Walking on Caves of Fire

Mining always leaves its footprints in both the sands of time and on the lives of the people and their lives. You may think you have seen it all- especially if you have seen or lived in the horrors of oil activities in the Niger Delta. I thought so too, particularly because I have devoted at least two decades of my life in persistent pursuit of polluted lands (at home and abroad) searching for ways to comprehend the great harm generated by extractive activities.

Some of the places that have left deep impressions in my heart are documented in my book Oilwatching in South America – Or, Guana Guara - Mudfish Out of Water a Pollution Tour Of Venezuela, Curaçao, Peru & Ecuador. This book is more or less the diary of a pollution tour of these countries carried out in 1997 under the auspices of Oilwatch International. Others can be found in To Cook a Continent – Destructive Extraction and Climate Impacts on Africa.

After many years of following the heavy pollution of communities in South West Durban in South Africa, and with kin ears for developments related to proposed fracking in the Karoo, I was still not prepared for the level of impacts from mining in Witbank, Old Coronation mine and other Highveld communities. This filed trip was organised by groundWork (Friends of the Earth South Africa) as a prelude to Oilwatch Africa conference that was held in Midrand mid May 2013. On the group were activists from eleven African countries.

The field trip in Mpumalanga Province where mines literally turned to walking in minefields! No, we did not rush to the mines. Our first port of call was the offices of the South African Green Revolutionary Council (SAGRC) at Witbank. It was early in the morning, but the comrades were already waiting to receive us. Led by Matthews Hlabane, we were quickly given a short introduction to the Witbank.

Mining started here in 1896 and with it began a reign of land grabbing and pollutions. From the 1950s the environmental problems began to intensify and were glaring and undeniable. Acid mine drainage polluted the water and coal dusts took over the air. With these contaminants it was not a surprise that the locals began to suffer from headaches, dizziness, kidney failures and other diseases.

We were informed that there are eight (8) coal-fired plants in Witbank and up to seven hundred (700) mines from where coal and platinum are dug. But that is not all there is a pile of five thousand (5000) applications for mining permits, with many of them “linked to the ruling party,” we were told. Overall, there are 6000 abandoned mines in the country and among these are the abandoned coalmines of the Highveld.

He regretted that there were no direct gains to the community even though so much “wealth” was being excavated from beneath their feet. The coal extracted here is used for electricity generation and for export. The level of contamination here is so high that an estimated 30 billion Rand will be needed for environmental rehabilitation.

Although we were told of sinkholes, unstable grounds and impacts on entire biodiversity

Our visit took us to the abandoned Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Mine (TMDB). On arrival we were greeted by a mountain range of wastes and polluted water seeping from the tremendous pile. Walking in this field requires extreme caution. We had to go in a single file, trusting that our guide knew what spot to tread and which could be considered as safe ground. We were bemused and some thought it was preposterous for anyone to insist that we couldn’t walk where we pleased. Soon enough we all saw why rebellion was not a good option here. There were cracks in the ground best picked out by trained eyes.

We soon knew we were on the devil’s territory when we began to smell sulphur. And then we saw heat waves simmering from holes ahead of us. The smell got stronger as we moved nearer. We were walking over caves of fire. A once luscious land was now 880 hectares of hell!

We were told of, and shown sinkholes scattered in the fields. Anyplace could crack up and anytime and a yelp may be the only goodbye to be heard before the victims disappear into netherworld. These mines are located between two Townships and kids and others traverse these burning mines daily either to school or to work. Some kids are said to have fallen into these sinkholes. And someone hazarded that criminals may also have used these burning pits as convenient places to bury their crimes.

Spontaneous fires started in the mines in the 1930s and they were eventually closed in the 1950s. Interesting. It is said that the fires in the mines were burning both the roof supporting pillars and the roofs themselves. We guess that before the mines were closed, perhaps while one portion of the mine was burning, miners were pressed to keep digging at other parts. That can be understood in an apartheid context. But why are the flames not extinguished and the land remediated today?

Our friends told us that because of lack of adequate public response to their complaints about the air quality and other pollutants, they have had to train themselves on how to do that for themselves. In fact, we were told that of occasions when officials bring testing equipment and the community folks were the ones who showed the officials how the equipment were operated. Talk of community empowerment! Tests show that some of the water bodies here are either very acidic or highly alkaline.

Leaving the field of horror, we passed by the VANCHEM Ltd factory. Our comrades asked us to look up at the sky. Thick smoke bellowed from the stacks. That was not surprising. But they asked us to note that no birds were flying in the area. Well, that was true. “They simply die if they try,” we were told. Okay. Get me out of here!

We were told that to keep healthy, workers in this factory are compelled to drink milk everyday. I could not laugh. I have personally heard at an environmental health workers workshop of oil company workers (machine operators) in Nigeria who are urged to drink milk as a way of keeping their bodies purified of pollutants. This myth has also been heard of in India. Workers are kept in the dark hopes that milk eliminates the impacts of pollution. See my 2010 article tiled The ‘Milking’ of Oil Workers for more about this and the cynical actions of corporations.

Our next port of call was the Old Coronation Township sitting on Old Coronation coalmines. The ground here is very unstable. We were taken to a huge pit into which a preschool disappeared after the ground gave way in 2012. Sinkholes started happening here more than five decades ago.

Many resident of this Township ‘mine’ coal in huge waste heaps in the neighbourhood. Stories abound of kids and women who met their death here when the pile of waste collapsed on them as they dug for the carbon needed for cooking and for heating their shacks.

It was one story of woe after another. We saw women and kids digging for occasional lump of coal. We heard of resource and job opportunities conflicts with migrant workers from the SADC region. We saw extensive acid/water ponds. Devoid of life as expected.

“The graves in Highveld are full,” one comrade tells us. “if you live here and drink the water, there is a 70 per cent chance you will end up with liver problems.” Sadly, kids sometimes swim in the warm ponds and there is a chance that they gulp in the lethal water. There is a high incidence of sinuses, asthma, tuberculosis and others. “

“The doctors work with the mines and the mines work with the government. The people are left to fall through the cracks. The Highveld is a compost,” another comrade insists without elaborating.

We were thoroughly depressed at this point. Getting to watch a youth drama perform was hopefully going to be a relief. Soon we were gathered in a community hall built and donated by a mining company! Speeches and tales of woes from various cities, townships and communities over, the Mpumalanga Youth Against Climate Change drama group took centre stage.

The acting was excellent and the storyline and message was clear and direct. Global warming was better termed “global burning” and humans were shown as anointed to be the most foolish specie on earth. The youngsters declared, “our governments have failed us, but we will not fail ourselves.”

As we left these heavily polluted communities, Comrade Matthew declared that the Witbank is the most polluted city in the world. A Nigerian comrade retorted that the Niger Delta was the most polluted region on earth. An argument ensued but was happily settled that one was a city and the other a region. But best of all, we ought to be arguing about which is the cleanest and safest, not which is most based by capital. Would either of these places ever return to health?

The 'Milking' of Oil Workers

Lagos (Nigeria) - If you have ever passed by the entrance gates to any of the oil companies, you must have seen a warning sign that says that you would not be allowed to drive into the premises without using your seat belt. The intent of those signs is to indicate to you that the companies follow strict safety rules.
Some years back, I was in a training meeting of directors of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC). The major focus was on how to handle rampant pipeline problems. At that meeting, it was revealed that in trying to clamp ruptured or damaged pipes conveying refined petroleum products, some workers had to stand in pools of petrol or diesel to carry out their assignments, obviously without adequate protection. Generally, oil field workers are as exposed as communities are to the dangerous pollutants of the industry.

At that meeting, I had an opportunity to propose the thesis that ‘sabotage’ must be seen in some contexts as a legitimate political weapon. Legitimate? While remaining a proponent of non-violent resistance, it must be recognised that unless sabotage is seen as a possible weapon for the expression of dissent, then the right solution to the problems may never be found.

The thesis was roundly rejected. But eventually, when the sparks started to fly in the oil fields and in the surrounding communities, it began to sink in that the ultimate solution to address the explosive dissent in the Niger Delta must be found in tackling the root causes of the dissent.

A couple of weeks ago, I was opportuned to participate in health and safety workshops for oil sector workers, organised by the the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, also known as the Solidarity Center. There were four workshops in all, but I was only able to attend the ones in Warri and Lagos. While one cannot compare working in the oil fields to working in violent conflict zones, or at a nuclear power plant, it is quite true that workers in the oil and gas sector need to be pretty much concerned about health and safety issues.

Some of the workers who perform sedentary duties in offices complained that the constant focus on computer screens poses serious health issues to them. Others said that they were required to ensure they grab staircase handrails while climbing or descending the stairs to avoid falls. That must be why we have those banisters and balustrades, surely? A machine operator complained that he has hearing problems due to exposure to extreme noise at his workplace.

Some of the field workers said that sometimes they have to climb dangerous heights while performing their duties on the rigs and other locations. Even though they wear safety belts, but the dangers are always there.

Management versus workers

There were healthy debates over the question of who was to be blamed for most workplace accidents in this sector - management or workers? It was striking to see oil workers unionists speaking almost like their managers. Some informed the workshops that they did not have safety issues in their companies because management took care of everything.

Quite a number of them believed that the management did the utmost in providing safety gears and took other measures that should keep accidents from happening. They maintained that the blame must be placed on the workers since it was likely the accidents took place when workers cut corners or otherwise ignored specified methods and processes.

