Tanya Kerssen explores how the ‘global pursuit of fossil fuels’ is impacting on communities across oil-rich regions in Africa, and the prospects for food and fuel sovereignty in a world without cheap oil. ‘Ironically, those with the smallest ecological footprint on earth have born the highest cost,’ writes Kerssen, but these ‘beleaguered people – the small farmers, herders, fishers and artisans of the world – could hold the key to a more energy-efficient future.’
The high cost of cheap oil was brought abruptly to light last April when Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig (contracted by BP) exploded 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast, causing one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. Lost amidst the speechifying and PR, however, have been the voices of those directly affected: The thousands of families who inhabit some of the world’s richest fishing grounds. Louisiana is the largest supplier of domestic seafood in the continental United
States, providing shrimp, blue crab, oysters, crawfish and a variety of marine finfish[1]. For the primarily African-American fishing towns South of New Orleans – struggling for decades to compete against large fishing operations and hit hard by Katrina – the BP spill portends the loss of a traditional, and sustainable, way of life on the water: ‘Take a look out there,’ offered 71-year-old retired oysterman Roger Moliere to the New York Times, ‘See what they’re doing? Sitting, talking, nobody working…Was a time if a man lost his job he could always come down to the bayou and feed his family. But this here, what you got happening now, this here might finish us off.’[2]
Ironically, those with the smallest ecological footprint on earth have born the highest cost of our global pursuit of fossil fuels. These beleaguered people – the small farmers, herders, fishers and artisans of the world – could hold the key to a more energy-efficient future.
ACROSS THE POND: AFRICA’S BLACK GOLD RUSH
The Gulf disaster has also drawn attention to threatened ecosystems worldwide, such as Nigeria’s Niger River Delta – a region devastated by oil spills, waste dumping and toxic natural gas flaring for decades – not to mention the violent repression of affected peoples. Home to 30 million people, the Niger Delta is the world’s third largest wetland; its mangroves provide breeding grounds for 60 per cent of West Africa’s fish stock. Despite tremendous oil wealth, the region is deeply impoverished. Oil facilities have displaced people from the land both directly, by appropriating land and waterways for oil prospecting, and indirectly by despoiling the environment.[3] In 2006, a group of independent experts put the amount of oil spilled in the Niger Delta over the past 50 years at nine to thirteen million barrels of oil.[4] Last year alone, the country reported 2,000 active spills.[5]Except in rare cases, compensation to individuals and communities has been grossly inadequate or nonexistent. The result of this ongoing disaster has been a massive wave of rural to urban migration – swelling the ranks of the urban poor – as well as intensifiying poverty and violence in the countryside.
Without diminishing the severity of the Gulf spill, several observers have pointed out the asymmetrical political reactions to oil disasters in the US and in other parts of the world.[6] Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International, explains the sense of frustration: ‘We see frantic efforts being made to stop the spill in the US, but in Nigeria, oil companies largely ignore their spills, cover them up and destroy people's livelihood and environments…This has gone on for 50 years in Nigeria. People
depend completely on the environment for their drinking water and farming and fishing. They are amazed that the president of the US can be making speeches daily, because in Nigeria people there would not hear a whimper.’[7] Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of US oil imports.
