Women
taking the lead in reversing climate change
A thorough report by Leigh Brownhill
and Terisa E. Turner (“Climate Change and Nigerian Women’s Gift
to Humanity”) traces Nigerian resistance to massive oil exploitation
--which has not rendered any good for the country’s people (see
WRM Bulletin Nº 56) -- and highlights women’s leading role in
that struggle.
The Nigerian organization Environmental
Rights Action stated in 2005 that “More gas is flared in Nigeria
than anywhere else in the world. Estimates are notoriously unreliable,
but roughly 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas associated with crude
oil is wasted in this way everyday. This is equal to 40% of all
Africa's natural gas consumption in 2001, while the annual financial
loss to Nigeria is about US $2.5 billion. The flares have contributed
more greenhouse gases than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined.
And the flares contain a cocktail of toxins that affect the health
and livelihood of local communities, exposing Niger Delta residents
to an increased risk of premature deaths, child respiratory illnesses,
asthma and cancer.”
In WRM Bulletin Nº 100 we have also
depicted how vast tracts of mangrove forests are slowly suffocated
by the numerous oil spills, which permeate the coastal waters
and streams, and coat the exposed, air breathing roots of the
mangroves.
However, Nigerian people have not been
witnessing such a massive destruction without resistance. Environmentalists
in Nigeria, notably from among the Ogoni, Ijaw and other ethnic
groups in the oil-rich Niger Delta, including the MOSOP (Movement
for the Survival of the Ogoni People), have persistently tried
to shut down Shell’s gas flaring. As a response, on November 10,
1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other members of the MOSOP were hanged
by Nigeria’s military dictatorship (see WRM Bulletin Nº 27).
On 11 December, 1998 the newly formed
Ijaw Youth Council, acting as part of the multi-ethnic, pan-Delta
Chikoko movement issued the Kaiama Declaration, which stated that
all land and natural resources belonged to the communities and
demanded “that all oil companies stop all exploration and exploitation
activities in the Ijaw area. We are tired of gas flaring, oil
spillages, blowouts and being labelled saboteurs and terrorists.”
On 1 January 1999 activists in the Niger
Delta launched ‘Operation Climate Change,’ to shut down oil flow
stations and gas flares in the Delta. What was conceived as a
ten-day program of non-violent civil disobedience, with occupation
of flow stations and attempts made to shut down the flares, finally
lasted for several weeks. The Operation Climate Change seriously
affected five oil companies - Agip, Chevron, Mobil, Shell, Texaco
-. The Shell-backed military administration responded with a state
of emergency. Two warships and up to 15,000 troops were deployed.
Many women were raped by soldiers. Soldiers using a helicopter
and boats owned by Chevron, attacked environmentalists who were
occupying a drilling rig, killing over fifty people and destroying
dozens of homes.
Dozens of women’s groups from across
the Delta, mobilized in a multi-ethnic umbrella organization called
Niger Delta Women for Justice, took to the streets in Port Harcourt.
Nigerian peasant women asked for solidarity from women and other
international activists in a joint campaign to protect life by
putting a stop to the depredations of Big Oil. Environmentalists
in Nigeria and the UK described their Operation to shut down Shell
gas flares as a “gift to humanity” because it sought to cut carbon
emissions that threaten humanity as a whole.
The aftermath for those engaged in the
“gift to humanity” campaign unfolded over the subsequent eight
years along three axes: first, the deepening of militancy within
the Niger Delta around the demand for democratic ‘resource control;’
second, the achievement of significant success in expelling oil
companies from the Niger Delta; and third, the experience of violent
counter-insurgency at the behest of the Nigerian state and foreign
oil companies. This third dimension of the aftermath exposed the
empirical power relations between women who try to interdict perpetrators
of ecocide and those men who profit from expanded oil production
with its escalating deadly emissions.
In 2005 the Nigerian women’s groups,
including Niger Delta Women for Justice that had contributed to
a moratorium on gas flaring were labeled “terrorist” by the government
which was being drawn ever more deeply into the U.S. global ‘war
on terror.’
The Nigerian women’s “gift to humanity”
provoked a leap in global consciousness about the dire common
fate of all humanity if specific polluters amongst the world’s
tiny clique of 400+ billionaires are allowed to run rampant outside
democratic control as well as provoked and accelerated an international
groundswell of coordinated mobilization (see more info in the
report).
In January 2006 Nigerian courts ordered
Shell to stop the flaring of natural gas. Shell has appealed the
ruling. The oil giant has also been unable to return to Ogoniland
since 1993. In a 23 September 2006 interview, Owens Wiwa stated
that “It was Ogoni women who were most instrumental in preventing
Shell from operating in Ogoniland over the past decade. This is
a major success because not only have we
driven Shell out non-violently, but we have set a precedent for
all Nigeria and indeed the whole world: without local people’s
agreement, no oil company can go in. A tremendous price has been
paid in loss of life. But government’s
revocation of Shell’s operating licence is a tremendous victory
and it is due largely to the commitment of
ordinary village women, mostly organized through the Federation
of Ogoni Women’s Associations.”
The shut-down of all Shell operations
in Ogoniland means less gas flaring, less carbon emissions and
less global warming. The shut-down is not limited to Ogoniland.
Across the Delta, some 600,000 barrels a day, or about a quarter
of Nigeria’s total production, was shut-in throughout 2006. This
entails a massive cut in greenhouse gas emissions.
Nigerian women led a remarkable global
initiative to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The coordinated, international
action and its aftermath suggest tactics that, if adopted more
generally today, promise to deliver success in the complex struggle
to reverse climate change.
Extracted and adapted from: “Climate
Change and Nigerian Women’s Gift to Humanity”, by Leigh Brownhill
and Terisa E. Turner, Centre for Civil Society,
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,1153