Those who held that the management were to be blamed for most of the accidents insisted that management cared more about machines than they care about the workers. They held also that accidents do happen even when the procedures set out by management are followed. Another point was that, sometimes, workers are forced by management to take shortcuts in order to meet production targets.

One interesting fact shared at the workshops was the need for unions to carry out workplace mapping of health and accident issues. When such mapping is done over time, a pattern of accident or health issues related to particular workstations or procedures emerge. It was also noted that the shop floor workers could take these steps, even if the unions are not keen on monitoring and mapping.

A real surprise that came from these workshops was the revelation that oil companies use milk as an antidote for exposure to heat and hazardous chemicals. We exchanged banters that if cow milk was so efficacious and could cure cancers and other health challenges, then every oil worker should own a milk cow.

A participant from one of the top oil transnational corporations said that the company provides tins of milk to workers who man their electricity generators to counter the impact of the heat and chemical exposures.

It sounded as a joke initially, but it turned out to be a serious matter. A former union member said that between 1975 and 1978, while working in a gas industry, the workers, who produced acetylene and oxygen in cylinders, were always provided with milk while on duty.

Medical experts will have to tell us if milk is the antidote to heat and chemical exposure in the oil and gas sector. Could this be another way by which workers are taken for a ride, exposed to harm, and then given a false sense of well being though gifts of tins of milk?

If this is fraud, the companies who engage in this deception must be brought to book. If it is effective, then get me my cow.

First published in the now defunct 234Next (Nigeria)/ Thursday, 19 August 2010

Ambition, Selfishness and Climate Action

Humanity’s fossil addiction will be the climate hangman unless we quickly wean ourselves off them and take a new energy trajectory. We make this assertion because evidence continues to mount and all witnesses – conservative and radical- point unwavering fingers at the oil and gas wells, coal holes and the tar sand pits of this world.

Global warming occurs due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Heat comes from the sun in short waves, but when bounced off the earth they go up in long waves. Whereas the short waves pass through the atmosphere without resistance, the greenhouse gases trap some of the long waves trying to exit the atmosphere. Scientists estimate that without the greenhouse effect the earth would be as cold as minus 18 degrees Celsius. That does sound like we should celebrate the greenhouse gases in the air. Right? Well, the trouble kicks in when the concentration of the greenhouse gases gets higher than they ought to be.

The principal greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2). Its level has increased by a third since the industrial revolution while that of methane has doubled. Over the past 150 years, a period during which fossil fuels have become the main source for energy needed for electricity generation and or movement of goods and people, temperature have risen by 0.8oC and is set to gallop with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

As the reports of three conservative agencies have shown, unless the world embarks on a swift energy transition the course is set for calamitous global warming. Rather than seek ways to move from dependence on fossil fuels, rich nations are literally fighting to secure fossil fuels reserves to ensure they can keep guzzling same and not change their high consumption lifestyles. So-called emerging nations, like those in the BRICS bloc are equally ramping up their consumption levels as they assert the right to pollute so as to grow or as they grow. Thus growth may now be seen as a measure of pollution. Researchers estimate that at the current rate of consumption of petroleum resources, China alone can exhaust the known stock in just one decade. Indeed, It is estimated that by 2030 the USA and China will together generate 45 per cent of global carbon emissions.

Fossil fuels have supplied energy more efficiently than most other sources. The fuels have been cheaper than others because the environmental costs are externalized to poor communities and peoples whose governments are satisfied with rents from the sector and could not care less about the impunity in the fields and mines. As fossil fuels resources dwindle, we witness more desperate exploration. We see extraction in protected areas including the Arctic region. We see more aggressive moves into deeper waters and open and blatant warfare conducted in the guise of securing democracies. We can expect a spread of extreme extraction such as is already seen in fracking and tar sands exploitation.

Fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing – a process of blasting a solution of water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals into a shale bed between two to three kilometres into the belly of the earth. The mixture fractures the rock and releases the gas through bruises created by the sand. Because of its sheer depth some of the wells must puncture through aquifers causing pollution either from the chemicals used or as fallout of the violent fracturing process itself.

The pollutions and the global warming threats notwithstanding, the race to squeeze the last drops of fossils from the earth is on. An official US Department of Energy Report is quoted to have said “The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions were gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.”
Leaving the fossils in the ground is the unmistaken path that we ignore to our peril. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued a report late 2012 that asked some pointed questions. The questions were premised on the fact that the aggregate voluntary emissions reductions by rich, industrialised and polluting nations would not ensure the level of reduction needed to avoid catastrophic global warming. It showed that a gap existed between the “level of ambition that is needed and what is expected as a result of the pledges.”

Previous assessments showed that for global temperatures to stay within a 2 degrees Celsius increase annual emissions ought to average 44 gigatonnes (Gt) or less by 2020. UNEP scientists, however, believe that current levels are 14% above what should be the level in 2020 and that if urgent actions are not taken an emissions gap of 8 Gt of CO2 equivalent could happen.

Other analysts like Pablo Salon believe that “With the Doha, Durban and Cancun outcomes they will hit the level of 57 GT of CO2e by 2020. So the “gap” is 13 GT of CO2e.” Solon warns, “If this “gap” is not closed by 2020 the global average temperature of the planet will increase by more than 4 to 8o C. The last time the Earth had a global warming like this was millions of years ago.”

Just before the 18th Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC at Doha in 2012, similar research findings emerged from three unexpected quarters: the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and the business outfit PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The PwC report sees the safe limit of 2o C temperature increase suggested by the IPCC as unrealistic because even if current “decarbonisation” levels are doubled the world would still be heading for a temperature increase of 6oC by the end of the century.

Both the World Bank and the IEA reports suggest that for a 50-50 chance of staying below two degrees, the world requires to leave 66% of the known reserves of coal, oil and gas underground. And for an 80% chance, we have to leave 80% of those reserves untouched. Despite of all these warnings, political leaders dither and pollutions roar ahead as if there will be no tomorrow. Perhaps they know that there may not be any.

Carbon Tracker, a consultancy outfit, reached a similar conclusion earlier. According to the group, for warming to be kept at 2o C, from 2010-2040 only 565 billion tonnes of CO2 can be permitted to be emitted into the atmosphere. If this is done, there would be a 20 per cent chance of success. However, the known fossil fuels reserves have about 2795 billion tonnes of CO2 of which two thirds is coal, 22 per cent is crude oil and 13 per cent is gas. From these figures they estimate that 80 per cent of the known reserves must be left below the ground if we must hope for a slim chance of keeping temperature increase at 2o C.

On 9 May 2013 a record was made when CO2 concentration in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million (ppm) as measured at Hawaii's Mauna Loa observatory. It has been noted that the last time this level of CO2 was attained was 3-5 million years ago. At that time scientists believe that temperatures were 3-4 degrees warmer than it is today and that sea levels were 5-40 metres higher than we have today. In addition there was no ice in the Arctic region and there probably were no humans on the planet at that time. The concentration of carbon in the atmosphere before man’s romance with fossil fuels stood at 280ppm. In less than two centuries we have dug ourselves into deep fossil holes and marched to the climate precipice.

Look at that sea level in the long gone age. 5 to 40 metres! Should the earth experience a 1 metre sea-level rise in the future what would become of the Eko Atlantic currently being built into the sea? Generally, because of the low lying nature of Nigeria’s coastal region a sea level rise of a mere 1 metre would mean the inundation of land quite a distance into the hinterland. There is an estimate that this could go as far inland as 90 kilometres.

Temperature rises pose universal problems to the whole world, but more so for Africa. This is so because Africa has 50% higher temperatures than the global average. If temperature increases by say 4oC, Africa would be 6oC warmer. The consequences would be dire. We can expect mass crop failures, concomitant starvation and mass migration for those who can.
At the Copenhagen summit in 2009, the lead negotiator for G77, Lumumba Di-Aping, denounced the 2 degrees Celsius warming target as “certain death for Africa” and as a type of “climate fascism” forced on Africa. Di-Aping then said Africa was asked to sign an agreement that would permit warming in exchange for $10 billion, and that Africa was also being asked to celebrate that deal.

Michael Mann, speaking on Democracy Now! warned, "We have to go several million years back in time to find a point in Earth’s history where CO2 was as high as it is now. ... If we continue to burn fossil fuels at accelerating rates, if we continue with business as usual, we will cross the 450 parts per million limit in a matter of maybe a couple of decades. With that amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we commit to what could truly be described as dangerous and irreversible changes in our climate."

Warning that we were trudging on the roadmap to idiocy, George Monbiot looked at the atmospheric pollution record and suggested a possible way out of the fix: “The only way forward now is back: to retrace our steps and seek to return atmospheric concentrations to around 350ppm, as the 350.org campaign demands. That requires, above all, that we leave the majority of the fossil fuels which have already been identified in the ground. There is not a government or an energy company which has yet agreed to do so.”

In the face of the clear warnings, oil companies and others benefiting from the world’s fossil fuels addiction continue to press on unperturbed. Again we turn to Monbiot’s blog: “Recently, Shell announced that it will go ahead with its plans to drill deeper than any offshore oil operation has gone before: almost 3km below the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, Oxford University opened a new laboratory in its department of earth sciences. The lab is funded by Shell. Oxford says that the partnership ‘is designed to support more effective development of natural resources to meet fast-growing global demand for energy.’ Which translates as finding and extracting even more fossil fuel.”