Many opponents of the Obama administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium, and of increased regulation of the industry in general, have indicated that rig owners will not risk their revenue stream by remaining in the Gulf in such an uncertain political climate. Rather, they will move their operations, and their jobs, to more ‘business friendly’ waters.[8] With US unemployment teetering into double-digits, this is a sensitive issue indeed. The spill’s damage to fisheries, restaurants and tourism begs a thorny
question: Which jobs should be privileged, and which sacrificed? In fact, the number of offshore rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico has fallen by 71 per cent, from 56 to 16, since the spill began.[9] Notably, Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc., the largest US deepwater driller, has begun moving its rig,
the Ocean Confidence, to the Republic of Congo. Another of Diamond’s deepwater rigs, the Ocean Endeavor, is being readied for relocation to Egypt.[10]
Presumably, companies are not only put off by the prospect of increased red
tape in the US, but also attracted – as they have been for decades – by the
limited capacity of African States to regulate extractive activities. To
attract foreign investment, most countries in sub-Saharan Africa also enter
into generous production-sharing agreements that allow foreign oil companies
to turn a relatively small upfront investment in exploration into billions
in downstream profits.[11]
Of course, there was already growing interest in African energy resources
before the Gulf spill, particularly in the deepwater and ‘ultradeep’ oil
deposits off the coast of Angola and, just to the north, in the Gulf of
Guinea, passing through the territorial waters of a dozen countries. Oil
exploration and production activities are also being ramped up in Sudan,
Chad, Uganda, the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville, among others. As reserves
elsewhere are depleted, Africa’s oil is increasingly sought-after. Angola
has already become the biggest supplier of crude oil to China, the world’s
second largest oil consumer after the US.[12] Sub-Saharan Africa is expected
to provide 25 per cent of North America’s oil by 2015.[13]
HIGH RISK IN DEEP WATERS
Michael Klare, author of ‘Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New
Geopolitics of Energy’, argues that the fossil fuels that gave rise to the
Industrial Revolution are likely to be exhausted by the end of this century
– and sooner in the case of petroleum. With all of the ‘easily accessible’
oil nearly used up, new oil resources will be increasingly costly and
difficult to extract, buried deeper underground, and located farther
offshore and in more hazardous environments.[14] Of the earth’s deepwater
reserves 75 per cent are thought to be located in three regions known in the
industry as the ‘Golden Triangle’: The Gulf of Mexico, the coastal waters of
Brazil, and 5,000-miles of West African coastline stretching from Senegal to
Namibia.[15] Opening up and securing these high-risk reserves offers
opportunities for enormous profits. A leaked document published by
ProPublica, for instance, shows that BP has been eagerly seeking to expand
its deepwater operations and position itself as the ‘leading deepwater
company.’[16] Even after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the company has
moved full-steam ahead with plans to sell off US$30 billion in onshore and
shallow-water production assets in order to aggressively pursue deepwater
drilling in West Africa, Angola, Egypt and, yes, Louisiana.[17]
One particularly attractive piece of deepwater real estate, Ghana’s Jubilee
Oil Field located 40 miles from mainland, has drawn dozens of corporate
suitors since its discovery in 2007. With an estimated 600 million to 1.8
billion barrels of oil, the Jubilee Field has been called the largest
discovery in West Africa in the last ten years.[18] Two companies are
leading in exploration and production: Britain’s Tullow Oil and US-based
Kosmos Energy. With this first foray into hydrocarbons, many in Ghana are
looking at neighbouring Nigeria, the quintessential African Oil State, and
fearing the worst. Critics also point to Ghana’s long history of extractive
activities and primary commodity exports: Ghana produces gold, bauxite,
manganese, diamonds, timber and cocoa, none of which have generated
appreciable benefits for the majority of Ghanaians. Even the World Bank,
which has heavily promoted foreign investment in mining, has acknowledged
that benefits mainly accrue to mine operators, producing little foreign
exchange for the country’s development.[19] In addition, Ghana’s human
rights ombudsman has documented numerous violations in mining areas
including polluting communities’ water sources, deprivation and loss of
livelihoods, and violence perpetrated by security agencies contracted by
mining companies.[20]
The Jubilee Oil Field, slated to begin commercial production in November
2010, already has government officials and civil society organisations
voicing serious concerns, including reported spills. Kosmos Energy is under
government investigation for negligence in the spillage of 598 barrels of
oil-based mud around its rigs between December 2009 and March 2010.[21] Once
production is operational, there are heightened concerns about spills,
leakages, atmospheric emissions and waste discharge that may threaten human
health, marine life and the fishing-based livelihoods of local people.
There are also onshore concerns. Since exploration began, the area has come
under ‘economic siege’, particularly by companies and businessmen seeking
land for housing construction and other commercial activities. High rates of
in-migration and rapid urbanisation raise issues of sanitation, crime and
rising prices.[12]
Despite these many concerns, the development of Ghana’s deepwater oil is
advancing rapidly. This fast-track is especially problematic since the
country lacks the legal and regulatory framework to deal adequately with its
nascent oil and gas sector. Ghana has chosen to accept so-called
‘stabilisation clauses’ in its contracts with companies that lock in current
laws and regulations. If the country should decide to strengthen its
regulatory framework, companies with existing contracts could claim that the
new laws do not apply to them, or require the government to provide
financial compensation for the cost of compliance.[13] As foreign companies
reap handsome rewards, and Ghana gains uncertain benefits (much of the
content of these contracts remains secret), coastal communities are sure to
pay the highest cost. At a recent Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative (EITI) workshop held in the coastal town of Takoradi,
representatives of six districts located closest to the oil find responded
angrily to refusals to commit part of the petroleum royalties to an
environmental mitigation or compensation fund, as is legally required in the
mining sector.[24] No such provision has thus far been established for the
oil and gas industry.
