Ogoni Women's Climate Justice Was Decades Ahead of Today's Debates
(heartbreaking)
Ogoni Women’s Climate Justice Was Decades Ahead of Today’s Debates
3/8/2022 by Domale Keys
The story of the Ogoni women of Southern Nigeria makes the term “climate change” seem nonsensical. *********The climate didn’t simply change—someone ALTERED it.******
lOn May 12, 2016, hundreds gathered at the first ever oil well in the Niger Delta, called Oloibiri well 1. They called for the rehabilitation of the entire Niger Delta. (Babawale Obayanju / Flickr)
“They were ready to take the oil, and we told them they would no longer take the oil. Even in Dere, they packed up and left,” Karalole, a member of the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Association (FOWA), proudly declared as she recounted the nonviolent demonstration she along with other Ogoni people of the Southern Nigerian ethnic group participated in that ultimately led Shell Oil to abandon their drilling site in their land. In 1993, through FOWA, Ogoni women alongside their community launched a movement that would declare to Shell and the world that they would no longer stand by and watch oil companies devastate their lands—devastation that has resulted in what many now term “climate change.” However, the Ogoni women’s story makes the term “climate change” seem nonsensical because from where they stand, the climate didn’t simply change—someone altered it.
For the first two weeks of November 2021, world leaders met at COP 26—the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow—to discuss how to curb this issue most frequently known as climate change. Climate change, global warming and climate crises are all terms used to describe the current pending emergency the world is experiencing. Many of these terms hide the primary actors, mainly corporations and big businesses, who are responsible for the issues we are facing, and suggests that the climate is simply changing. However, when we focus on Global South women and women of color whose lives are most impacted by this issue, the problem seems a lot less elusive. Then we can put faces to the problems that tend to hide behind fancy jargon.
lDestroyed mangrove in 2015 as a result of oil pollution in area. (Domale Keys)
Over the course of three years, I visited with members of FOWA, a women’s wing of the broader Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, to learn more about their struggle to improve their land, livelihood and communities which has been devastated by the negligence of oil companies and government policies. They shared about the history of their struggle and ways they believe the government can help them achieve their aim. Shell began oil exploration in Ogoni in 1958. Since then, their land has been subject to deadly pollution and the Ogoni people have been making pleas for improvement of their circumstances from the start. Following a major oil blow-out in 1970, the Ogoni people wrote a letter to the then governor of Rivers State stating that their complaints to both the government and Shell continues to fall on deaf ears:
“Your Excellency, neither from the Shell-BP nor from the successive Governments have we received the slightest consideration in the widespread destitution that has been our sad lot as a direct result of the oil industry in the Ogoni Division. The uprooted and displaced farmers are left without alternative means of subsistence.”
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Abandoned oil drilling sites in 2015 after the protests that ousted Shell. (Domale Keys)
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Precious Love💘
@MaverickThamani
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Happy Ogoni Day to all Ogoni people all over the world!
May we recover from the pains of the past. May our generation learn from that bitter past and above all, may we be able to live in a clean environment, drink clean water and swim in our rivers again🤲 -Ndume Green.
10:30 AM · Jan 4, 2022
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In the United States, despite sweeping promises at COP 26, fossil fuel extraction nearly resumed in the Gulf of Mexico when the first major bid for oil drilling leases occurred in the week following the climate talks. On Nov. 17, “Shell, BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil offered $192 million for the rights to drill in about 1.7 million acres in the area offered by the government,” according to New York Times journalist Lisa Friedman. However, shortly after environmental groups sued the administration’s sale of the leases, citing that the sale was made by relying on outdated information concerning the extent to which the oil and gas leases would contribute to climate change. The environmental groups won the suit and a decision by the D.C. District Court agreed to revoke the sale of the leases until further analysis of the true environmental impact of new drilling activity could be conducted. As this lawsuit only buys time, the question remains whether the U.S. government, other individuals and communities across the world including major oil consumers in the U.S. will follow the Ogoni women’s example in putting an end to the extraction of new fossil fuels, push for investment in renewable energy resources and press energy companies to comply.
https://msmagazine.com/2022/03/08/ogoni-women-climate-change-shell-oil-fossil-fuel/