Have the Conference of Parties helped the world to tackle climate change? The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the space where nations negotiate and should agree to act together in the common interest and for the survival of the planet. The conferences of parties (COP) to the convention have over the years turned into sessions where the powerful browbeat the weak and efforts are made to avoid responsibility and to act in narrow national or regional interest. The rapid slide down this slope took root at COP15 in Copenhagen, got deepened at COP16 in Cancun where the concept of consensus got redefined as agreement by the majority. COP17 in Durban took the medal as a conference whose critical achievement was the blatant postponement of action while the earth burns. Nations like the USA, Canada, Japan and Australia openly throw spanners in the works. Some go as far as foreclosing any participation in any legal and accountability formats proceeding from the Kyoto Protocol.

Doha was a sigh as leaders kicked the noisy decision-making can further down the road. There was little excitement about COP18 at Doha even before it took place and no celebratory vuvuzelas were heard after the event either. In the negotiations following Doha the talks in Bonn and Geneva continue to show the strains between developed, emerging economies and differently developed nations – especially with regard to emissions reductions commitments and mitigation actions.

At the negotiations held early May 2013 at Geneva the developed countries pushed for a legally binding “spectrum of commitments” from both developed and developing countries. However, their stance was based on targets nationally determined according to national capabilities and circumstances. They suggested that these would be reviewed periodically with the aim of keeping global temperature rise in line with the 2 degree Celsius goal.

Nations dance to different beats as they negotiate. Reporting from the meetings, the Third World Network informed that the developed countries also wanted “a different form of differentiation according to the emission profiles of countries rather than that which exists in the Convention (which is a differentiation between developed and developing countries). Developed countries also wanted common accounting rules for mitigation and transparency for both developed and developing countries. The United States did not want developing countries to condition their contribution to emission reductions on the availability of finance and technology transfer.”

The position of many of the developing countries was that the differentiation applied must remain the same as in the Convention keeping the lines of developed and developing countries or Annex 1/Non-annex 1 and not diminishing the importance of the historical responsibility of developed countries. They also insisted that the developed countries should take the lead in emissions reductions and for finance, technology transfer and capacity building to be provided to developing countries.

This spat can indeed be seen as the cause of the lethargy underlying the politics in the negotiations and keeping leaders from considering the need for real actions to tackle global warming. The developed nations see any real emissions reductions as potentially slowing their development curve, challenging their industries and ultimately placing heavy financial burdens on their systems and peoples. The developing nations on the other hand insist that developed countries must bear their historical responsibility for taking up as much as 80 per cent of the atmospheric space for carbon. The debates about emissions reductions can in a sense be seen as a struggle about who would colonise the remaining atmospheric space.

Climate justice advocates generally insist that those who created the climate problem must be the ones to mitigate it. However there is a rising call also from these quarters that some level of binding commitment by developing nations may be in order. Even here, the argument is that the commitments must be based on common but differentiated responsibilities.

Clearly, a bottom-up or voluntary emissions reduction would not work, as nations are unwilling to radically cut their emissions. Developed nations generally choose the market track and rely on offsets to do the mathematics of emissions reduction. Developing nations, including highly polluting and emerging nations like China and others in the BRICS formation prefer to take cover under the umbrella of the developing nations and claim the right to develop as equal to the right to pollute. The point against a bottom up, voluntary path is that there is no mechanism for closing the emissions reduction gap should the pledges not add up to the ambition needed by 2015 to enhance mitigation actions by 2020, etc.

The inability to meet climate finance and adaptation needs in the face of rising military budgets give us deep instructions. When you are standing at the precipice, you do not make progress by stepping forward. The effective action is stepping backwards. At such a time, it would make sense to be content with Keke NAPEP going in the right direction than insisting on the luxuries of a stretch limousine heading in the wrong direction, metaphorically speaking. Pressing ahead as we see in the climate talks as well as in some localised actions simply show that humans have refused to accept the evidence around us.

With the crisis on hand, the need to provide adequate finance for climate mitigation and adaptation has not been more serious than ever before. Yet the UNFCCC processes have merely thrown up a Green Climate Fund with a literally empty kitty. The $10 billion per year over a three-year period carrot dangled in Copenhagen and the promise to ramp that up to $100 billion a year from 2020 has not materialised. To refresh our memory, we quote the “accord” below:

The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010–2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation. Funding for adaptation will be prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island developing States and Africa. In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, developed countries commit to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.


Most wars have been fought to secure resources and to expand spheres of influence. This has become even clearer today as resource wars are fought under a variety of false pretenses. As the resources get depleted the intensity of the conflicts will increase. And so will the military budgets.

Military expenditure by the Industrialised nations went up by 50% since 2001 and rose to over $1.7 trillion in 2011. A mere fraction of that amount would save lives and help combat the ravages of global warming. Somebody figured that if a dollar represented one second it would require 32,000 years to reach 1 trillion. We are talking of huge sums here. If just 25% of the war budgets were to be set aside for climate mitigation/adaptation measure there would be $434.5bn in the kitty and the world would be the better for it. Just consider that one stealth bomber costs a whopping $1 billion.

Another source of funds would be for the rich nations to pay for the ecological debt owed the nations and regions that have borne centuries of prodigious exploitation and environmental damage. While debates go on in scholarly circles about how such a debt could be computed and to whom it would be paid, rich nations have simply refused to consider the notion. They insist on staying on the path of limitless and continuous growth. But it is noteworthy that “an economy based on growth and resource depletion cannot function globally, since it logically implies that power is accumulated in one part of the world and applied in another. It is in essence particularist, not universal: everyone cannot exploit everyone else at the same time.”

Climate change has become big business and false solutions are celebrated just as the naked emperor was hailed as being well dressed. Whereas it has been clear for a long time now that global warming is mostly man-made and is due to the huge amount of greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere by polluting activities involving the use of fossil fuels, preferred actions taken by nations and industries have been patently false actions. These actions are mostly predicated on the specious notion of carbon offsetting. The notion itself is built on the creed that financial markets hold the key to solving humankind’s problems.

Carbon offsets allow polluters to keep polluting provided they pay for it in cash (carbon tax) or imagine that some trees somewhere else in the world are absorbing an equivalent carbon as they are emitting in their activities. Thus while damaging the climate, polluters perform acts of indulgence through offsets.

For example, the so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) covers some of such offset schemes where projects that help reduce carbon emissions earn some carbon credits. Some really obnoxious projects get listed under the CDM. Gas to power projects utilizing gas that was otherwise flared make sense, except you consider the fact that gas flaring has been illegal in Nigeria since the gas reinjection law came into effect in 1984. There has also been a High Court judgment in the case of Jonah Gbemre versus Shell Development Petroleum Company over the gas flare at Iwerekhan, Delta State. The High Court sitting in Benin City ruled that gas flaring is an illegal activity, is unconstitutional and is an affront on the people’s human rights. That judgment was delivered in November 2005 but the flares continue to roar. The point here is that even if the gas to power plants succeeded in stopping gas flaring, they would simply have helped to stop an illegal activity and should not merit consideration as CDM projects. Qualifying projects are expected to be ones that bring in additionality, or that do some mitigating actions that would not have otherwise been done. Writing on this elsewhere we made the point that “Any compensation for such an activity flies in the face of reason. Gas flares are the most cynical manifestations of corporate insolence in the face of climate change and environmental health. The flares release greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous and sulphur oxides. Apart from these, the flares release other harmful substances that greatly affect human health.”

Just when we thought we had overcome slavery we are getting dragged away into not just carbon colonialism but carbon slavery. Carbon was placed on the market shelf through the acceptance of the CDM at the COP held in Kyoto in 1997. That opened the floodgates for carbon speculators, introduced inaction and benefited carbon cowboys while disasters hit the world’s vulnerable communities and sometimes the rich!

Market mechanisms threw Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) into the tray at the Bali climate meeting of 2009. REDD and its variants allow polluters to keep on at their business of polluting while “showing” that trees in a forest or plantation that they have secured somewhere else absorb the carbon they emit. Thus REDD projects permit pollution and cannot be said to reduce emissions. It is clear that the name itself is a sad joke. In addition, REDD does not stop deforestation, but at best defers or displaces it. A REDD scheme is a business scheme, pure and simple.

A declaration from the Climate Space at the World Social Forum held in Tunis in March 2013 insisted “We cannot put the future of nature and humanity in the hands of financial speculative mechanisms like carbon trading and REDD. REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), like Clean Development Mechanisms, is not a solution to climate change and is a new form of colonialism. In defence of Indigenous Peoples, local communities and the environment, we reject REDD+ and the grabbing of the forests, farmlands, soils, mangroves, marine algae and oceans of the world, which act as sponges for greenhouse gas pollution. REDD and its potential expansion constitutes a worldwide counter-agrarian reform which perverts and twists the task of growing food into a process of “farming carbon” called Climate Smart Agriculture.”

The Climate Space also opposed “proposals that want to expand the commodification, financialization and privatization of the functions of nature through the so-called “green economy” which places a price on nature and creates new derivative markets that will only increase inequality and expedite the destruction of nature.”

Groups like the No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) see REDD as a dangerous false solution to global warming primarily because it locks in pollution, just as the UN-REDD framework feared would be the case when the scheme was introduced. REDD locks out communities from their forests, impacts on their culture and strangulates their sources of livelihood. REDD schemes see forests and plantations as little more than carbon sinks.

Some REDD-like projects operate outside the purview of the UN-REDD coverage. One of such schemes is what has come to be called California REDD. Moves to include REDD projects in the State of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32 has drawn a lot of criticism from around the world because many believe that this would give impetus to similar schemes to mushroom around the world, granting polluters more space to keep on with their harmful activities thereby placing the world in deeper problems. It was in this wise that Oilwatch International denounced Shell oil company’s purchase of 500,000 carbon offsets credits from a forestry project on over 200,000 acres in Michigan, USA because it would grant Shell the permission to pollute at its refinery in Martinez, California.