MILITARISED DEVELOPMENT: SECURITY FOR WHOM?
When it comes to oil, corporate interests are often recast as national
security concerns. It was President Jimmy Carter who cemented the connection
in his 1980 State of the Union address by stating that any foreign attempt
to gain control of Middle Eastern oil would be regarded as ‘an assault on
the vital interests of the United States of America.’ The policy, now known
as the Carter Doctrine, set a dangerous precedent of using military might to
secure ‘strategically important’ resources throughout the world.[25]
Combined with the post-9/11 escalation of global counter-terrorism
activities, the Carter Doctrine has provided rationale for an increased US
military presence in Africa. After a five-year counter-terrorism initiative
in West Africa (Operation Enduring Freedom Trans-Sahara) that began in 2002,
the Bush Administration announced the creation of a new unified combatant
command – US Africa Command or AFRICOM – to ‘promote US national security
objectives in Africa and its surrounding waters.’ [26] AFRICOM became an
official command on 1 October 2008.
Despite expectations to the contrary, the Obama Administration has opted to
continue, and indeed to expand, the unilateral militarisation of Africa
through AFRICOM. Budget requests for the 2010 fiscal year submitted to
Congress in May 2009 – which include funding for all US arms sales, military
training and other security assistance programmes – showed a 300 per cent
increase in military financing to sub-Saharan African countries, from US$8.2
million to over US$25.5 million.[27] In view of the tragic history of
military repression on the continent, this strategy is cause for concern. In
particular, civil society protests in resource-rich areas such as the Niger
Delta have been violently repressed by their militaries, often with tacit
approval from foreign companies.
The 1995 hanging of Nigerian author and playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa along with
eight fellow anti-oil activists – collectively known as the Ogoni Nine –
drew international attention to corporate involvement in human rights
abuses. [28] Last year, Royal Dutch Shell paid US$15.5 million to settle a
lawsuit accusing Shell of complicity in the executions.[29] The settlement
was seen as an important, if small, victory for oil-affected peoples.
Tragically, however, the persistent quashing of non-violent movements in the
Delta has led to the radicalisation of rural youth, the emergence of armed
militias and the increased belligerence of the Nigerian State towards
affected communities. In another case, the European Commission on Oil in
Sudan (ECOS) has accused oil companies of complicity in crimes against
humanity in a Southern oil field known as Block 5A. ECOS charges companies
with pressuring armed groups to ‘clear the ground’, leading to a wave of
repression in which 12,000 people were killed and another 20,000 displaced.
Reverend James Koung Ninrew, general secretary of the Nuer Peace Council in
Southern Sudan, stated: ‘As soon as the troops secured the area, they moved
to the next, systematically, and the companies followed, until the whole
area of Block 5A was brought under control. The companies could see the
villages still burning.’[30]
OIL AID, FUELING THE ADDICTION
For decades, industrialised countries such as the US, Japan and Europe (and
now China and India) have used development assistance as an inducement for
poor, oil-producing countries to grant resource access to Western oil
companies. When the rise of petro-nationalism in the 1970s threatened the
ability of Western powers to fuel their economies with cheap oil,
contemporary ‘oil aid’ emerged to help pry open national markets and reverse
the trend towards State-owned oil companies.[31] To be sure, military
pressure was also used to gain access to coveted oil deposits. But
ideological warfare, waged by the influential Washington-based aid agencies,
played a paramount role. As part of their conditional lending practices, the
World Bank and IMF stepped in to restructure the oil sectors of Third World
countries, encouraging them to de-nationalise production and instead focus
on attracting and facilitating foreign investors. In the name of economic
growth (and debt repayment), South countries were enjoined into the fast and
furious exploitation of their natural resources.
