hear much about value-addition as a way of building our agricultural industrial sector. Is it not time to move meat rather than cattle across the nation?

The world’s appetite for meat is having global impacts on the rate of deforestation and on global warming. Indeed, much of the food grown in the world today go to feeding animals rather than humans, thus entrenching hunger and malnutrition.

With so much blood shed so that cattle may roam roughshod over the land, it does make sense for us to rethink our meat production and consumption patterns.

Burning Africa with the Paris Agreement

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The Paris Agreement will see to the sinking of Small Island states and the roasting of Africa – a continent uniquely exposed to the vagaries of global warming. Of what use is it for poor vulnerable nations to smile at the cameras, sign up to do things that will add up to nothing, knowing that they never contributed to the problem in the first instance? What would Nigeria or any African country gain by endorsing this hollow agreement?

What is needed is for the big polluters to line up and sign an agreement to keep fossils in the ground and urgently ensure a just transition to renewable energy. That is when we will know that there is a climate agreement. Signing the Paris Agreement on Earth Day (22 April 2016) is a poking of fossil fingers in our collective faces and an affront to Mother Earth.

Signing the Paris Agreement is nothing but letting the polluters off the hook, and burning the innocent to boot. It is time to keep fossils in the ground. Addictions may be hard to break, but for our survival, it is time to break free from fossil fuels.

The achievement of the Paris conference was that all nations agreed to take some sort of climate action. This means little if what they promise to do are mere intentions rather than scientifically determined levels of emissions reduction based on their current levels of greenhouse gas emissions as well as on historical responsibility.

The expected climate actions are based on Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These INDCs as the name suggests are what each country proposes to do about cutting their emissions. Many of the countries have stated that they would only take certain actions based on some conditions such as availability of finance and technology.

Particularly worrisome is the fact that the world has already warmed up by 1 degree Celsius above pre industrial levels. If all the nations put their INDCs into action, average global temperatures will rise above 3 degrees Celsius, according to analysts. That would be beyond the tipping point by which the world would cascade into irreversible or cataclysmic climate and ecological change.

The Paris Agreement locks in fossil fuels and, to underscore corporate capture of the negotiations, the word, fossil, is not as much as mention the document. It is shocking that although the burning of fossil fuels is known to be a major contributor to global warming, climate negotiations engage in platitudes rather than going to the core of the problem. Scientists tell us that burning of fossil fuels would have to end by 2030 if there would be a chance of keeping temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The signal we get from the silence on the fossils factor is that oil and coal companies can continue to extract profit while burning the planet.

The agreement is hollow with regard to climate finance because raising necessary funds remains aspirational while rich nations spend trillions of US dollars on war efforts that deepen climate vulnerability of target nations and regions. Loss and damage from irreparable climate impacts remain the imposed burdens that vulnerable nations will continue to suffer.

Signing the Paris Agreement is nothing but letting the polluters off the hook, and burning the innocent to boot. It is time to keep fossils in the ground. Addictions may be hard to break, but for our survival, it is time to break free from fossil fuels.

Eco-Instigator 11 by HOMEF- a collector’s delight

Cover of Eco-Instigator 11HOME RUN

The turmoil in the world has continued with increasing sites of environmental and political conflagrations. As this edition of your Eco-Instigator was going to bed, the world was shocked to hear of the assassination in Honduras of Berta Caceres, the outstanding, inspiring, courageous human rights and environmental campaigner, Founder of the Civic Council and Indigenous Peoples of Honduras Association (COPINH). Her murder was compounded by the shooting, and detention of Gustavo Castro, a comrade and leader of Otros Mundos, (Friends of the Earth Mexico). HOMEF joined all people of good conscience to condemn these atrocious actions, demand for justice and, of course, call for a halt to these and similar acts around the world.

Two unfolding scenarios in Nigeria are of great concern to us and we have beamed our spotlight on them in this edition. First is the resolve of biosafety regulators in Nigeria to promote the entry modern agricultural biotechnology into the country. When officials saddled with regulating a sector act as promoters of the very thing they should regulate you can imagine what the tendencies would be. Soon after a deeply flawed National Biosafety Management Bill was hurriedly signed into law by the immediate past president of Nigeria, Monsanto Nigeria Agricultural Ltd rushed two applications for field testing of genetically modified maize and the commercial release of genetically modified cotton in Nigeria. Public notices on these applications were published on 25 February and HOMEF in concert with 99 national organisations sent objections to the National Biosafety Management Agency (NABMA). A short advisory on our objections is published in this issue. We also publish an open letter sent by a collective to Nigeria’s president on why genetically modified organisms should not be permitted in Nigeria.