In its own rejection of California REDD, NRAN recalls a situation in Mozambique, where a La Via Campesina study found that thousands of farmers in the N’hambita REDD project were paid meagre amounts for seven years for tending trees. “Because the contract is for ninety-nine years, if the farmer dies his or her children and their children must tend the trees without any further pay or compensation. This has been interpreted as a clear case of carbon slavery.”
Another false solution has been the presentation of agrofuels as a replacement of fossil fuels. It is a false solution because it keeps the fossil fuels paradigm and is equally polluting. Moreover it has triggered massive land grabs and even at its peak cannot replace fossil fuels because the amount of land needed to cultivate crops and the feedstock needed for production of agrofuels is simply not available on planet earth.

Geo-engineering and agricultural genetic engineering are other false solutions that lull humans to think that they can keep current polluting lifestyles and find techno-fixes for their addiction.

What must be done? Reflections on the challenge of climate change can leave us utterly exasperated considering the corporate capture of governments and the refusal of states to take actions that would benefit the people and the planet and not just the corporations. Although time is ticking fast, the peoples of the world must continually press for climate justice, understanding that no nation, rich or poor, is immune to the challenge of global warming. This has been amply illustrated by the tragic weather events that have fairly democratically impacted nations around the world.

These are undeniable:
1. Sea levels are rising
2. Arctic ice is melting – may lead to changes in ocean circulation
3. Sea-surface temperatures are rising
4. Acidification of sea water due to increase of dissolved carbon dioxide
5. Heavier rainfalls, hurricanes and floods are common
6. Droughts and desertification getting more intense
7. Crop failures

All these and more impact negatively on human lives and that of other species on planet earth. Urgent actions are needed across all nations. Among these we list:

1. A just global climate treaty that recognises historical responsibility, climate debt as well as legally binding emissions reduction
2. Elimination of market mechanisms (including CDM, REDD, REDD+) and all other false solutions from the climate regime
3. Rapid transition from dependence on fossil fuels - including in transportation, power generation and agriculture
4. Recycling of wastes
5. Make national laws that build mechanisms for climate mitigation and adaptation actions including coastal protection, combatting desertification
6. Stop gas flaring in the Niger Delta and at Badagary immediately
7. Stop fracking and other extreme extraction including drilling in the Artic region
8. Creation of communities climate defence committees that would set rules for physical developments as well as monitor impacts of climate change
9. Reducing consumption in line with planetary limits
10. Universal respect of Mother Earth rights as captured at the Cochabamba peoples summit on Climate Change.
11. Leave the fossils in the soil. Besides global warming, the environmental cost of fossils cannot justify a continued reliance on the resource. Reflect on Shell’s pollution of Ogoni land as captured by UNEP. Think also about the open scars created by tar sand extraction in Alberta, Canada. Think about Texaco’s destruction of the Ecuadorian Amazonia. Who benefits from all that? Certainly not the planet!
12. Set up Climate Tribunals to try Climate Criminals – the unrepentant polluters whether heads of corporations or states. Ecocide is no less a crime than genocide.

Conclusion: Our narrative must be the story of our lives told by us and dipped in our experiences. These words by Arundhati Roy are apt here:

"...If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low to the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them.
The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination - an imagination that is outside capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfilment.”


It is our life, we know how the rain has beaten us and for our long. Our narrative must not be stuck in the crisis narrative imagine about us by others. We must awake, arise, mobilise and work for the transformation of our society and planet – by all legitimate means available and necessary.

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This was a Keynote presented by Nnimmo Bassey at an Intensive Practical Course on Climate Change, Environmental Law, Regulation and Management hosted by The Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) at the University of Lagos, 20 May 2013
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Red Card for California REDD

The state of California, USA, has become the battleground for REDD-type projects. REDD is the acronym for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation. While there is no argument against deforestation and forest degradation, many critics and forest-dependent communities literally see red in the practical implications of REDD as a tool to combat global warming.

California is on the verge of allowing carbon credits obtained from forests and tree plantations anywhere in the world to be used as offsets for polluting activities at home. Targeted forests include those in Acre, Brazil as well as in Michigan in the USA.

In bringing up the UN-REDD Framework, the United Nations admitted that REDD could result in the “lock-up of forests,” “loss of land” and “new risks for the poor.” The No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) stated in a recent statement rejected the inclusion of REDD projects in the State of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB32. NRAN stated that just as the ‘UN predicted, in Africa, REDD and forest carbon projects are already resulting in “loss of land” in the form of massive evictions, as well as “new risks for the poor” in the form of servitude, slavery, persecutions and killings.’

Indigenous groups in Brazil and Mexico as well as NRAN and Oilwatch International have sent petitions to the Governor of California, the Chairman of California Air Resources Board and other officials of the California Environmental Protection Agency, demanding the exclusion of REDD from California’s climate solutions

The spread and diversity of the groups standing against California REDD stems from the fact that this may unlock an avalanche of REDD-type projects around the world. These projects would operate both outside and within the UN-REDD system. The implication according to Oilwatch International is that polluting companies such as Shell could continue polluting while imagining that their carbon emissions are offset by the carbon stored in trees in Brazil, Mexico, USA or Nigeria.

Critics see REDD as a dangerous false solution to global warming primarily because it locks in pollution. It also locks out communities from their forests, impacts on their culture and blocks off their sources of livelihood. REDD also does not halt deforestation but at best displaces this objectionable act to another location or merely delays it. Carbon offset projects exploit forests as mere carbon sinks.

Shell oil company recently purchased 500,000 carbon offsets credits from a forestry project on over 200,000 acres in Michigan “that not only will grant Shell’s refinery in Martinez, California permission to pollute, but will push the planet further down the road to catastrophic global warming”, according to Oilwatch International.

In Mozambique, La Via Campesina found in a study on the N’hambita REDD project in Mozambique that thousands of farmers were paid meagre amounts for seven years for tending trees. Because the contract is for ninety-nine years, if the farmer dies his or her children and their children must tend the trees without any further pay or compensation This has been interpreted as a clear case of carbon slavery. Regrettably, the N’hambita project was celebrated by the UN on the website for Rio+20, the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro last year.

Violent evictions in Uganda saw over 22,000 farmers with land deeds shoved off their land for a REDD-type project in 2011. In one of the incidents a sick eight-years old Friday Mukamperezida was killed when his home was razed.

In Nigeria REDD is already raising the spectre of persecution and criminalization of activists, including in Cross River State, Nigeria where the State of California intends to have REDD projects. The Executive Director of the Rainforest Resource and Development Centre (RRDC) in Cross River State, Nigeria, Mr Odey Oyama, had to flee his home for several weeks in January and February 2013 due to harassment and intimidation from state security agents. Odey is one of the vocal opponents of REDD activities aimed at extracting more forest estates from indigenous communities and similar land grab operations.

“One of the activities placing me in confrontation with the Cross River State Government of Nigeria is my stand against the REDD programme. My reason for rejecting the REDD programme is because it is geared towards taking over the last vestiges of community forest that exist in Cross River State of Nigeria,” declared Mr Oyama.

Land grabbing for plantation agriculture in Ogoni land, already decimated by pollution from the oil industry, has turned violent. The Government of Rivers State of Nigeria forcefully seized and gave away over 2000 hectares of community farmlands in Tai and Khana Local Government Areas to a Mexican company, Union De Iniciativa S.A. de C.V., for the cultivation of bananas possibly for export. A new report issued by the group Social Action indicates that at least three youths have been killed in relation to this land grab. The project was approved and has commenced without an environmental impact assessment as required by law.

In other parts of Africa, REDD is exacerbating threats to the cultural survival of Indigenous Peoples. According to “The DRC Case Study: The impacts of carbon sinks of Ibi-Batéké Project on the Indigenous Pygmies of the Democratic Republic of Congo” published by the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests, Batwa Pygmies suffer “servitude” on the World Bank’s Ibi-Batéké Carbon Sink Plantation. This REDD-type forest carbon plantation for fuel wood and charcoal is the DRC’s first Clean Development Project and claims to contribute to sustainable development and climate change mitigation. Pygmy leaders object to these projects and have denounced the World Bank for funding deforestation of their ancestral forests that not only releases emissions but also violates their rights, destroys their livelihood and causes social conflict.

In supporting the protest against California REDD from Brazilian organisations, several groups and movements from around the world stated in an open letter “We believe that their demand for a meaningful participation in any consultation process in Acre related to legislation or programmes linked to REDD activities that already or potentially affect their way of life is legitimate. Forest-dependent peoples have the right to give or withhold their consent to activities that deeply interfere with their way of living. Decisions regarding REDD+ legislation or programmes already do and will in future affect forest peoples' way of life. Given that such meaningful participation was absent from REDD+ processes in Acre or during the elaboration of recommendations to the government of California in this matter, we urge you not to include REDD offset credits into the California carbon trading scheme.”

That is a real red card for California REDD.

Politics of Ecological Defence

It cannot be denied that the multiple crises currently confronting humankind are intimately linked to our perception of nature’s resources and that this perception drives the manner by which these are exploited and utilised. The last century has been driven my the mindset that man can extract whatever is needed and if anything gets broken such can be easily fixed. This has been the path of limitless exploitation, limitless growth and limitless power. Unfortunately this exploitative system chooses to forget that the Planet Earth is finite and that most of what is being exploited is non-renewable.

