Nnimmo Bassey and some Right Livelihood Award laureates from around the world, wrote to Norway Government Pension Fund asking them to take action on a matter of grave importance regarding corporate social responsibility and ethical investment of Shell Nigeria in relation to their devastating exploration activities on the Niger Delta environment from which they operate.
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has flayed the Federal Government’s removal of the so-called subsidy on petroleum products with effect from January 1, 2012, describing the decision as “complete insensitivity” to the articulated views of the Nigerian masses who insist the way to go is to fight corruption in the sector and to make the nation’s ailing refineries work. The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), in a statement signed by its Executive Secretary, Reginald Stanley, had announced the removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) on January 1, 2012, claiming the decision was informed by extensive consultation with stakeholders across the nation. It also said that in the coming weeks, it will work with the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and engage stakeholders in further consultation to ensure the continuation of the exercise. But in a statement denouncing the government move, ERA/FoEN insisted that the “sham” which the PPPRA dubbed national consultation on which it based the decision to remove the so-called subsidy was a crude smokescreen to usher in a new era of impoverishment for Nigerians.
The Nigerian government must as a duty to communities of the Niger Delta that suffer endless spills in their environment, ensure independent ways of verifying the amounts of spewed crude disclosed by the oil companies, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth (ERA/FoEN) has demanded.
The call is coming on the heels of Shell's forced shut down of its 200,000 barrel-a-day Bonga field after an alleged leak during a tanker loading caused what may be Nigeria’s worst offshore spill in more than a decade.
Media reports indicated that an export line from the Bonga floating production, storage and offloading vessel caused the leak, which Shell estimated at below 40,000 barrels of crude in a statement issued immediately after the incident.
The UN climate talks in Durban were a failure and take the world a significant step back by further undermining an already flawed, inadequate multilateral system that is supposed to address the climate crisis, according to Friends of the Earth International.
Developed countries engaged in a smoke and mirrors trick of delivering rhetoric but no action, failed to commit to urgently needed deep emissions cuts, and even backtracked on past commitments to address the climate crisis, said Friends of the Earth International.
The outcome of the Durban talks, heralded by some as a step forward, in fact amounts to: • No progress on fair and binding action on reducing emissions • No progress on urgently needed climate finance • Increased likelihood of further expansion of false solutions like carbon trading • The further locking in of economies based on polluting fossil fuels • The further unravelling of the legally-binding international framework to deliver climate action on the basis of science and equity.
ERA/FoEN bags Ford’s $500,000 award for transparency
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has been named recipient of the maiden Ford Foundation Jubilee Transparency Awards.
ERA/FoEN along with the Nigerian Popular Theatre Alliance/Theatre for Development Centre, a network of organizations that use performing arts as a means to improve participatory development process, were announced as winners, at an event held Monday night in Abuja.
Eni misleads shareholders over end to gas flaring in Nigeria
Italian oil major Eni is misleading shareholders over the company’s commitment to end gas flaring in Nigeria, according to a new report [1] by an international delegation of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), following a recent fact finding mission to the Niger Delta. Gas flaring is illegal in Nigeria.
The report, entitled The reality behind EU ‘energy security’, examines the environmental and social devastation caused by European oil multinationals Eni, Total and Shell in Nigeria.
Internal documents obtained by the delegation reveal that Eni was warned in 2005 by its consultants that gas flaring has “adverse”, “long-term” and “irreversible” impacts on health and the environment.[2] Despite being aware of the ongoing dangers, Eni continues to flare gas. In May 2011, Paolo Scaroni, ENI's chief executive assured shareholders during ENI AGM that the company planned to reduce flaring in its oil operation at Kwale to "zero" by June 2011[3] and the company has since stated: “We do not flare gas”[4]. However, the delegation documented ongoing flaring from at least five “flare stacks” at the Kwale processing plant [5]. Contrary to what ENI declares on its website [6], gas flaring is continuing also at Ebocha oil facility [7].
Nnimmo Bassey in his new book : To Cook a Continent - Destructive Extraction And the Climate Crisis in Africa , just released today the 10th day of November 2011, provides a glimpse into the links between exploitative natural resource extraction, ecological destruction and conflict in Africa.
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria cordially invites you to her 4th National Environment Consultation The National Environment Consultation of ERA/FoEN which took off in 2008 is an annual event to stimulate broad-based national discourse on the state of the environment with the view to identifying and recommending remediation policies and actions. The 2011 consultation with the theme “Climate Change and Environmental Governance” will provide a platform for galvanizing issues, opinion as well as stimulate debates that will propel Nigeria and indeed Africa to make effective use of the opportunity of COP 17, Durban 2011 to seek a balance in the sharing of the fallouts of climate change. It will equally bring to the front burner of national discuss the real challenges and opportunities in the Nigerian environmental governance milieu.
New research reveals Shell paid militants who destroyed Nigerian towns
“Shell’s obligations are clear: it must clean up after decades of devastating oil spills, end the illegal practice of gas flaring and compensate the victims of human rights abuses in Nigeria. It is unacceptable that Shell continues to deny responsibility, while pushing communities deeper into poverty and fuelling destructive conflicts.” - Nnimmo Bassey
Counting the Cost implicates Shell in cases of serious violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta region from 2000 to 2010. The report uncovers how Shell’s routine payments to armed militants exacerbated conflicts, in one case leading to the destruction of Rumuekpe town where it is estimated that at least 60 people were killed.According to Platform’s report, Shell continues to rely on Nigerian government forces who have perpetrated systematic human rights abuses against local residents, including unlawful killings, torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. The report is available to download .