A 20 kilometres right of way for an about 100 metres highway must hold the record for government land grabbing for the “overriding public interest’ to satisfy deep private interests.

The second obnoxious drama unfolding on our shores is Superhighway Project that is proposed to lead from a proposed deep sea port on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and cut through pristine community forests to the Nigerian hinterland. Forest communities in the Cross River axis of Nigeria where this so-called Superhighway is to be built have managed their community forests so well that a community like Ekuri has been awarded the Equator Prize for community forest management. The government of Cross River State has commenced the bulldozing of forests and farms in defiance of the fact that the project is yet to receive an approved Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and the people have not given free prior informed consent as required by ILO article 169.

One of the highlights of this 264km long Superhighway is that the Cross River State government has claimed land stretching 10 km on either side of the road. A 20 kilometres right of way for an about 100 metres highway must hold the record for government land grabbing for the “overriding public interest’ to satisfy deep private interests.

We serve you a menu of poetry, reports and, of course, books you must read. As usual, we like to hear back form you.

Read the full publication here… eco instigator 11

Until victory!

Nnimmo

New PIB: Coming in Four Draft Bills?

O&GReportcoverNew PIB is coming in four parts

Petroleum industry watchers in Nigeria have been wondering whether the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) that has been in the works for almost a decade would eventually be junked. Information emerging from those who should know suggest the PIB, much resisted by transnational oil companies operating in Nigeria, would now come in four separate and perhaps palatable bits

Signals coming form the Petroleum Resources Ministry suggest that the primary concern of the ministry is the business part of the entire petroleum industry architecture. Indeed, a version of the first Bill in circulation (The Governance and Institutional Framework for Oil and Gas) is not at all concerned with the environment. It mentions gas flaring just once and this in the same breath with fracking! Could the Ministry thinking of embarking on fracking while gas flaring goes on unabated?

That same version of the first Bill has no mention or reference to communities in which oil and gas activities are being carried out.But then, its focus is governance, not environment and not communities.

It does appear that none of the four pieces of law will have any focus on environmental or community health concerns.

According to a report in the January 2016 edition of the Africa Oil & Gas Report, “The Governance and Institutional Framework for Oil and Gas is the first of four proposed bills that will be sent to Nigeria’s bicameral house of legislature: The National Assembly, for passage by the Muhammadu Buhari administration.” It is speculated that four versions of the draft of the first Bill is currently in circulation at the National Assembly. This seems to be in sync with the spirit of the comatose PIB.

Africa Oil & Gas Report suggests that the breaking the PIB into four different legislations may be part of the learning from the inability to pass an oil and gas reform law by the last two governments.

It does appear that none of the four pieces of law will have any focus on environmental or community health concerns. Information suggests that the second bill after the ‘Governance and Institutional Framework’ Bill will be the Fiscal Reform Bill, that will focus on fiscal issues in the industry. The third bill will be concerned with Licencing Rounds, while the last legislative bill regulating the petroleum industry will be the ‘Revenue Allocation and Management‘ Bill. Africa Oil & Gas quotes  a source as saying that “Part of what the last bill will propose is what will go to the communities, in terms of percentages.”

It is indeed essential that communities receive due payments for the massive cash milked from their environment, it will be unwise to imagine that environmental concerns can be buried under a whiff of cash, no matter how sweet the smell. While the draughtsmen are at work, it will be essential for them to pay in-depth attention to halting gas flaring and the dumping of toxic wastes in the environment. They should also block the loopholes that allow oil companies to casually blame most oil spill incidents on the victims of their dastardly environmental misbehaviour.

 

Our Environment, Our Resources, Our Future

IMG-20160225-WA0001It is indeed exciting to be a part of this epochal reception. One reason is that it is not easy to move from the civil society space and perform creditably on the government side. Some even say that civil society campaigners are more effective as critics than as public service leaders. Our hope is that you will prove the sceptics wrong. And that you will epitomise what it means to lead with the people leading. The thoughts here expressed are directly mostly at the Minister for Environment, Amina J. Mohammed and the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, who you will permit me to address as Comrade Kayode Fayemi.

Bearing in mind that the environment is a living system and that environmental problems are interlinked; and keeping in mind that our peoples depend on the natural environment for economic and living activities, resolving our environmental challenges can indeed be a unifying pathway for Nigerians. The Niger Delta has been on the spot light as a region despoiled by petroleum extraction and soon the story may shift to mine pits across the nation as States scramble to generate revenue from a sector that allows decentralised investment in a way the petroleum sector does not permit.

