Many people in the Niger Delta may not have heard of the term “environmental injustice” before, but it is just a new word for an old problem. Environmental justice is based on the principle that all people have a right to be protected from environmental pollution and to live in and enjoy a clean and healthy environment. In the Niger Delta environmental injustice is experienced mostly from the activities of the oil industries which have degraded the land, contaminated the water and polluted the air without proper compensation. Gas leakage is killing many people and continues to have a negative impact on the lives of the people living around the area. The aim of this book is to raise awareness of the issues affecting the Niger Delta region, and to encourage involvement in the cause.
Nigeria is the sixth largest producer of oil in the world and one of the major suppliers of oil to the US. Set against a backdrop of what has been called the scramble for African oil, this text documents the consequences of a half-century of oil exploitation and production in one of the world's foremost centres of biodiversity.
Omolade Adunbi investigates the myths behind competing claims to oil wealth in Nigeria's Niger Delta. Looking at ownership of natural resources, oil extraction practices, government control over oil resources, and discourse about oil, Adunbi shows how symbolic claims have created an "oil citizenship." He explores the ways NGOs, militant groups, and community organizers invoke an ancestral promise to defend land disputes, justify disruptive actions, or organize against oil corporations. Policies to control the abundant resources have increased contestations over wealth, transformed the relationship of people to their environment, and produced unique forms of power, governance, and belonging.
The Niger Delta Region has in the past two decades experienced protracted violent conflicts. At the roots of these violent conflicts are the genuine quests of the people for sustainable development that is based on social justice, equity, fairness and environmental protection. Although richly endowed, the region is hopelessly poor. This paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty has been attributed to a myriad of factors ranging from Nigeria’s centralized federalism, to ethno-regional domination, corruption, poor governance, and oil-related environmental degradation. Development in the Niger Delta is vital not only to the stability and prosperity of Nigeria, but also to global energy security. This book provides unique insights into the challenges of development and peace building in the Niger Delta, and insights into other resource-rich but poverty-stricken, conflict-prone regions of the world.
In the few decades since the 1956 discovery of oil at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria, the NDR, and the entire state of Nigeria, have been dramatically transformed. Oil exploration in the NDR has led to the construction of hastily built oil infrastructures that have, perhaps forever, altered the livelihoods of millions as well as the patterns of Nigerian politics. Whereas Nigeria''s agricultural and other exports had been diverse, Nigeria''s economy is now completely dependent on oil revenues. In many ways, the global demand for oil should have translated to great developmental success in Nigeria. But the growing level of per capita GDP is deceiving; at least 80% of the Nigerian population works in the informal economy and lives below the poverty line. To date, survey textbooks on African politics or development studies have skirted the details surrounding this profoundly traumatized region. Horror in Paradise is an attempt to fill that critical gap. The contributors to this book include scholars from leading Nigerian universities, Africanist scholars from the U.S. and the U.K., and development practitioners with experience in Nigeria (USAID, UNDP). Together, they offer a range of frameworks for thinking about the ongoing crises of the NDR, organized as: Part I: Culture, Gender, and the Environment; Part II: Governance; Part III: Development; and Part IV: Security. The book aims to facilitate scholarly and policy-oriented discussions of the region''s sometimes complex inter-related challenges and, in turn, increase both national and global attention to the plight of the NDR. This book is part of the African World Series , edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. " Horror in Paradise offers a compelling and systematic approach to unpacking the cross-cutting crises of the Niger Delta. In offering frameworks of study for channels of development, governance, and security -- among others -- contributors present a roadmap for understanding the historical genesis of crises in the Delta, as well as the structural impediments to crisis recovery. Investigators assessing the many contradictions in Nigeria -- aptly captured in the volume''s title -- will find value in both the analytic rigor of the contributions, as well as the breadth of the thematic coverage." -- Scott Edwards, Ph.D., Amnesty International (Director of International Advocacy for Africa and Director of the Science for Human Rights program at Amnesty International, USA), George Washington University (Professorial Lecturer on Development in Africa, Elliot School of International Affairs) " Horror in Paradise presents the glaring paradox between abundant resource endowment and the harrowing conditions spawned by the crises of deprivation in Africa''s most prolific oil producing region in critically stark, yet empathetic perspectives. In this book, the voices of a new generation of outstanding scholars tellingly explore the contradictions that underpin the betrayal of the hopes for people-centred development and security in the oil-rich, but impoverished Niger Delta. This book vividly captures the role of local and global actors in the unfolding complex crises and represents a major contribution to existing studies on the Niger Delta." -- Cyril Obi, Ph.D., Program Director, Social Science Research Council, African Peacebuilding Network (APN) " Horror in Paradise is a collection of intellectually stimulating essays on Nigeria''s oil inebriation. It presents a comprehensive, insightful and multifaceted analysis of the Niger Delta crisis. The book''s lucid explication of the historical, political, material and ideational dimensions of the Niger Delta crisis is without doubt one of the most engaging. This is essential reading." -- Temitope B. Oriola, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston "The Federal Republic of Nigeria has transitioned