With today’s release of the report of a two-year study by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has called for the creation of a $100 billion Environmental Restoration Fund for the Niger Delta. ERA/FoEN in a statement issued in Lagos welcomed the report and said that the Environmental Assessment of Ogoniland, despite its short comings, has not only vindicated it worst fears about the state of the environment in Ogoniland and the entire Niger Delta, but also showed Shell’s atrocious breach of minimum requirements of the Environmental Guidelines and Standards for Petroleum Industries in Nigeria (EGASPIN) and its own standards.
The UNEP assessment presented to President Goodluck Jonathan showed hydrocarbon pollution in surface water throughout the creeks of Ogoniland and up to 8cm in groundwater that feed drinking wells at 41 sites including a serious case in Nisisioken Ogale in Eleme, Rivers State. Soils were found to have been polluted with hydrocarbons up to a depth of five metres in 49 observed sites, while, benzene, a known cancer-causing chemical was found in drinking water at a level 900 times above World Health Organisation (WHO) acceptable levels. The report also documented that fisheries have been destroyed and that wetlands around Ogoniland are highly degraded and facing degradation. These combined, have led to irreparable loss of livelihoods and will take 30 years to remediate.
There have been massive propaganda and lobbying from Biotech Institutions/industry and their concerned ‘stakeholders’ in Nigeria and abroad for the President to give assent to the Biosafety bill “
The bill has been recently passed by the National Assembly and these same bandwagon is now urging the President to proceed to Accent to a bill that has being kept under wraps and away from public scrutiny, thereby preventing groups who may want to take a critical look at the bill and raise policy issues that will improve the bill.
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) on saturday June 4th 2011 marked the World Environment Day , with the theme “Forests: Nature at your service, by planting hundreds of trees at two locations in Benin city Edo state Nigeria.
They also embarked on a protest march against environmental Degradation and the consequent climate change.
In a statement issued by ERA the federal government of Nigeria was asked to produce a workable environmental blueprint that will address deforestation, gas flaring and other grave environmental concerns besetting the nation.ERA further stated that the time is ripe for government to match talk with action by “putting the brakes” on all destructive projects promoted in collaboration with profit-driven corporations hiding under the cover of development to further impoverish the people.
The present Nigeria administration should take note of the warning from the United Nations, that if the current trend of deforestation continues with as much as 13 million hectares of forest destroyed directly or through logging , the people of the world especially those in sub Saharan Africa that depend on forests for their livelihoods are on the brink of massive poverty, starvation and the consequent death and this will also force precious species into extinction. The theme of this year’s commemoration should draw our attention to the activities of corporations that enter forest-dependent communities with deceptive tactics. These deceptive tactics under the guise of development only end up compounding biodiversity loss and increasing forest destruction which causes economic gaps between the global North and the South as well as within the South itself.
Gas Flaring: Shell Sustainability Report Mocks Niger Delta Communities, says ERA
Details in Shell Sustainability Report for 2010 which showed that the company actually increased the volume of gas flared in Nigeria, is totally condemnable and must be matched with adequate penalties by the Nigerian government, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has said.
The report released last week, indicated that Shell flared over 30 per cent more gas in 2010 than it did in 2009 due to what it said, was “increased production in Nigeria and new activities in Iraq.”
But in a statement condemning the development, ERA/FoEN called the report a “bare-faced mockery of the people of the Niger Delta” which must be criticized by all well-meaning people in every part of the globe.
Nuclear Plants: Clarify Nigeria’s Position Now, ERA urges FG
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has asked the Federal Government to clarify it’s position on the conflicting statements credited to two serving ministers on the status of Nigeria’s nuclear power projects following the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daichi Plant in Japan.
Media reports had quoted Environment Minister, John Odey as saying that nuclear energy is no longer an option but a necessity, if Nigeria is to meet her energy needs. Conversely, Minister of State for Power, Nuhu Wya, told journalists in Lagos that Nigeria would explore means other of power generation in which it has comparative advantage in view of the inherent dangers in nuclear power.
ERA has recently received information that a group calling itself the "Niger Delta Coalition in the Diaspora" is still engaging itself in activities and communications giving the impression that it is linked with Environmental Rights Action (ERA).
This group issues out communications using ERA's headquarter address and mail box. We have never had any ties with this group and any views, comments or opinions expressed by them is not endorsed or authorized by any member of management or staff of ERA.
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Is there a spill, pipeline rupture, fire, gas flare, water, land or air pollution in your community or one you know about? Do you need assistance to respond, and prevent future occurrences or have you noticed any activity that threatens the environment?
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ERA/FoEN bags Ford’s $500,000 award for transparency
Eni misleads shareholders over end to gas flaring in Nigeria
Nnimmo Bassey in his new book : To Cook a Continent - Destructive Extraction And the Climate Crisis in Africa , just released today the 10th day of November 2011, provides a glimpse into the links between exploitative natural resource extraction, ecological destruction and conflict in Africa.
The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria cordially invites you to her 4th National Environment Consultation 
With today’s release of the report of a two-year study by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has called for the creation of a $100 billion Environmental Restoration Fund for the Niger Delta. 
