By Bassey Udo
Amid the global quest for energy transition away from fossil fuels to renewables, a new report by environmental right activists demands for the creation of alternative livelihoods for oil-rich communities devastated by years of exploitation for hydrocarbons.
The report published by Spaces for Change, in collaboration with Youths & Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC) and Extractives 360 (E360), said the creation of an alternative means of livelihood for the affected communities impacted by oil and gas exploration and production would be the only redress for the environmental injustices perpetrated against the people.
The research for the report was supported by Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) to explore the post-energy transition conditions of Nigeria’s oil-rich communities.
Nigeria, which is the leading producer of hydrocarbon in Africa, and one of the seven countries with the largest reserves in the world, has unfolded plans to phase out fossil fuels as part of its commitment to achieve net zero by 2060.
The report published on Friday in Lagos said Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan (ETP) developed as a pathway for realizing the set target adopts natural gas as a transition fuel to aid the process of phasing out carbon-polluting fuels like crude oil.
Although Nigeria acknowledged as globally as a gas province with little oil, the report said meeting the target set by the government under the ETP would put an end to the country’s historical dependence on crude oil as the mainstay of the economy and major source of export revenue.
Despite the huge reserves of gas in Nigeria, Africa’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions remains insignificant, with Energy Information Administration (EIA) statistics showing the continent accounts for less than 3% of the world’s energy-related carbon emissions.
Even with the low contribution to the global emissions, the report said Nigeria was witnessing radical changes in climatic and environmental conditions, such as intense rainfalls, heavy flooding, fast receding coastal lines due to rising sea levels, drought and desertification.
“These incidents highlight the country’s increasing vulnerability to climate change, mainly caused by high carbon-emitting activities in the extractive and transportation sectors,” the Executive Director, Spaces for Change, Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri, said in the report.
“With the goal of lifting 100 million people out of poverty by bringing modern energy services to the full population, Nigeria’s ETP proposes to reduce emission levels by increasing dependence on natural gas and focusing on low carbon technologies that will scale up emission reduction across sectors, create 5 million new solar connections and up to 840,000 new jobs,” Ibezim-Ohaeri added.
The report raised a number of posers for the promoters of the global energy transition agenda. “How will oil-rich communities in Nigeria benefit from these ambitious plans? Are oil-rich communities in Nigeria even aware of the ETP? With the adoption of gas as a transition fuel, including the long-term energy security proposals that are heavily anchored on the use of natural gas, how much have gas-rich communities contributed to the development of national transition plans?
“What are the guarantees that these plans will work for them? Should energy transition succeed, what alternatives are placed before communities? What are the opportunities and mechanisms for including local communities (where oil and gas have been exploited for decades) in this new conversation, so that they can also benefit from the new green economy?”
In an attempt to proffer answers to these posers, the report highlighted some gaps identified in the National energy transition plan, which it said was silent on the fate of the communities that have borne the brunt of fossil fuel extraction for several decades and whose livelihoods are dependent on crude oil and local refining.
Also, the report, observed that the National transition plans and policies neither made arrangements for cleanup, remediation, compensation, and rehabilitation of oil-rich communities, nor for addressing the massive environmental damage that accompanied the country’s protracted dependence on fossil fuels.
Again, decades of neglect, widespread environmental damage, and monumental poverty, the report said, have now contributed to popularizing the environmentally-damaging, but money-spinning artisanal refining trade in the communities.
This burgeoning venture, the report noted, is envisaged to become moribund in the new green economy, but the ETP did not make provision for the development of alternative livelihoods for local populations involved in this trade which is potentially a recipe for renewed violence.
Although the report observed that most extractive corporations have announced their commitments to energy transition by unveiling their respective transition agendas, including some even changing their names to align with the new global trend, it pointed out that these proposals make veiled references to the host communities.
A deeper introspection, the report said, reveals shallow commitments that require little, if any, deviation from current corporate behavior and practices that entrench power and knowledge asymmetry.
Besides, the report said, the review also revealed that no effectual and concrete commitments were made to promote environmental accountability.
Community support for energy transition, the report noted, is conditioned on the presentation of a clear roadmap for righting the wrongs that fossil fuels had done to the extractive communities, adding that from the community perspective, a just transition should mean recognizing the gender-differentiated impacts of hydrocarbons and the availability of adequate remedies for these impacts.
Highlighting the needs for the oil-rich communities, the report said the people want to play an active role in the emerging green economy, and not relegated to background as mere spectators and recipients of handouts packaged as corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
“Communities want inclusion, participation, enforceable contracts, alternative livelihoods, and environmental justice. To prevent a repeat of the mistakes of the fossil fuel economy, Nigeria needs to dismantle the governmental grip on natural resources, with the attendant centralized systems for resource governance,” the publisher of Extractive360, Juliet Alohan, who is also a co-author of the report said.
“Leapfrogging into prosperity in the green economy requires a phased wind-down of economic dependence on the center, giving states the autonomy to manage their own natural and renewable resources,” Alohan added.
Some of the recommendations contained in the report include the need to prioritize the involvement of communities in the green economy; the need to create spaces for healthy engagement and dialogues regarding energy transition to resolve concerns around inclusion, participation, decision-making, gendered impacts of business harms, and environmental accountability.
The other recommendation were that steps must be taken to address environmental injustices first and create alternative livelihoods for oil-rich communities, while guaranteeing the involvement of women as key stakeholders in energy efficiency and environmental sustainability initiatives.
