The essays here contribute to developing and deepening an understanding of the ecological challenges ravaging Nigeria, Africa and our world today. They illustrate the global nature of these terrors. These essays are not meant just to enable for coffee table chatter: they are intended as calls to action, as a means of encouraging others facing similar threats to share their experiences.
Set out in seven sections, this book of 54 essays deals with deep ecological changes taking place primarily in Nigeria but with clear linkages to changes elsewhere in the world. The essays are laid out with an undergird of concerns that characterise the author’s approach to human rights and environmental justice advocacy. The first section rightly presents broad spectrum ecological wars manifesting through disappearing trees, spreading desertification, floods, gas flaring and false climate solutions.
The second section zeroes in on the different types of violence that pervade the oil fields of the Niger Delta and draws out the divisive power of crude oil by holding up Sudan as a country divided by oil and which has created a myriad of fissures in Nigeria. The exploitation of crude oil sucks not just the crude, it also sucks the dignity of workers that must work at the most polluting fronts.
Section three underscores the need for strict regulation of the fossil fuels sector and shows that voluntary transparency templates adopted by transnational oil companies are mere foils to fool the gullible and are exercises in futility as the profit driven corporations would do anything to ensure that their balance sheets please their top guns and shareholders. The fourth section builds up with examples of gross environmental misbehaviours that leave sorrow and blood in a diversity of communities ranging from Chile to Brazil and the United States of America.
Section five of the book is like a wedge in between layers of ecological disasters and extractive opacity. It takes a look at the socio-political malaise of Nigeria, closing with an acerbic look at crude-propelled despotism and philanthropic tokens erected as payment for indulgence or as some sort of pollution offsets.
The closing sections provide excellent analyses of the gaps and contortions in the regulatory regimes in Nigeria. It would be surprising if these were not met with resistance on the ground.
These essays provide insights into the background to the horrific ecological manifestations that dot the Nigerian environment and the ecological cancers spreading in the world. They underscore the fact there are no one-issue struggles. Working in a context where analyses of ecological matters is not the norm, decades of consistent environmental activism has placed the writer in good stead to unlock the webs that promote these scandalous realities.
Cuprins
List of Abbreviations xiii Foreword by Ogaga Ifowodo xv Preface xix
Part I. ECHOES OF AN ECOLOGICAL WAR
1. I will not dance to your beat 3
2. Echoes of an ecological war 5
3. Human rights and the multiple environmental changes 9
4. Africa in the vice-grip of the climate crisis 21
5. Where are the 50-year-old trees? 35
6. To stop the Sahara 39
7. Of oods, dams and the damned 43
8. Flaring gas: Pro ting from illegalities in Nigeria 47
9. How would you y to the UK? 51
10. Can Cancún? 55
11. The betrayal of Cancún 59
12. A red card for California REDD 63
13. Ambition, sel shness and climate action 67
Part II. VIOLENCE IN THE LAND
14. As Kogi ghts over re nery location 83
15. Violence in the land
16. A nation split by oil
17. The ‘milking’ of oil workers
18. The tragedy of Ayakoromo
19. Mending MEND
20. The amnesty worked
87 91 95 99
103 107
ix
Part III. EXTRACTIVES AND TRANSPARENCY
21. When oil companies volunteer 113
22. Environmental issues in extractive industries transparency 117
23. Drilling in the dark 139
24. So Shell is everywhere 143
25. Shell’s fracking moves in the Karoo 147
26. The coming belt of re 151
27. Gas aring, hot air and fertilisers 155
28. The bush re neries of the Niger Delta 159
29. Seekers of selective transparency 163
30. Charge them with manslaughter 167
Part IV. IMPACTS OF EXTRACTIVE ACTIVITIES
31. Death and the kids of Zamfara 171
32. Resurrection in Chile 175
33. Caught in the Amazon 179
34. The cemetery of mangroves 183
35. The emperor with no clothes 189
36. Chasing tar balls in the Gulf of Mexico 193
Part V. OIL, DESPOTISM AND PHILANTHROPIC TOKENISM
37. The price of a vote 199
38. Running from the senate 203
39. Serving the nation in hostile times 207
40. Oil, despotism and philanthropic tokenism 211
Part VI. SLIPPING ON OIL AND GAS LAWS
41. Nigeria’s unacceptable biofuels policy 217
42. Slipping on oil and gas laws 221
43. How about the Petroleum Industry Bill? 225
44. The petroleum bill and last minute legislative contortion 229
45. Many blind spots 233
46. Nigerian draft Petroleum Industry Bill criminalises 237
communities
Part VII. RESISTANCE AS ADVOCACY
47. Resistance as advocacy in the oil elds of Nigeria 243
x
48. Shell shrugs o Bonga ne 245
49. Decades of destruction: Shell in Nigeria 249
50. Between four farmers and Shell 255
51. Walking on caves of re 259
52. Ogoni and the agony of a delayed clean up 263
53. Two years after the UNEP report: Ogoni still groans 267
54. Afterword 273
About the author 275
Despre autor
Nnimmo Bassey is a Nigerian environmental justice activist, architect, essayist and poet. He is the director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and coordinator of Oilwatch International. He was the chair of Friends of the Earth International (the largest grassroots environmental organisation in the world) from 2008-2012 as well as the co-founder and executive director of Environmental Rights Action (1993-2013) which is based in Nigeria (in Benin city, Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Yenagoa).
He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize.’ In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. In 2014 he was awarded Nigeria’s national honour as a Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism.
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