Citizen-driven democracy, legislative activism and systemic change is the only thing that will hold companies to account. The case of Nigeria proves this.

Shell’s reaction to the fine announced by the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) over its Bonga oil spill of December 2011 is in line with the oil companies’ stance of avoiding responsibility whenever possible.

The reality of communities with oil, gas and mineral resources - whether in Nigeria, Ecuador, Philippines or Canada - are the same. All of them face daily assaults on their lives.

Offshore oil and gas exploitation is accident-prone. Yet the response mechanisms of the oil companies as well as the government's regulatory agencies remain dismal in Nigeria.

To push genetically engineered crops into Africa, the promoters work hard to ensure lax biosafety laws, ignore the Africa Model Law on Biosafety and ensure lack of transparency while truncating participation.

The crippling strike called by labour organisations may have ended, but Nigeria is not yet at ease. The arguments the government offered for removal of the fuel subsidy ring hollow and the people are not convinced.

The climate conference in Durban has led some observers to conclude that developed countries are engaged in a form of apartheid against the rest of the world. But Nnimmo Bassey hopes negotiators will heed the voices of the people.

In an extract from his forthcoming book, Nnimmo Bassey provides a glimpse into the links between exploitative natural resource extraction, ecological destruction and conflict in Africa. ‘What can Africa do? And once our peoples decide, can the rest of the world act in solidarity?’ Bassey asks.

It’s unlikely we’ll get ‘an equitable outcome’ from COP17, but it will be ‘a great moment to intensify campaigns against the business-as-usual manner’ in which climate negotiations have been conducted so far, writes Nnimmo Bassey.

Nigerian environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey remembers the life of Wangari Maathai, the internationally recognised founder of the Green Belt Movement, who died on 25 September.

A recent report on the pollution of Ogoniland prepared by United Nations Environment Programme marks ‘the first official confirmation’ that there is ‘a major tragedy on our hands’, writes Nnimmo Bassey.

‘People who have suffered the impact of unjust practices and those who have been victims of abuse from corporate impunity will heave a sigh of relief the day directors of such companies are brought to court from behind their corporate shields,’ writes Nnimmo Bassey, amidst talk that ‘top guns at BP’ may be charged with manslaughter over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

‘Without doubt’, the crude oil business ‘is the stuff that oils the machinery of despotism’ and that ‘blinds the world to the bloods that flow on the streets as people fight for liberty’, writes Nnimmo Bassey.

With the Sudanese referendum this week, Nnimmo Bassey looks back at Nigeria's civil war in 1967, what is at stake for South Sudan and the role of oil in the region.

Nnimmo Bassey examines how minority rights are still not protected in oil-rich regions of Nigeria. Oil companies and the national government could contribute to improving infrastructure and services for communities that are paying the environmental and social price of oil extraction, Bassey argues.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/500/10_500.gifNnimmo Bassey, environmental justice activist and winner of the Right Livelihood Award, often referred to as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize', pays tribute to Pambazuka News on occasion of its 500th edition. ‘Through this medium we build and equally recover lost memories for future action,’ he writes.

Fresh from a trip to the Gulf of Mexico, Nnimmo Bassey discusses the intertwining of oil and fishing within local livelihoods and suspicions that BP’s post-spill response has been more cover-up than clean-up.

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Environmental Rights Action (ERA) demand that obscene oil company profits be used to clean up the environmental and social mess inflicted upon the Niger Delta population. Concerned about the government’s inability to tackle the problem of gas flaring, Bassey and the ERA propose a concerted endeavour to stop gas flaring, audit all oil spills and bring about a thorough clean-up of the region in order to detoxify the land once and for all. With a view to moving Nigeria away from its dependence on crude oil exports, Bassey and the ERA argue that offering new oil blocks should be resisted and oil kept in the soil.

Climate Change is accepted today even by die hard sceptics as a real crisis that must be urgently tackled for the preservation of the earth in a form that would sustain human and other life forms. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the best known body of climate scientists who accepts that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activities [1].

It has also been recognised as a human rights issue by the UN. There have been several conferences, studies and multilateral discussions on the issue. There has also been plenty of foot dragging by governments who erroneously think that prodigious carbon emission is a mark of progress and development.

We note that the global North has historically contributed disproportionately to the amounts of greenhouse gasses (GHS) in the atmosphere whereas the global South has been saddled with the impacts and is now being forced into a corner from where she has no option but to seek means for mitigation of the impacts and adapting to them as well. It is instructive as we shall see that the slant of these official frameworks and mechanisms have been intimately tied to trade and have had the main slant of opening up opportunities for huge financial benefits for polluting industries while the South will be further pushed into the debt trap through the strategies of the World Bank and other international financial players.

This paper aims to review governmental frameworks for addressing climate change with an underlying premise that there is an urgent need for the delinking of carbon emission from positive development.

The KYOTO PROTOCOL

The Kyoto protocol will effectively end in the year 2012. The protocol had set very minimal targets for reduction of carbon emissions that was to be achieved between 1990 and 2012. Major emitters such as the USA and Australia did not accept these targets. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and other analysts have shown that even if the targets set by Kyoto were met, the climate crisis would not have been sufficiently tackled.