into an important oil-producing nation but its Niger Delta Region has sunk in a downward spiral of poverty, violence, political decay and human suffering, constituting a formidable puzzle to scholars. Horror in Paradise provides an analytical framework to understand the historical roots as well as the political, social and developmental dimensions of crises in the region. Horror in Paradise sheds light on how the economy of extraction has turned the Niger Delta into a hopeless place. Students as well as policy practitioners and activists for social justice will find this collection useful in promoting progress and sustainable development in the Niger Delta." -- Masse Ndiaye, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar at the Midlo International Center, University of New Orleans "No work I know offers a more insightful view of the deeply troubled region of the Niger Delta, if only because, instead of being limited to mere advocacy, it gives a voice to a number of Nigerian citizens with different experiences, different perspectives and different forms of involvement in the complex and conflicted roots of this human and environmental tragedy." -- Dr. Edouard Bustin, Professor in Political Science and the African Studies Center, and Director, Francophone Africa Research Group, Boston University " Horror in Paradise serves as an excellent survey text...a useful contribution to an undergraduate level introductory course on Nigeria. While much of the political science literature on the region focuses on economic factors, the editors have offered a valuable contribution to the extant scholarship by presenting a multitude of angles from which to understand the ongoing conflicts of the Niger Delta." -- Adria Tinnin, University of California, Los Angeles
This book aims to strengthen the knowledge base dealing with Air Pollution. The book consists of 21 chapters dealing with Air Pollution and its effects in the fields of Health, Environment, Economy and Agricultural Sources. It is divided into four sections. The first one deals with effect of air pollution on health and human body organs. The second section includes the Impact of air pollution on plants and agricultural sources and methods of resistance. The third section includes environmental changes, geographic and climatic conditions due to air pollution. The fourth section includes case studies concerning of the impact of air pollution in the economy and development goals, such as, indoor air pollution in México, indoor air pollution and millennium development goals in Bangladesh, epidemiologic and economic impact of natural gas on indoor air pollution in Colombia and economic growth and air pollution in Iran during development programs. In this book the authors explain the definition of air pollution, the most important pollutants and their different sources and effects on humans and various fields of life. The authors offer different solutions to the problems resulting from air pollution.
The recent escalation in the violent conflict in the Niger Delta has brought the region to the forefront of international energy and security concerns. This book analyses the causes, dynamics and politics underpinning oil-related violence in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It focuses on the drivers of the conflict, as well as the ways the crises spawned by the political economy of oil and contradictions within Nigeria's ethnic politics have contributed to the morphing of initially poorly coordinated, largely non-violent protests into a pan-Delta insurgency. Approaching the issue from a number of perspectives, the book offers the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis available of the varied dimensions of the conflict. Combining empirically-based and analytic chapters, it attempts to explain the causes of the escalation in violence, the various actors, levels and dynamics involved, and the policy challenges faced with regard to conflict management/resolution and the options for peace. It also examines the role of oil as a commodity of global strategic significance, addressing the relationship between oil, energy security and development in the Niger Delta.
The largest U.S. trading partner in sub-Saharan Africa, petroleum-rich Nigeria exports half its daily oil production to the United States. Like many African nations with natural resources coveted by the world's superpowers, the country has been shaped by foreign investment and intervention, conflicts among hundreds of ethnic and religious groups, and greed. Polio has boomed along with petroleum, small villages face off with giant oil companies, and scooter drivers run their own ministates. The oil-rich Niger Delta region at the heart of it all is a trouble spot as hot as the local pepper soup. Blending vivid reportage, history, and investigative journalism, in A Swamp Full of Dollars journalist Michael Peel tells the story of this extraordinary country, which grows ever more wild and lawless by the day as its refined petroleum pumps through our cities. Through a host of colorful characters--from the Area Boy gangsters of Lagos to a corrupt state governor who stashed money in his London penthouse, from the militants in their swamp forest hideouts to oil company executives--Peel makes the connection between Western energy consumption and the breakdown of the Nigerian state, where the corruption of the haves is matched only by the determination and ingenuity of the have-nots. What has happened to Nigeria is a stark warning to the United States and other economic powers as they grow increasingly frantic in their search for new oil sources: unbridled plunder eventually rebounds on those who have done the taking. A Swamp Full of Dollars--shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award--shows that if the Arab world is the precarious eastern battle line in an intensifying world war for crude, then Nigeria has become the tumultuous western front.
The first title in a planned series of classic texts, written and published in Africa, on the history and culture of the Niger Delta. Long out of print, this book brings together oral traditional evidence and all other available historical material including the work of the eminent historian of the Niger Delta, Kenneth Owuka Dike. The study is an attempt to reconstruct the early history of the Ijo people of the Niger Delta, from the nineteenth century, using their own mostly oral traditions. The work has been considerably revised and updated to include material and research conclusions from the ongoing Ijo History Project on Niger Delta history chaired by the author.
