Niger Delta – a Humanitarian and Environmental Catastrophe
Nigerian forces have been fighting on the Niger delta since May, but international awareness of the problem seems slight. The military have been attacking resistance fighters hiding there, and around thirty thousand civilians are caught in impossible circumstances. They have little food and water, and very little opportunity to get information about their situation out to the wider world.
Are oil companies causing humanitarian crises?
Nigeria has a large population and is also a major oil producer, with over 90% of the oil it exports coming from the Niger delta region. Last week, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) claimed to have cut both the Shell and Agip pipelines in Beyelsa state, but the Nigerian military says this is not true. Shell stated that it was investigating the claim and Agip refused to comment.
An independent report, commissioned by the Nigerian Conservation Foundation in 2006, says that the Niger delta region is one of the five most polluted places on the planet, in large part due to oil spillages. An untestable assertion is that, in the past decade, more than a million tones of oil have been spilled in the delta, damaging the mangrove eco-system that is the fragile margin between saline and freshwater environments in this part of the world. It is also claimed, but unverifiable, that gas flaring from petroleum extraction has led to a level of airborne toxicity that causes acid rain, cancers and birth defects.
These claims cannot be tested because access to the delta is difficult to obtain. For many years the Nigerian government, whether elected or otherwise, has been fighting against a variety of groups who have found the delta an ideal hiding-ground as well as the place in which the government in Lagos is easiest to hurt – you could say that the delta is Nigeria’s wallet. There are further, somewhat more testable claims that oil companies have provided finance and weapons to successive Nigerian governments to help them quash opposition to their regimes. US Subcommittees have heard that US oil company sites in the delta were given police and military protection, often resulting in deaths of local people and razing of local housing to provide ‘safe operation zones’.
Mangroves polluted, fisheries failing?
Because it’s almost impossible to get into some parts of the delta, both environmental and human rights organisations struggle to assess the true extent of the human suffering and environmental degradation that is happening in one of the most oil-rich regions of Africa. What is certain is that what was once a fertile region of rotational farming and small scale aquaculture is now no longer agriculturally productive – while around 50% of fish eaten across Nigeria is harvested in the delta, the higher value shrimp and other crustacean fisheries have well nigh collapsed. The planet cannot afford to lose fisheries: as the developed world struggles with the collapsed cod stocks, and the imminent collapse of the blue-fin tuna fishery, it’s disturbing to discover that complex ecosystems in Africa, including fisheries, maybe disappearing without public recognition or much attempt to save them and the people who depend on them.
Niger delta courtesy of 300td.org at Flickr under a creative commons licence