We are children of the environment and that what we call natural resources are actually Nature’s gifts and elements that help her maintain and reproduce her natural cycles, the best approach to solving our environmental challenges must be narrowed down to what impacts most on the lives of our peoples.

Key areas:

ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION- the challenge of extractives

Environmental remediation/restoration and stoppage of polluting activities and processes. The determination of the President and the HM of Environment to make the clean up of Ogoniland in line with the UNEP report of 2011 is commendable and must be supported. It is essential that this be extended as a Pan Niger Delta recovery initiative including heavily polluted areas such as Ikarama, Forcados, Ibeno, Koluoma, Kalaba and Oruma to name a few. Environmental remediation must extend to challenged communities like that of Makoko, Lagos (Which the HM E has visited) and the communities depending on the Challawa River in Kano and the water ponds of Zamfara and the tin pits of Jos.

We are children of the environment and that what we call natural resources are actually Nature’s gifts and elements that help her maintain and reproduce her natural cycles,

SANITATION

Sanitation, including solid waste management and access to potable water. This requires deliberate campaign for change of mind-set to discourage careless handling and disposal of wastes. Efforts in this direction must be in cooperation with the Ministry of Water Resources with a view to halting the privatisation of water through purchase of public facilities as well as through the bottling of water and an enforced absence of public water supply.

Use of plastic bags should be outlawed as a means of curbing wastes, general pollution and clogging of our drains. Our people must return to the use of durable goods and accept to recycle, reuse, reduce and also refuse some items.

EROSION

Gully, wind and coastal erosion are serious challenges in Nigeria. A comprehensive framework to tackle this menace needs to be developed. Again we note that solid mineral extraction will aggravate this problem. Where we once had gullies, we may now have craters.

GREAT GREEN BELT and DEFORESTATION

There is no reason for southern Niger Republic to be greener than Northern Nigeria. Annual tree planting rituals will ultimately remain television activities. Communities must own the agenda, with government supporting. Having farmer-farmer exchanges would help our farmers acquire knowledge from their counterparts in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali would help in learning techniques of restoring otherwise arid lands.[1]

In the same vein is the crucial need to stop the assault on our forests, including the very poorly conceived plan to take a 6 lanes super highway through Ekuri Community Forest, one of the last pristine forests we have left in Nigeria. The thought of compulsorily acquiring 10 km on either side of the road in public interest is a euphemism for dispossessing the poor forest communities and to throw open a logging bazaar without regard to equity, justice or concerns for the looming climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Nigeria has submitted her intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) to emissions reduction as required by the UNFCCC. One task before you in this direction is to translate the intentions to action. And if we may suggest a starting point it would be to stop gas flaring.

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STATE OF NIGERIAN ENVIRONMENT REPORT

Ultimately we require to have an Annual State of the Nigerian Environment Report that would both provide a baseline and a means of monitoring and evaluating our efforts in this sector. The only such report that we have was prepared in 2008 and published six or so years later. It was a good starting point that needs to be taken forward.

ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS/REGULATIONS

It is often said that there are sufficient laws in Nigeria but not enough will to enforce the laws. There are laws that require urgent review or repeal. One of such laws is the Biosafety Management Act of 2015 signed into law in the last week of the last presidency. The management of our Biosafety is not helped by the fact that the regulatory and research bodies are more concerned with promoting rather than regulating the introduction of agricultural modern biotechnology and do not appear to consider ethical, environmental, health and other issues.

We need a law that gives an agency like the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) teeth, including enforcing sufficiently high penalties to discourage environmental misbehaviour such as oil spills and gas flaring.

The National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) Act does not cover the oil and gas sector. The presence of captains of the oil and gas sector on the board of NESREA is an anomaly and that space should be closed.

The Environmental Impact Act (EIA) must be given teeth so that compliance ceases to be a token requirement for project proponents. The EIA and environmental management plans for mining projects must consider the fact that every mine pit or oil well has a life span. This necessitates the preparation of exit or closure plans, including decommissioning at the end of the lifespan of such activities.

CONCLUSION

We are lending you to the governance machinery and expect that your civil society sensitivities will keep you open to engage continuously with the people whom you have been called upon to serve.

Thank you.

Nnimmo Bassey, Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation @NnimmoB

**Presented at reception for Nigerian ministers with civil society background at Abuja on 22 February 2016

 

 

[1] See my blog on this at https://nnimmobassey.net/2015/11/22/forests-on-rocky-soils/.