Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
'form of government' they know. In recent years, this proximity to host
communities has increased SPDC exposure to growing discontent with
government” (Ikporukpo 2004, 338).
In the latter half of the 1990s, Delta-based environmental nongovern-
mental organizations (NGOs), including the Civil Liberties Organiza-
tion, the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, and the
Constitutional Rights Project, advocated for the return of central gov-
ernment-controlled oil resources to the region to allow for remediation
of environmental degradation and to secure increased development
opportunities. International NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch,
Amnesty International, and the World Council of Churches, also publicized
the environmental and living conditions in the Delta and called for redis-
tribution of resources as a partial means of securing resources for reme-
diation. These organizations called on the corporations involved to take
steps to help the communities in which they were working and to address
pressing pollution abatement and cleanup needs. Ultimately, as noted
above, the central government and corporations responded and provided
more resources (International Crisis Group 2006). The national govern-
ment shared increased revenues with state and local governments, while
the oil companies began to provide specifi c development projects in
tandem both with community groups and local governments within the
areas of their operations. Human Rights Watch has formally acknowl-
edged these developments, but has also suggested that these changes have
done little to make changes in how Delta residents live (Human Rights
Watch 2007). Paradoxically, while it seems clear that at least a share of
the newfound willingness of the national government and petroleum
companies alike to provide increased resources arose from the pressure
applied by international NGOs, the citizenry at large continues to per-
ceive these environmental groups as distant and untrustworthy elites
(Okonta and Douglas 2001).
The Political Economy of Oil-Company Regulation
The tale of the specifi c arrangements by which the Nigerian government
has overseen oil operations over the decades has been well told else-
where. But to gain a perspective on what has occurred over the last four
and a half decades, it may help to note that the multinationals have
established an enormous infrastructure of machinery and facilities that
necessarily has impacts on the limited land area and waters it occupies.
Oil and its refi ned products cannot be produced without environmental