Aid to the industry has also taken a more direct form: Subsidies to oil
companies bankrolled by taxpayer dollars. A database compiled by Oilwatch
International determined that at least US$61.3 billion in public funds were
spent globally between 2000 and 2007 to subsidise the oil and gas
industry.[32] The US contributed the greatest amount to that pot, with some
US$15.6 billion distributed by the US Export-Import Bank, the Overseas
Private Investment Corporation, the US Trade and Development Agency, USAID
and the US Maritime Association.[33] (This is in addition to billions in
domestic tax breaks for oil and gas companies.[34]) The single largest
multilateral source of oil aid remains the World Bank, which provides
financing primarily for large infrastructure and private sector-driven
export projects. In Africa’s politically and (environmentally sensitive
areas), many projects could not move forward without World Bank support, the
mere presence of which acts as risk insurance and helps attract other
funding.[35] Despite high-profile fiascos such as the controversial
Chad-Cameroon pipeline[36], the Bank continues to lend vigorously for oil
development. In 2008, for instance, World Bank lending for fossil fuels
increased by 102 per cent – compared to 11 per cent for renewable
energy.[37] What's more, by promoting energy-intensive export agriculture,
the Bank – in collusion with bilateral agencies including USAID and
mega-philanthropies including the Gates Foundation – further entrench oil
dependence in the Third world.
FOOD AND FUEL SOVEREIGNTY: A WORLD WITHOUT CHEAP OIL IS POSSIBLE
>From the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Guinea, oil production has been
marked by corporate impunity, lack of transparency and undemocratic
decision-making, ecological crisis and human tragedy. The root cause of
these problems is the massive consumption of oil and oil-based products in
the industrialised world for use in manufacturing, transportation and food
production. Insomuch as they rely on the burning of fossil fuels, these
activities are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions
contributing to global climate change. Farming accounts for as much as 32
per cent of total emissions, a significant portion of which are created by
industrial agriculture through the use of petroleum-based fertilisers,
pesticides and forest clearing.[38] The issue of ‘food miles’ – the distance
our food travels from farm to table[39] – has been well documented, while
new data shows that the production phase accounts for as much as 83 per cent
of the average US household’s carbon footprint for food.[40] Changing the
way we produce food, therefore, constitutes a necessary step towards
reducing oil dependence, its enormous carbon footprint and its human toll.
Food sovereignty, the political project put forward by the international
peasant movement Via Campesina, offers a promising road map. Food
sovereignty emerged in the 1990s as a critique to the neoliberal vision of
‘food security’ promoted by the World Bank and others, who view agriculture
primarily as a source of export earnings – as opposed to local nutrition,
livelihood, biodiversity, culture and community well being. This model –
which farmer-activist José Bové has called ‘food from nowhere’ – cares
little about the displacement of small-scale food producers from their land
by oil companies or industrial farms, since cheap food imports are expected
to feed the masses. Food sovereignty, by contrast, privileges sustainable,
local food production for local consumption, arguing that international
trade must come second. And while some will argue that organic production
can’t feed the world, numerous studies prove otherwise. [41] [42] [43]
Industrial agriculture may be more ‘efficient’ in terms of labour (output
per worker), but its productivity is achieved through massive applications
of fossil fuel-based inputs such as tractor fuel and agrochemicals. Small
organic farms, however, are generally more efficient in terms of land
(output per acre), since they grow a variety of plants and animals, taking
full advantage of each ecological niche. Organic farms are more energy
efficient, since they rely primarily upon ‘closed-loop’ nutrient cycles –
for example, crop nutrients consumed on site by animals may be returned the
soil as crop residues or manure to restore fertility. Finally, small organic
farms produce far fewer greenhouse gas emissions and could even reverse the
trend of global climate change through carbon sequestration in trees and
soil.[44]
By producing more food with less energy, promoting small-scale organic
agriculture may be our best bet for kicking the cheap oil habit, providing
livelihoods for millions of smallholders around the world, and cooling the
planet for all. This undertaking will require immense political will and a
monumental global shift from oil-dependent, export-driven development to a
focus on environmental stewardship and food sovereignty. Meanwhile, the
small farmers, fishers and herders of the world – those with the smallest
ecological footprint – are fighting a multi-front battle for their right to
sustainably produce food on the land and waterways.
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