For one, our concept of energy has been so shifted that what comes to mind when we think of energy is either electricity or the power to move objects and human beings. The faster we move objects or ourselves from one point to another convey a sense of satisfaction, achievement and even pleasure. The development and ultimate unravelling of capitalism can be understood in its overall view of nature as something to be exploited and not to be nurtured, respected and protected. This mindset requires examination so that we see clearly that the nature-society dialectic generating and compounding the unfolding ecological crises is not accidental.

A review of literature on the origins of reckless despoliation of the environment as mankind’s ambition to accumulate by cornering common goods for private enjoyment shows that this trend was visible even at the transition from feudalism to industrialisation in Europe. The reality is simply getting worse across the world today. Some commentators point out that technology is not the primary driver of man’s antagonistic relationship with nature “but rather the nature and logic of capitalism as a specific mode of production.”

The concept of disaster capitalism has been well defined by writers like Naomi Klein and we increasingly have situations where catastrophes are seen as opportunities for business. When floods, earthquakes or tsunamis level the properties of the weak in society, the power brokers sweep in, demolish what may be left standing and then appropriate everything without any sense of accountability or responsibility. Some of these disasters have been termed “natural disasters” whereas they are clearly the result of the activities of humans.

Someone was quoted as saying that oil spills make economic sense in that they could generate new businesses for those who would handle the clean-ups. In fact this “witness” at an hearing even went as far as insisting that where fishermen are displaced from their trade they would have an opportunity of staring a new line of work perhaps with any compensations they may be paid.

It may sound crude, but this captures the basic sense in the drive for disposition, acquisition, accumulation for profit. In this context there is pretty little economic difference between activities that maintain the integrity of natural ecosystems and those that destroy people and their environment. The narrow pursuit of profit makes it impossible to see into the future, as whatever can be grabbed now is fair game.

The environment is the theatre of life. We are part of it and not apart from it. We do not own it and cannot reasonably appropriate it as private property. This is what makes the continued colonisation of the atmosphere through unmitigated pumping greenhouse gases unreasonable and utterly unacceptable. Defending the environment is an unavoidable political duty.

As the exploitation of nature draws to the zenith of unreasonableness, merchants are now seeing nature as an object for speculation and wholesale commodification. Good concepts such as sustainable development are being turned on their heads. The concept of Green Economy on which even the brownest sectors cling turns out to be a platform insisting that nature cannot be defended except it is assigned a monetary value and absolutely ignoring the intrinsic value of nature.

On the whole, the expansion of capital conveniently overlooks the ruination of nature. This is why the Nigerian environment, from the South to the North, has been so utterly abused and ignored. We are confronted with a situation where land is grabbed with brute force, forests have been chopped down, pollution is rife and wastes are not adequately taken care of.

The sorry state of the Nigerian environment is best seen through the lens of the impacts of the oil and gas sector. The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) assessment of the Ogoni environment shows the level of ecocide inflicted by over five decades of reckless exploitation. UNEP surmises that it would require about 30 years of work to detoxify the Ogoni environment where active oil extraction was shut down in 1993. Almost two years after the presentation of that report to the government of Nigeria little has been seen by way of responses to the clear situation of environmental emergency the report announces.

The system of nature is circular and these remain in a state of recycling and replenishment until man interferes with them. Current dominant production systems are linear and overload natural systems with excessive amounts of waste products. The governing creed appears to be that the more polluting the action, the more profitable they are. And, in a twisted sense, that is right because it extends the doctrine of pillage and brigandage in which environmental costs are externalised to the poor and to nature.

Transnational corporations are in the vanguard of the unrelenting assault on nature. By their mode of operation they are forever seeking ways to block the doors of justice and not to do what is right. State companies driven by similar neoliberal principles are just as bad.

What is to be done? Shall we throw up our hands in despair because the challenges are daunting? The simple answer is that this is not the time to despair. It is the time to organise! We have the seeds for the growing of national as well as pan-African movements for ecological justice. These must be deepened, expanded and linked with the global wave of movements taking their stand on this. It is the right time to place the ecological question in the heart of our political debates and plans of action. We are the people of the environment: our lives, culture and production are embedded and intertwined with nature.

We must act to break the transactional relationship with nature by exploitative forces. It is time to take a clear stand and fight to build a real and radical path for change based on the empowerment of our people to defend their patrimony, ensure justice and equity. In the struggle for environmental/ecological justice when we pretend to be neutral we simply show that we are accomplices in the despoliation of nature.

This blog was written for SPN bulletin

Draft Petroleum Industry Bill Not Strong on Environmental Protection

I thank Spaces for Change for the excellent and focused work done on the Petroleum Industry Bill. Your Frequently Asked Questions on the PIB document should be required basic reading for those seeking clarity on the issues.

Nature’s Resources

We need to remind ourselves at the outset that crude oil and gas are neither produced by oil companies or by communities that are sometimes erroneously labelled as oil producing communities. These fossil fuels have been produced by nature over thousands, if not millions of years. A correct way to understand natural resources is to humbly see them as Nature's resources. Drilling kilometres into the bowels of the earth actually is a violation of nature. It isn't wisdom or smartness.

Oil companies merely extract oil/gas. They never produce any. The Nigerian government collects oil/gas rents. The poor communities are best described as oil companies impacted communities.

The PIB ought to be predicated on the premise that the Petroleum Resources sector is a highly polluting sector. It should also have the clear understanding that the resources are non-renewable and are thus finite. It is not a resource that will be available or useful in perpetuity. They will either be exhausted or may simply fall out of use. This demands utmost care to ensure socially and environmentally acceptable practices. Acts that are socially and environmentally irredeemably contaminating ought to be shut down for the sake of present and future generations, irrespective of how lucrative they may be. Laws on environmental, social and related impact assessments suggest this.

Oil spills and gas flares should be dealt with as environmental security matters for the entire planet, not just Nigeria, and clear powers to regulate and control activities, punish violators and restore the environment should be identified – and such should be with the Ministry of Environment and not those related to Petroleum Resources.

Gas Flaring

The provisions on the contentious issues of gas flaring leave a lot to be desired. Gas flaring is already illegal in Nigeria (since 1984 and confirmed by a High Court decision in 2005). The PIB seeks to legalise illegality when it overlooks these facts. Gas flaring is wasteful treatment of nature's resource and harms both the people and the local as well as global environment. This obnoxious act is a prime example of climate denial.

Section 201(1) provides that the Minister may permit and penalise gas flaring as deemed fit (by the Minister). Section 277(2) states that the fine for gas flaring shall not be less than the commercial value of the gas. The PIB should clearly state this in Section 201(1) to avoid the Minister lowering the fine to below commercial value. Indeed, the punishment for gas flaring should not be limited to fines but should have weightier consequences considering its criminal nature.

While the draft PIB states that gas flaring should end on 31 December 2012 Section 275 states “Natural gas shall not be flared or vented after a date (‘the flare-out date’) to be prescribed by the Minister…). This contradiction should be eliminated. An illegal act is already illegal and does not need a terminal date. That date ceased from the moment the act became an illegal. In any case, 31 December 2012 has come and gone - just like other 31 Decembers.
Discretionary powers, Seeking and accepting Gifts and stuffs like that
The section (33) prescribing the powers to receive gifts should be eliminated. Seeking gifts smacks of a lack of sense of ownership of the resources in the first instance. It is also an open door for corrupt activities.

Discretionary powers of the President to award petroleum leases should not be condoned by the PIB. Such powers provide avenues for questionable practices that abort efforts at transparency and due process. Accordingly, Section 191 should be expunged outright.

Publish What You Pump

Provisions for independently verifiable metering of extracted oil and gas should be stipulated in the PIB. A situation where the State does not know actual daily volumes of extracted crude oil and gas makes nonsense of any talks of transparency and feeds corrupt practices of players in the sector and their cohorts. This is the bedrock of the oil thefts that has become a national refrain. It is also the reason we cannot know our oil reserves figures or even how much oil is dumped into our environment.

Ownership, Control and criminalisation of Communities

Investing in the technological development of the sector is mandatory if true ownership and control of the resources is to be secured. There is no real ownership without operational control. A read the history of the often-cited Norwegian model shows a clear understanding and practice of this. They outlawed gas flaring right from the onset, invested in technological and manpower development and equally determined to proceed on a controlled pace.

True ownership must include that of the communities living within the areas impacted by these activities. Community ownership should be positioned in a way that promotes adequate contribution to the national economy/purse as well as securing protection of the environment and investments. Sections 116-118 providing for Petroleum Host Communities Fund scratches the issue and requires deepening. For example it is not acceptable that communities should bear cost of environmental restoration following incidents (including civil unrest!) in the oil field simply because a member of the community contributed to the incident. This sort of punishment criminalises communities and cannot be accepted.

Section 294(4) equally criminalises Local and State governments for acts perceived to have been caused by sabotage. With these levels of government not controlling security outfits it is objectionable that they should be punished for security lapses that may result in sabotage.

Moreover, the deductions made before payment into the fund ensures that only tokens get paid as the oil operators are clearly in charge of determination of their production costs.

Locus Standi

The enforcement of the rights of Nigerians to a safe environment has been difficult. Our adversarial legal system sometimes blocks the route to justice by claiming that citizens lack locus standi. The PIB is an opportunity to state unambiguously that every citizen has a right to seek redress for any act of environmental harm irrespective of whether the impact is direct or indirect. Our environment is interlinked. We are all connected. We all suffer impacts.

