Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
As helpful as our discussion may be in contextualizing the prospects
of Delta communities for securing environmental improvements and
more sustainable economies and thereby some measure of justice, we
have not yet treated the signifi cance of one factor that serves as a major
driver in Nigeria's oil-production region: the role of international non-
governmental organizations in securing worldwide salience for the Delta
peoples' plight. Human rights and environmental INGOs have pressed
vigorously for improvements in Nigerian governance and for improved
living conditions in the Delta. These groups have succeeded in focusing
major international media attention on the needs and issues of the Delta
and have kept pressure on the Nigerian national government to secure
changes in existing environmental regulatory policies and practices as
well as resource distribution formulas. In short, these international actors
have worked to serve as counterweights to the market-related power of
the oil multinationals, whose standing the Nigerian government was ill-
equipped to address alone.
Beck's “Double Contingency” and Environmental Justice in the Delta
Ulrich Beck's double contingency formulation is helpful in understanding
the political-economic situation in the Delta and its consequences for
environmental remediation and improved prospects for sustainable
development. Like the international politics and global trade in which it
is ensconced, the region and the agents with power to affect its destiny
are in a state of fl ux. As Beck argued should occur, transnational civil
society organizations have pushed for changes in how the Nigerian
federal government distributes its oil revenues to Delta-area governments
as well as improvements in the overall transparency and fi scal and politi-
cal accountability of all levels of governmental budgeting and adminis-
tration. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other INGOs
have advocated publicizing the continuing venality and corruption of
Delta state and local governments. Similarly, the same organizations and
a variety of environmental INGOs, including World Wildlife Fund-UK
and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (World
Conservation Union), have publicized the ecological damage evident
across the region and have demanded the Nigerian governments at all
levels address it (Brown 2006). These groups also have placed pressure
on the oil companies to change their pollution-contributing practices.
Even as transnational NGOs sought to secure greater accountability
on the part of the various levels of the Nigerian government as well as
