Interview: Johannes Beck (stf)
Editor: Sarah Steffen

Re-posted from Deutsche Welle

 Nnimmo Bassey (right) with Johannes Beck, DW’s head of the Portuguese for Africa department

10/12/11

International head of Friends of the Earth, Nnimmo Bassey, is a special guest at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. The Nigerian campaigner spoke to DW about the link between literacy and environmental protection.

For years, Nnimmo Bassey has been fighting against the oil industry’s pollution in the Nile Delta. Broken pipelines, illegal small refineries and the burning of excess gas have caused an ecological disaster. According to Bassey’s organization “Environmental Rights Action,” the Nigerian chapter of Friends of the Earth, a proper cleanup would cost $100 million.

Bassey, a laureate of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize), spoke to the head of DW’s Portuguese for Africa department, Johannes Beck, at the Frankfurt Book Fair’s LitCam conference. This year’s focus is on how education can contribute to sustainable economic growth. To hear the full interview, click the link below.

Deutsche Welle: Today we’ve heard how literacy can contribute to climate protection. Yet if we look at industrialized countries, we see that many have a high literacy level – for example Germany – but we still cause a lot of carbon dioxide emissions. What do we need?

Nnimmo Bassey: The industrialized world has to a large extent – and I say this with due respect – lost the connection with nature. I mean, when was the last time you looked at a night sky to see the stars? If you are in a city with so much electric light everywhere you almost don’t know what a beautiful night sky looks like. And this is [just] a small thing.

We actually require taking this literacy to the popular level. Our scientists have to be retrained to communicate their work in a popular way, to speak the language that the people on the street can understand. Because when you keep on producing statistics and things that sound like flying above people’s heads, this is okay as a scientific finding, but is has nothing to do with me. People want what they can relate to, what they can understand.

You said industrialized countries have lost their connection to nature. But when I travel to Latin America, Africa or Asia, I feel that at least in the big cities of the developing world, people also have a very fragile connection to nature. Is it really only a problem for industrialized countries?

I would agree with this. We need a worldwide reconnection, but we must also not forget the historical basis of the conflict and challenge we are facing. When scientists tell us that 80 percent of the atmospheric space for carbon has been taken, this was not done by the developing countries.

We know some really rich polluting entities of the world, which have taken off and colonized the atmosphere by themselves. They don’t want to negotiate how the remaining 20 percent can be shared.

They don’t really care what happens the day after, because they have better resilience and better capability to withstand the storms of life that most inevitably will confront all of us.

But again, when we make some broad statements, we have to look at details. We have the global north in the south; we have the global south in the north. Because there are very rich people in poor countries who live very wasteful lives and who are creating as much damage as anybody else.

I’m personally engaged and committed to engage in joining people across the world to confront power, because corporate power has captured public structures across the world.

Full text interview

Full audio interview

Nigerians seek $1 billion from Shell for oil spills

By Mira Oberman | AFP – Thu, Oct 20, 2011

Re-posted from AFP

A Nigerian tribal king filed a lawsuit in a US court seeking $1 billion from Royal Dutch Shell to compensate for decades of pollution that sickened his people and damaged their lands, his lawyer said.

The suit was filed a day after the US Supreme Court said it will consider a lawsuit accusing Shell of human rights abuses in Nigeria in a landmark case that could make companies liable for torture or genocide committed overseas.

That case will assess the potential liability of corporations — including multinationals with a US presence — under the Alien Tort Statute, a US law dating back to 1789 that scholars say was meant to assure foreign governments that the United States would help prevent breaches of international law.

The latest case alleges that Shell’s Nigerian operations are “well below internationally recognized standards to prevent and control pipeline oil spills” because the Anglo-Dutch company “has not employed the best available technology and practices that they use elsewhere in the world.”

It cited a recent United Nations report that found that contamination was widespread in the Nigerian Delta after 50 years of oil extraction left groundwater badly contaminated and the soil soaked with hydrocarbons to depths of five meters.

The suit was brought on behalf of the people of Ogale in the Eleme local government area, where the UN team found the most serious groundwater contamination and people drinking water laced with cancer-causing benzene at 900 times World Health Organization guidelines.

Scientists found an eight centimeter layer of refined oil floating on the groundwater that served the wells. The oil was linked to a spill that had occurred six years earlier and was not properly cleaned up.

Full article

photo credit: © Kadir van Lohuizen/NOOR

From the website of Amnesty International: http://blog.amnestyusa.org/business/shell-accused-over-misleading-figures-on-nigeria-oil-spills/

17 October 2011
Re-posted from AFP

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court said Monday it will consider a lawsuit accusing Royal Dutch Shell of human rights abuses, a case that could make companies liable for torture or genocide committed overseas.

The plaintiffs — relatives of seven Nigerians killed by the country’s former military regime — sued the Anglo-Dutch energy giant and other firms for apparently enlisting the government to suppress resistance to oil exploration in the Niger Delta in the 1990s.