Regular Environmental Audits

The PIB should require periodic environmental audits and also prescribe mandatory remediation of impacted or damaged environment. There is an emergency in the land. When the UNEP report stated (in their report of August 2011) that it will require about 30 years to clean-up the pollution of the waters of Ogoniland and 5 years to clean the land it was a diplomatic way of saying that if the Nigerian state did not act with utmost seriousness right away, we may as well start to sing a dirge for the land and its people. And for us all. Ogoni polluted, is everywhere polluted.

No Go Zones

Sections 198 and 199 require that oil operators must not damage commercial trees or sacred sites/objects. Where there is damage the operator would be required to pay "fair and adequate compensation." Going by current compensation regimes this is an opening for continued impunity, destruction and desecration. The PIB would serve a better purpose by simply saying there must be no petroleum prospecting or mining in such areas. Considering the extensive damage already inflicted on the Niger Delta environment it is not too much to declare some places as no-go areas for oil/gas prospecting activities. (Ends)
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The above were the talking points at Space for Change conference on the draft Petroleum Industry Bill by Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of the Board, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria, Port Harcourt, 23.04.2013

Nigeria: National and Global Environmental Challenges

Introduction

The truth that we have only one planet Earth and that our environment is deeply interconnected is daily being played out in the web of crises confronting the world today. They may appear not to be closely linked but a close look shows that there are strands revealing that they are held together by a clear logic. This logic pertains to reinforced fields of perception in which transactional actions have shut out the doors of transformational actions. This training hopefully will help us to ask questions, interpret events robustly and take actions to prise open the shut doors of justice as we relate to our environment and nature’s resources.

Nature’s resources belong to nature. When humans term them “natural resources” the implication is that these resources occur naturally and can thus be grabbed or taken by the quickest, the strongest and the most brazen.
Resolving or at least tackling the endemic environmental problems of the world requires that we critically review the root causes of some of these problems as well as the political filters through which we view them. Anything short of this means that we simply skirt the problems or at best tackle the symptoms while the problems fester and eventually develop into catastrophic proportions. Some policy makers consider the number one task of safeguarding the environment to be the demolition of so-called illegal structures and informal settlements, even though we know our cities cannot survive without them.

Nigeria has many environmental problems. Indeed, you will find as many of these problems and challenges as you care to name. Some of these challenges include the following:

• Deforestation, illegal logging, bush burning, over grazing
• Desertification
• Industrial pollution, chemical pollution
• Oil pollution- including oil spills, toxic wastes and gas flaring
• Mining issues
• Solid waste management/medical wastes/electronic wastes/plastics
• Erosion – gully, coastal, etc.
• Floods/droughts – most of our cities lack drainage plans. The rural communities are at the mercy of the elements.
• Water pollution
• Sanitation
• Land grabs
• False climate solutions – agrofuels, REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation)

We can add noise pollution to this list. The careless attitude of the citizenry adds to the problems. A casual look around shows plastic water sachets all over most of our cities and even police/military checkpoints on our highways. These block drains, dirty the environment and are not biodegradable.

Geography and Demography

Nigeria has a total land area of 923, 768 Km2 of which 13,000 Km2 is taken up by water bodies. About 35% of the land mass is arable and the coastline stretches over 853 km. The border with Benin is 773 km long; with Cameroon 1,690 km; Chad 87 km and with Niger 1,497 km.

In terms of elevation the land lies lowest at 0m on the Atlantic Ocean coast to the highest peak of 2,419m at Chappal Waddi, a mountain in Taraba State. The low-lying nature of the land heightens threats of flooding from sea level rise.
The country has wide climatic variations even though it lies wholly within the tropical zone. It is equatorial at the coast, tropical a bit inland and arid to the farther north. There are two main seasons: the dry season that generally occurs from November to March and a rainy season from April to October. Temperatures reach highs of 32-38°C but relatively cool nights, dropping as low as 12°C (54°F) at the Jos Plateau area. Along the coast, the average rainfall varies from about 180 cm to about 430 cm. Rainfall decreases to around 130 cm further inland and dips to 50 cm in the far north.

At the 2006 census the population of Nigeria stood at 143 million. The population growth rate is put at 1.99% while the average life expectancy for males is 48 years and for females a slightly higher 49 years. For the Niger Delta the average life expectancy stands at a paltry 41 years and with 60% of the population below 30 years this is very significant. The national median age hovers around 19 years.

Global Logic, Local impacts

Although measures are taken by the Nigerian government to tackle some of the prevailing environmental challenges there is little effect to show for these efforts. This happens because the problems cannot be resolved with cosmetic solutions. What is needed is system change. The current system is inherently anti-people and anti-environment. The system is one that sees the environment as something to be exploited, used and discarded rather than as something to be cared for and respected. The system is driven by the market logic that has been raised by the apostles of neo-liberalism to the status of religion. In this system the gods of the market cannot do any wrong. It is a system that thrives on competition, fights rough and respects only power. The system believes that whatever is needed can be created and whatever is broken can be technologically fixed. It also believes that whatever can be extracted must be extracted and whoever resists must be crushed.

We should say at this point that the rise of the market has led to a situation where rather than accumulating wealth from excess labour of exploited workers, today profit is made through what some term innovative financial instruments. In the environmental sphere some of these have been built on the backs of climate negotiation as well as on the so-called Green Economy. Economists describe this process as financialisation.

We see the environmental expression also in the commodification of nature. The Green Economy idea itself is premised on the suggestion that nature is best protected when it is assigned a monetary value. In other words, people would not protect or defend Mother Earth except a price tag is placed on it. The sort of questions that are raised before nature is protected would be “what is the Ikogosi Warm Spring (Ekiti State) worth in Naira terms”? If it has a low value it could be neglected, auctioned or even destroyed.

After reading the article from which the quote below was taken, Pablo Solon tweeted this: “Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalism. Social & Environmental justice is only possible with system change.”
In recent decades, developments in technology, finance, and international trade have generated new waves and forms of insecurity for leading capitalist economies, making life increasingly unequal and chancier for not only the lower and working classes but much of the middle class as well. The right has largely ignored the problem, while the left has sought to eliminate it through government action, regardless of the costs. Neither approach is viable in the long run. Contemporary capitalist polities need to accept that inequality and insecurity will continue to be the inevitable result of market operations and find ways to shield citizens from their consequences -- while somehow still preserving the dynamism that produces capitalism's vast economic and cultural benefits in the first place.
Globalization often manifests in the movement of goods and services. The driving geopolitical forces are sometimes hidden because the faces that are visible are the international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Funds. This is why the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of the 1980s and the so-called Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are seen as the sins of the IMF and the WB whereas there are political superstructures behind these entities.

The SAPs threw our country and other African nations into the debt trap. Futile attempts to escape the trap are premised on efforts to make these payments from exploitation of natural resources for exports. Because the prices of those commodities are set remotely they are sometimes be so low that raising reasonable revenue necessitates deeper and more drastic exploitation of natural resources. In such desperate situations environmental concerns are the least worries of neoliberal and predatory governments.

There is a direct link between environmental protection and politics. The more inclusive of the people a system is the environment friendly the government would be. According to the first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize for environmental activism, the late Wangari Maathai,

What we've learned in Kenya--the symbiotic relationship between the sustainable management of natural resources and democratic governance--is also relevant globally. Indeed, many local and international wars, like those in West and Central Africa and the Middle East, continue to be fought over resources. In the process, human rights, democracy and democratic space are denied...

With regard to the Nigerian context, besides other causes, the major reason why massive pollutions are tolerated by government has been because the polluters generate the bulk of the revenue government needs for its activities. We have infernally polluting international oil companies in mind here. In some other areas these manifest as land grabs, displacing local communities from their lands and forests in order to make way for that thing that poor governments are so addicted to: foreign direct investment

Whenever there appears to be a call for responsible behaviour all the companies do is to threaten to pull out of the oil fields to blackmail government to withdraw and be content with the oil rents they receive. A recent fad has been the selling off of some oil fields to local companies. We are yet to hear that any of them has sold off their pipelines. They retain ownership of the pipelines and continue to reap revenue from these, as the local companies must pay to use them.

It is interesting that the same transnational polluters are closely advising the government on issues that have implications for environmental quality in Nigeria. For example, they sit on the board of the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) while they are exempted by law from being regulated themselves.
Recall that the coming into existence of NESREA effectively repealed the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) Decree 58 of 1988 later amended in Decree 59 of 1992. FEPA was created in 1992 following the embarrassment of the toxic wastes dumped at Koko in Delta State Nigeria in 1988. The first reaction of government after the Koko debacle was the promulgation of the Harmful Waste Decree 42 of 1988.

It can be said that our more recent environmental laws have been largely reactive. And some actions are taken without enabling laws to ensure suitability and evaluation. Here we have in mind the creation of the Hydrocarbons Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP) one year after the damning report of the assessment of the Ogoni environment by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). When HYPREP was known to have emerged, we wrote a blog on it and stated among others:

Considering that it took twelve months before government made this announcement it is not surprising that the major reason why this was made at all was, according to sources, to calm frayed nerves in Ogoniland by demonstrating “government’s commitment to implement the harmonised recommendations of UNEP report.” This is no public information so far about what these “harmonised recommendations” are. What we do know, however, is that the reviewers of the UNEP report consider some of the recommendations as not being “actionable.” It is not clear how the classification was arrived at.

