Overview

The essays here contribute to developing and deepening an understanding of the ecological challenges ravaging Nigeria, Africa and our world today. They illustrate the global nature of these terrors. These essays are not meant just to enable for coffee table chatter: they are intended as calls to action, as a means of encouraging others facing similar threats to share their experiences. Set out in seven sections, this book of 54 essays deals with deep ecological changes taking place primarily in Nigeria but with clear linkages to changes elsewhere in the world. The essays are laid out with an undergird of concerns that characterise the author's approach to human rights and environmental justice advocacy. The first section rightly presents broad spectrum ecological wars manifesting through disappearing trees, spreading desertification, floods, gas flaring and false climate solutions.

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9780995222311

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Reviews

Nnimmo Bassey embodies the thinker, writer, activist in one. His latest collection of essays Oil Politics is the story of our times. And since we are all eating, drinking, thinking oil, it is a story each of us should read. Oil has caused pollution in the Niger Delta and contributed to climate change. But it has also polluted democracy. As Nnimmo puts it, the story of oil is the story of 'The blind walk of autocrats in the vice grip of kleptocrats results in unrelenting pummelling of the grassroots.' We need to move from Oil to Soil, from Kleptocracy to Earth Democracy. Oil Politics is a call to action to each and every Earth Citizen.- Dr VANDANA SHIVA, philosopher, environmentalist, author, professional speaker, social activist For decades, Nnimmo Bassey has been a relentless warrior against the ravages of the oil industry, holding the Niger Delta up as both a stark warning and an inspiring model of resistance. The truths in these essays demonstrate that the climate crisis amounts to a war, one waged by global elites on the poorest and most vulnerable. In his de ance, fearlessness and lyricism, Bassey also lights the way towards a just and democratic peace. - NAOMI KLEIN, author This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine Nnimmo Bassey is that rare individual-he combines solid theoretical knowledge with practice; a perceptive writer and campaigner of the nest pedigree. In this collection of essays, ranging from issues of petroleum extraction to climate justice, Bassey brings to bear these formidable talents. This book deserves reading and re-reading. It is a worthy addition to the corpus of works on Africa's badly mauled ecology. - Dr IKE OKONTA, author When Citizens Revolt: Nigerian Elites, Big Oil and the Ogoni Struggle for Self- Determination and co-author Where Vultures Feast: 40 years of Shell in Nigeria Very few people understand the 'politics of oil' and have confronted the environmental crisis in Nigeria like Nnimmo Bassey. In Oil Politics: Echoes of Ecological Wars, he not only reveals the devastating impact of our environmental indiscretions but how the incestuous relationship between the Nigerian state and multinationals like Shell has left Nigeria and Nigerians gasping for breath. If we still care about Nigeria, or what is left of it, then we can only ignore this intervention at our own risk! - CHIDO ONUMAH author, We Are All Biafrans Oil and mineral development represents a continuous act of violence against nature and society; this violence is a prerequisite to these extractive activities. Faced with this reality, communities in diverse regions of the planet organize varied forms of resistance and construct alternatives. Nnimmo Bassey is one of the human beings most committed to ecological justice and thus, social justice. This book, a collection of the author's essays, is an example of that commitment. - ALBERTO ACOSTA, Economist, former President of the Constitutional Assembly of Ecuador, former Minister of Energy and Mines Nnimmo Bassey is an angry good man, aware in his bones of the socio- ecological debt from North to South. He writes brilliantly calling the world to action for climate justice and against fossil fuels extraction. He comes from Nigeria and the Niger Delta where over two million barrels of oil are exported everyday, where many people have been killed while others have resisted throughout the decades of destruction brought by Shell and other companies.- Professor JOAN MARTINEZ-ALIER, ICTA, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona Activists and communities around the planet, who not only believe that another world is possible but are willing to ght for it, have much to learn from this book.- EDGARDO LANDER, retired professor of social sciences at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, Caracas

Nnimmo Bassey embodies the thinker, writer, activist in one. His latest collection of essays. Oil Politics is the story of our times. - Dr VANDANA SHIVA, philosopher, environmentalist, author, professional speaker, social activist. For decades, Nnimmo Bassey has been a relentless warrior against the ravages of the oil industry, holding the Niger Delta up as both a stark warning and an inspiring model of resistance. The truths in these essays demonstrate that the climate crisis amounts to a war, one waged by global elites on the poorest and most vulnerable. In his defiance, fearlessness and lyricism, Bassey also lights the way towards a just and democratic peace. - NAOMI KLEIN, author This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine. Nnimmo Bassey is that rare individual - he combines solid theoretical knowledge with practice; a perceptive writer and campaigner of the finest pedigree ... This book deserves reading and re-reading. It is a worthy addition to the corpus of works on Africa's badly mauled ecology. - Dr IKE OKONTA, author When Citizens Revolt: Nigerian Elites, Big Oil and the Ogoni Struggle for Self-Determination and co-author Where Vultures Feast: 40 years of Shell in Nigeria. Very few people understand the 'politics of oil' and have confronted the environmental crisis in Nigeria like Nnimmo Bassey. In Oil Politics: Echoes of Ecological Wars, he not only reveals the devastating impact of our environmental indiscretions but how the incestuous relationship between the Nigerian state and multinationals like Shell has left Nigeria and Nigerians gasping for breath. - CHIDO ONUMAH author, We Are All Biafrans Nnimmo Bassey is one of the best known and most respected activist/analyst of the socio-political and environmental impact of fossil fuel extraction across the planet. ... This book contains an extraordinary, thoughtful and well documented critical analysis of many of these impacts and struggles. - ALBERTO ACOSTA, Economist, former President of the Constitutional Assembly of Ecuador, former Minister of Energy and Mines

Author Information

Nnimmo Bassey is a Nigerian environmental justice activist, architect, essayist and poet. He is the director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and coordinator of Oilwatch International. He was the chair of Friends of the Earth International (the largest grassroots environmental organisation in the world) from 2008-2012 as well as the co-founder and executive director of Environmental Rights Action (1993-2013) which is based in Nigeria (in Benin city, Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Yenagoa). He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize.' In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. In 2014 he was awarded Nigeria's national honour as a Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in recognition of his environmental activism.

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