The case will assess the potential liability of corporations — including multinationals with a US presence — under the Alien Tort Statute, a US law dating back to 1789 which scholars say was meant to assure foreign governments that the United States would help prevent breaches of international law.

The 12 Nigerian plaintiffs charge Shell with “complicity in human rights violations committed against them in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta in Nigeria between 1992 and 1995,” according to their complaint put before the court.

“These violations included torture, extra-judicial executions and crimes against humanity.”

It said Shell “aided and abetted the Nigerian government in committing human rights abuses,” and added: “For the victims of human rights violations such cases often provide the only opportunity to obtain any remedy for their suffering.”

Full article

image credit: Sweet Crude

Read the Reuters piece on the same subject

Another instance of the use of excessive force in the Niger Delta has prompted  Amnesty International to observe, “The excessive use of force by Nigeria’s security forces in Bundu waterfront community is contrary to Nigeria’s international human rights obligations and commitments.”

Probe Bundu waterfront shootings Amnesty Int’l, SERAP urge FG, River

October 12, 2010

By Innocent Anaba & Wahab Abdulah,
Re-posted from Vanguard News

LAGOS—Amnesty International and Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, yesterday, asked the government of President Goodluck Jonathan and the Rivers State Governor,  Mr Rotimi Amaechi to “urgently set up an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the excessive use of force and firearms by security forces, which  resulted in at least one death, and 12 serious injuries in Bundu Waterfront, Port Harcourt, last year.

Addressing newsmen in Lagos, at the  launch the report, Port Harcourt Demolitions: Excessive Use of Force Against Demonstrators, SERAP’s Executive Director,  Mr Adetokunbo Mumuni, said, “we consider the events of 0ctober 12, 2009 to constitute violation of the human rights of the victims to protest, demonstrate and take part in political activities. We also consider the excessive use of force to be unlawful, resulting in violation of the right to life.”

The 18-page report is an eye witness account  from the victims of the Bundu shootings as well as from women, who were intimidated and beaten by security personnel.

Lucy Freeman of Amnesty said, “the excessive use of force seen in the Bundu shooting is just one of many examples of the brutality with which the police and army operate throughout Nigeria, yet, few officers are held accountable. In most cases there is no investigation. There must be an end to the impunity enjoyed by Nigeria’s security forces.”

Full article

Environmental Rights Action Field Report #276: Shell’s dredging of River Nun spurs coastal erosion in Peremabiri community

Tuesday, 04 October 20

Re-posted from Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria)

To tell you the truth no one is comfortable with the way the River Nun is expanding while the community land is shrinking by the day. It is like a story now when we tell strangers that this community has lost over fifty meters of land in the last few years. And, if the trend should continue unchecked, we may join the monkeys in the swamps very soon. We are of the view that the dredging activities of Shell around us also have negative effect that is leading to the collapsing river banks and expansion of the River here. We are calling for assistance from government before we are wiped out from this location. What are we going to tell our children coming behind? – Maurice Jonathan

GPS Coordinate: Elev: -9m, N 04°38.395’, E006°04.910’

Peremabiri community is one among several Ijaw communities in Boma Clan of Southern Ijaw Local Government Area that settles along the Nun River. Farming and fishing are the major occupations of the people.  Apart from hosting the biggest rice farm [abandoned for several years now]in west Africa established by the moribund  Niger Delta Basin Development Authority [NDBDA], it is also host  to several oil wells including Shell’s Diebu Flow station, wellheads and pipelines.
Peremabiri has had its fair share of the negative impacts of oil exploration/exploitation activities: oil spills/fire and the effects of gas flaring that is still on-going at the flow station.
Information reached ERA/FoEN that the community was almost going into extinction due to river encroachment caused by dredging activities of Shell and because of this phenomenon it became necessary to visit the community and get an on-the-spot assessment of the situation.
ERA field monitors were led round the community by the current and past chairmen of Peremabiri Community Development Committee [CDC], Mr. Maurice Jonathan and Dickson Peresuote.

Read full report

photo:  Environmental Rights Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria)

Re-posted from Social Action
Saturday, 17 September 2011

Over 700 families in Ogoniland are angry with the Rivers State government over what they allege was a forceful land acquisition by the state Ministry of Agriculture.

Consequently, the families, under the Ogoni Solidarity Forum and Ogoni Civil Society Platform have joined forces with two non-governmental organisations – the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) and Social Action (SA) – to show their displeasure and concern over what they described as the “grave human rights and due process breaches” by the Rivers State government.

The said farmland of about 200 hectares is being acquired to enable a Mexican investor, Union De Iniciativa S.A De C.V, undertake a commercial banana plantation project. As a result of this, families in the Nyokhana, Tai and Babbe kingdoms of Ogoniland stand to be affected by the land acquisition.

According to some of the affected family members, heavily armed military men have been coming every week in vehicles to patrol the area and survey new lands since May 16, 2011. They force anyone in their way to lie on the ground and people report being afraid to challenge the military for fear of the consequences.

Although the farmers have been explicitly forbidden by the military to return to the land, some now sneak back onto the land to harvest the few crops that remain in order to feed their families.

Full article