Environmental Damage Foretold

The environmental crisis in the world today has gone so deep that we can almost say that the world is facing a real possibility of massive ecological collapse. This is not far-fetched because it is already known that available planetary resources cannot sustain the current rate of consumption. With the reality of peak oil has come the rise of extreme extraction. Humanity is working to show that resources and lifestyles can be sustained or stretched no matter the cost – even if it means scraping the bottom of the planet. This mentality has given rise to reprehensible extreme extraction such as fracking or hydraulic fracturing. This is also the reason for tar sands extraction and the proposed extraction of bitumen in Nigeria.

Fracking is one clear indication that the team of climate deniers is still powerful. Conservative bodies such as the World Bank, the International Environmental Agency and even PricewaterhouseCoopers stated clearly in reports issued before COP18 in Doha that at least 80% of known reserves of fossil fuels must be left untapped if the world is to avoid catastrophic temperature rise.

In an open letter to governments on this issue, climate justice activists stated “If we want a 50-50 chance of staying below two degrees, we have to leave 2/3 of the known reserves of coal and oil and gas underground; if we want an 80% chance, we have to leave 80% of those reserves untouched. That's not "environmentalist math" or some radical interpretation--that's from the report of the International Energy Agency last month.”

While looking at these global trends, we remind ourselves that the challenges facing the Nigerian environment are enormous and multifaceted. It is common knowledge that various sectors of the national economy have suffered gross neglect over the past decades. The environment has suffered special injury because the implications of certain aspects of the neglect are not immediately visible, as would for example the decay of infrastructures such as road buildings, water supplies and telecommunications. Demands for environmental protection may even at times be viewed as anti-progress or development. Some times policy makers simply act as though they expect that the problems would disappear on their own. That has never happened to mountains of refuse. They don’t happen with polluted streams. They don’t happen with oil spills in waterways and farmlands. They don’t happen at the local or global levels.

REDD, Land Grabs and Evictions

REDD would make sense if it was not hinged on carbon markets and if the protection of intact natural forests were to be its principal or even minimal objective. Under the mechanism industrial tree plantations qualify as ‘forests.’ This odd definition of forests allows for forests to be seen as any set of trees that can act as carbon sinks. This opens up special threats of natural forests being replaced by plantations and still being classified as forests simply because trees are seen as mere carbon stocks and little or nothing else. It does not even matter whether the trees are exotic species including those that are genetically engineered. The threat is endless.

The very reason REDD in all its varieties has been attractive to African governments and others is that they choose to believe the false claim that REDD halts deforestation. There is also the general thought that the exact carbon stock in trees can be estimated and that securing those stocks would ensure that polluters elsewhere can keep on polluting believing that the carbon in the trees make up for their pollution.

As a vehicle for the commodification of nature, REDD provides the space for African governments to be baited with cash while industrialised nations continue their polluting pattern and intensify the re-colonisation of the continent
The REDD programme is also works to elongate the world’s dependence on dirty energy forms as represented by crude oil, gas and coal. To achieve this, REDD has been positioned in the carbon markets and presented as a means of offsetting the rampant release of destructive greenhouse gases houses generated to support fast and high consumption lifestyles and being pumped into the atmosphere.

REDD, REDD+ or whatever other proposed variants are all threats to Africa. They threaten the rights of forest dependent communities and provide mechanisms for displacement of populations and appropriation of their resources as well.

REDD-like projects have already manifested direct threats to forest dependent and indigenous peoples/communities in Africa. One of the most troubling is the case of over 20,000 farmers in Uganda that were forcefully evicted from their land in 2011. At that incident a sick 8-years old boy, Friday Mukamperezida was burned to death when his home was razed.

It is for this and other reasons that a No REDD in Africa Network (NRAN) was born at the World Social Forum 2013 in Tunisia.

Large tracts of land have been grabbed in Nigeria ostensibly for agricultural purposes. The more publicised cases in Nigeria are those of the Zimbabwean farmers in Kwara State and that of a Mexican company whose desire to cultivate bananas in Ogoni land is meeting stiff resistance. Other lands have been grabbed for cultivation of crops for production of ethanol for machines rather than food for people.

We must not forget that the bulk of the food produced in Africa come from small family farms that are primarily cultivated for family needs. Although these can also be found in urban areas, most of them are located in rural areas. Before the economic adjustment programmes came into being, governments were concerned with programmes that assisted farmers in local food production to meet national needs.

A study by Friends of the Earth groups revealed that over 100,000 hectares of land have already been grabbed in Nigeria for the cultivation of the crops meant for the production of ethanol or some other fuels.
The crops most targeted in Nigeria are cassava, jatropha and to some extent sugarcane. Cassava appears to be the most attractive to the speculators and this poses special threats in a number of ways. First, when food crops are used for fuel, food shortages or food price increases are direct outcomes. Second, agencies bent on introducing unproven genetic engineering crop varieties see this as a big opening because they can argue that crops for use as fuels do not affect the human food chain and therefore should raise no concerns.

Already, GE cassava modified for enhanced levels of vitamin A (which can easily be obtained by eating carrots, etc.) have been field tested by the Nigerian Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike. Just as the application and approval of the field-testing was shrouded in secrecy and controversy, so are the results and application of the outcome unknown to the Nigerian public.

Genetically engineered crops cause serious biodiversity erosion as they promote one/few variety and are used in monoculture industrial scales.

Desertification and Climate Conflicts

The pace of desertification in Northern Nigeria is well known and documented. It is also indisputable that desertification is one of the key environmental challenges facing Nigeria and indeed all of sub-Saharan Africa. It has been estimated that the desert area is increasing at the rate of more than half a kilometre every year and that about 35 million Nigerians are directly impacted by this menace. When seen in the filter of one of the most urgent crises of our time, climate change, it becomes clear that Nigeria faces a peculiar risk of being swallowed up by two migrating forces – water, from rising sea levels and sand, from spreading desertification.

The interconnectedness of the environment compounds the situation because the neglect of one territory or country does not exempt other regions from suffering the shared impacts. Such is the case of global warming and climate change. Local actions and inactions add up to a global crisis. This problem also presents itself in a particularly interesting way in Nigeria. We plant trees in the north to halt the downward march of the desert, but burn the skies through gas flaring in the south thus ensuring desertification.

About 50-70% of the landmass of 11 states (Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara) is estimated to be impacted and under severe threat. Besides global warming other factors aiding the process of desertification include bush fires, degradation of vegetation cover, poor irrigation and grazing practices. It is clear that although Nigeria has a National Drought and Desertification Policy and a National Drought Preparedness Plan, desertification remains a key challenge. The annual tree planting exercises appear to be futile labours except the main factors aiding the phenomenon are confronted and dealt with.

We posit that the conflicts between pastoralists and farmers in the Middle Belt, especially in the Plateau region are essentially climate-induced conflicts that are conveniently coloured as religious or communal rifts. A restoration of the grazing fields of the far north and suitable management of the water resources of Lake Chad would drastically reduce the southward migration of the pastoralists and the resultant conflicts.

Lake Chad shrank from an area of 25,000 square kilometres in 1963 to under 1,500 square kilometres in 2001. The Lake is bordered by Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria, but shares a hydrological basin with four other countries: the Central African Republic, Algeria, Sudan and Libya.

International Environmental Agreements

Nigeria is party to many international agreements related to the environment. These are ones related to Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands.
Oil, Gas and Mining

Related to desertification and climate change is the vital need to halt gas flaring in the Niger Delta.
Gas flares contribute to a release of a green house gases into the atmosphere and thus contributes to global warming. Thus we plant trees in the North and roast the skies in the South, working directly against our own best interests.
The operations of the oil industry engender conflicts and also directly impact Nigeria’s wetlands, water and sanitation as well as pollution generally. Close to 1000 oil spills occur every year. Shell alone admits to over 200 oil spill incidents a year. Thousands of barrels of produced water and drilling mud are dumped into the waterways and lands of the Niger Delta. These portend very serious violations and expose the people and environment to severe harm.
Apart from oil and gas, mining has left serious footprints in the Nigerian environment. The abandoned tin mines of Jos stand as stark reminders of the hazardous nature of extractive activities. Tailings and toxic wastes are still left unattended to.

The extractive of building materials may appear benign, but blasting of rocks in the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja) and limestone in Ebonyi State are known to have impacted negatively on rural environments – dusts, cracked buildings, etc. Ragged rocks in the Abuja environments have jeopardised the lives of both man and beast.

Flood and Erosion

Coastal erosion is a major challenge in the South. This problem is aggravated by sea level rise. In some areas canalisation and movements of heavy machineries and vessels compound coastal erosion. In the East, gully erosion has become a nightmare to many communities. The earth literally opens its mouth eating up land and swallowing houses. The federal ministry of agriculture estimates that 35 million tonnes of soil are washed away by erosion annually in Nigeria, mostly by gully erosion in the southeast, where the rain forests have been most severely depleted in the last three decades. Between 1981-1994 Nigeria has been said to lose 3.7 million hectares of forest and farmlands to erosion and other forms of soil degradation.

"The situation is not only dangerous for agriculture in terms of lost farmland, there is also the threat of significant but adverse changes in weather and the soil system," As the pressure on land intensifies communal conflicts also rise. It is believed that the only chance of averting the looming disaster lies with halting the process of deforestation and reclaiming the land already lost. The practice of bush burning depletes vegetation, and also kills off the soil's nutrients, weakens its elasticity and diminishes its capacity to resist erosion.

Industrial Pollution

A study of the discharge of heavy metals into the Challawa River in Kano gives an indication of the level of pollution of water bodies by industries in Nigeria’s key cities. The abstract of a research conducted on the Challawa River by S. DAN’AZUMI and M.H. BICHI of the Department of Hydraulics and Hydrology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, University Teknologi Malaysia and the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria respectively captures this situation.

“The study analyzed the effect of heavy metals discharge, from industrial effluents, on River Challawa in Kano, Nigeria. The Challawa River is used for many purposes including irrigation, fishing and water supply. Sampling was conducted during wet (September) and dry (May) season. Wastewater samples at the point of discharge into the river were collected and analyzed. The mean level of Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn, Fe and Mn discharged into the river, during dry season, were 2.297, 1.290, 1.051, 2.986, 9.408 and 2.054 mg L-1 respectively. Similarly, the mean discharge of these metals, during wet season, was 1.634, 0.727, 1.252, 22.230, 8.911, and 2.013mg L-1 respectively. The discharge Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn into the river, for both seasons, has exceeded the maximum permissible limit given by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency of Nigeria (FEPA) and WHO.“

Waste – solid, liquid, medical, POPs etc

The handling of solid and liquid wastes in Nigeria leaves much to be desired. Where solid wastes are dumped at designated places, such dumpsites are often abandoned burrow pits from where earth fillings may have been excavated for roads or similar construction works. These pits are neither designed nor built to serve as dumpsites. They are just holes in the ground and convenient spots to keep wastes away from population centres. It would appear that the thinking is that once the mountains of waste are not in sight, then they are safely kept away. But with pits that are not lined, heavy metals and others get leached into the ground waters.
Most of our cities do not have integrated sewage handling systems and households and building complexes are served by individual septic tanks and soak away pits. We need little imagination to see that this is not a healthy way to dispose of wastes especially when we know that the construction of those pits are not closely supervised for quality control.

Deforestation – including mangrove forests

Estimates have it that Nigeria loses 3,000 hectares of vegetation per year through tree-felling, bush-burning and general desertification. It is also believed that over the past four decades, 96 percent of Nigeria’s pristine forests have been cut down. It is common knowledge that Nigeria, which once had large areas of rainforests, now has only about 5% of such forests standing. As a result of the loss of this vital natural resource, it is now estimated that up to 75% of the nation’s furniture needs are met with imported timber. The minimum reasonable forest cover of our country according to FAO standards should be 25%.

One of the most important forest reserves in Nigeria is the Omo-Oluwa-Shasha Forest Reserves with its forest elephants and chimpanzees. The threats to this forest include that of logging, hunting and clearance for farming. According to reports, about 40 per cent of natural forest still remains here. While Omo and Shaha reserves are still connected, the Oluwa area is isolated.

One other important forest reserve in Nigeria is the Cross River National Forest. This forest has a lot of conservation focus but a part of it, at Ekuri, is earmarked as a REDD project area. This is not only a threat to the forest, but poses special threat to the forest dependent communities in the area who are not aware of the implications of REDD and expected restriction of access to the forest and its resources.
Another threat to the remaining forests is their conversion into monoculture plantations such as has happened at Okumo and Iguobazuwa Forests in Edo State where the Ose River Company otherwise known as Michelin has converted parts into rubber plantations. When the fact of uncontrolled logging is added, it is easy to see why our forests are disappearing so rapidly. A 2006 UNEP study estimated an annual deforestation rate of 0.76% in Nigeria covering some 663,000 ha.

Deforestation is not just about losing trees; it leads to loss of top soil and soil nutrients. It also degrades water bodies and when protection of water shed is lost this can lead to drying up of streams and rivers.
The consequence of the reduced tree-cover due to deforestation and loss of topsoil means that in Sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls, who are responsible for over 70 per cent of water collection, have to spend more time travelling to fetch water. According to UN estimates, women in Sub-Saharan Africa spend 200 million hours per day collecting water for food and farming purposes, or 40 billion hours annually.

Biosafety, Food and Agriculture

Africa appears to be a battleground for GMOs. The arguments used are that Africans are hungry and that genetically modified crops yield better, are more nutritious and lead to use of less pesticides. However, after over a decade of commercial introduction of GMOs in the world, the crops are still restricted to a handful of countries. Food aid channels have been used in to push GMOs into Africa with the most visible resistance coming from Zambia in 2002. Two years later the battleground shifted to Angola and Sudan over milled or non-milled corn food aid.

Experiments to introduce genetically modified potato in Kenya failed after an investment of $6 million in experimentations. Genetically modified corn failed massively in South Africa this year. The much hyped genetically engineered cotton in the Makathini Flats of South Africa has also turned to be a bad tale after all the promotions that the crop would eliminate poverty among the small scale farmers there.

Nigerian promoters of GMOs keep citing Burkina Faso’s Bt cotton as a roaring success. The truth is that the harvest was a bitter pill for the farmers in that country as the cotton turned up with shorter fibres than the conventional cotton they had been planting. This has left the farmers writhing in losses.

The issue of modern agricultural biotechnology is a contentious one. For one, rather than seeking to regulate the sector, the Nigerian government set up the Nigeria Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA) without having adequate regulatory framework such as a Biosafety Law in place. In a recent newspaper interview the head of NABDA declared, “My major concern is that we should not be over regulated”. That the NABDA boss repeated this favourite line of commercial genetic engineering proponents that abhors regulation was really shocking. The argument for running without restraint is often that Africans are hungry and that the only way to ensure food “security” is through genetic engineering applications.

However, we argue that food security can best be attained within the context of food sovereignty. Food security is mainly concerned with availability and accessibility of food, keeping down the numbers of the hungry. Food sovereignty on the other hand goes beyond this to demand that such foods must be wholesome, culturally appropriate and are produced on the principles of agro-ecology to ensure maintenance of environmental integrity. Clearly modern biotechnology is against the achievement of food sovereignty as its products go against the grain of local contexts/environments and do not respect local knowledge but rather are dictated by corporate interests and those of governments who are bent on promoting the corporate takeover of food production and marketing systems around the world.

Apart from the USA and a few countries in Latin America, the other nation were GMOs have taken up large tracts of farmland is India. The story of farmers’ suicides in India has been repeatedly told. Reasons for the sad turn of events include indebtedness and crop failures. A long quote talking to the state of GMOs in India is in good order here.

Owing to their potentially harmful impacts on health, environment, farmer income and national self reliance, and the failure of India's GM regulatory mechanisms, a moratorium on open-air field trials of GM crops was unanimously recommended last year by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, consisting of 31 members of Parliament across parties. Recently, an interim report by the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee recommended a 10-year moratorium on most GM crops and over 150 eminent Indian scientists have refuted submissions by the ministry of agriculture and supported these recommendations. Despite this, the fundamental issues that could save farmers' lives and livelihoods remain unattended while there is continuous lobbying to accept a risky technology that is currently grown on just 3.4 per cent of the world's agricultural land.

Importantly, researchers have shown that the claim that GMOs yield higher than conventional varieties is patently false. The Nature Biotechnology journal published a study in February 2013 showing that several varieties of GE seeds actually achieved reduced yields when compared to conventional counterparts. The researchers analysed 20 years of data from test plots and reached their conclusions that the higher yield kite is a myth.

Land and Urban development

Urbanisation has also put additional pressure on the Nigerian environment. With massive rural-urban relocations, pressure is put on existing infrastructure that is scarcely updated. Apart from problems of congestion, noise pollution and sewage problems, urban sprawl and unchecked expansions create acute social problems. The issue of slums is well known, but the handling of related challenges has often been rather anti-people.
Urbanisation makes a hard footprint on the country’s landscape and places serious pressure on agricultural land. The fact that urbanisation also impacts access to land and land ownership is easily appreciated.
It is estimated that by 2025 up to 60% of Nigerians will be living in urban areas. This will not only create unique problems, it will sound another death knell to our receding rural areas.

What Must be Done

1. Declare a National Environmental Emergency
2. National environmental audit and management plan
3. Detoxification of the Nigerian environment
4. Ecological Funds strictly monitored and used to remediate or restore damaged environment - Strict sanitation and waste management.. All over 4000 oil spills sites should be revisited and cleaned up urgently.
5. Massive reforestation programme across the nation.
6. At least 10% of national budget set aside for 2-5 above
7. Coherence brought in between government structures to ensure convergence of efforts
8. Stop gas flares. Usher in a real energy evolution - clean & renewable energy. Decentralises power supply based on community or regional grids
9. Halt new oil concessions and install meters at appropriate points to determine outflows from flow stations.

Conclusion

When it is said that the environment is our life, a significant implication is that we are all children of the universe. The sun remains the key source of energy for all creatures. For the survival of living creatures the water cycle must not be broken. Breaking the vital cycles of nature has dire consequences for all living beings on the planet.
When we strive to defend the Nigerian environment, we are at the same time defending the global environment because we have only one Earth. The fact that we have one earth makes it urgent that we report environmental crimes as soon as they occur. We also must proactively work to ensure that these incidents do not happen. Where they do happen there should be extraterritorial systems of checking and enforcing rulings against environmental crimes including ecocide. In terms of financial penalties, bilateral agreements can be utilised to ensure payments.
We have taken a broad look at the environmental challenges confronting us today. Nigeria has been especially in focus, but we would find similar situations in several countries. Accurate reporting of the environmental issues will not only help secure a healthy environment, it will also help halt the erosion of the gains of independence that are rapidly eroded by dispossessions, privatisation and other manifestations of neoliberalism.
(ENDS)

Text of a paper presented by Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of ERA/FoEN Board and Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF)at ERA's training session for journalists at Akure, Nigeria, 9-12 April 2013