Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is an international network of grassroots environmental organizations in 73 countries. About half of the member groups call themselves "Friends of the Earth" in their own languages; the others use other names. The organization was founded in 1969 in San Francisco by David Brower, Donald Aitken, and Gary Soucie after Brower's split with the Sierra Club because of the latter's positive approach to nuclear energy. The founding donation of $500,000 was provided by Robert Orville Anderson, the owner of Atlantic Richfield oil company. It became an international network of organizations in 1971 with a meeting of representatives from four countries: U.S., Sweden, the UK and France.
Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian writer, teacher, television producer, and environmental activist. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping.
The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), is a social movement organization representing the indigenous Ogoni people of Rivers State, Nigeria. The Ogoni contend that Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), along with other petroleum multinationals and the Nigerian government, have destroyed their environment, polluted their rivers, and provided no benefits in return for enormous oil revenues extracted from their lands.
Environmental racism, ecological racism, or ecological apartheid is a form of racism leading to negative environmental outcomes such as landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste disposal disproportionately impacting communities of color, violating substantive equality. Internationally, it is also associated with extractivism, which places the environmental burdens of mining, oil extraction, and industrial agriculture upon indigenous peoples and poorer nations largely inhabited by people of color.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier is a Canadian Inuk activist. She has been a political representative for Inuit at the regional, national and international levels, most recently as International Chair for the Inuit Circumpolar Council. Watt-Cloutier has worked on a range of social and environmental issues affecting Inuit, most recently, persistent organic pollutants and global warming. She has received numerous awards and honours for her work, and has been featured in a number of documentaries and profiled by journalists from all media. Watt-Cloutier sits as an adviser to Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. She is also a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. It is located within nine coastal southern Nigerian states, which include: all six states from the South South geopolitical zone, one state (Ondo) from South West geopolitical zone and two states from South East geopolitical zone.
Environmental justice or eco-justice, is a social movement to address environmental injustice, which occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has generated hundreds of studies showing that exposure to environmental harm is inequitably distributed.
Bayelsa state is a state in the South South region of Nigeria, located in the core of the Niger Delta. Bayelsa State was created in 1996 and was carved out from Rivers State, making it one of the newest states in the federation. The capital, Yenagoa, is susceptible to high risk of annual flooding. It shares a boundary with Rivers State to the east and Delta State to the north across the Niger River for 17 km and the Forçados River for 198 km, with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean dominating its southern borders. It has a total area of 10,773 square kilometres (4,159 sq mi). The state comprises eight local government areas: Ekeremor, Kolokuma/Opokuma, Yenagoa, Nembe, Ogbia, Sagbama, Brass and Southern Ijaw. The state is the smallest in Nigeria by population as of the 2006 census. Being in the Niger Delta, Bayelsa State has a riverine and estuarine setting, with bodies of water within the state preventing the development of significant road infrastructure.
The Odi massacre was an attack carried out on November 20, 1999, by the Nigerian Armed Forces against the predominantly Ijaw town of Odi in Bayelsa State. The attack came in the context of an ongoing conflict in the Niger Delta over indigenous rights to oil resources and environmental protection. It is estimated that over 900 civilians were killed in the attack.
Shell Nigeria is the common name for Shell plc's Nigerian operations carried out through four subsidiaries—primarily Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited (SPDC). Royal Dutch Shell's joint ventures account for more than 21% of Nigeria's total petroleum production.
The current conflict in the Niger Delta first arose in the early 1990s over tensions between foreign oil corporations and a number of the Niger Delta's minority ethnic groups who feel they are being exploited, particularly the Ogoni and the Ijaw. Ethnic and political unrest continued throughout the 1990s despite the return to democracy and the election of the Obasanjo government in 1999. Struggle for oil wealth and environmental harm over its impacts has fueled violence between ethnic groups, causing the militarization of nearly the entire region by ethnic militia groups, Nigerian military and police forces, notably the Nigerian Mobile Police. The violence has contributed to Nigeria's ongoing energy supply crisis by discouraging foreign investment in new power generation plants in the region.
Environmental issues in the Niger Delta are caused by its petroleum industry. The delta covers 20,000 km2 (7,700 sq mi) within wetlands of 70,000 km2 (27,000 sq mi) formed primarily by sediment deposition. Home to 20 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, this floodplain makes up 7.5% of Nigeria's total land mass. It is the largest wetland and maintains the third-largest drainage basin in Africa. The Delta's environment can be broken down into four ecological zones: coastal barrier islands, mangrove swamp forests, freshwater swamps, and lowland rainforests. Fishing and farming are the main sources of livelihoods for majority of her residents.
The Rainforest Foundation Fund is a charitable foundation founded in 1987 and dedicated to drawing attention to rainforests and defending the rights of indigenous peoples living there.
Environmental issues are disruptions in the usual function of ecosystems. Further, these issues can be caused by humans or they can be natural. These issues are considered serious when the ecosystem cannot recover in the present situation, and catastrophic if the ecosystem is projected to certainly collapse.
Extractivism is the removal of natural resources particularly for export with minimal processing. This economic model is common throughout the Global South and the Arctic region, but also happens in some sacrifice zones in the Global North in European extractivism. The concept was coined in Portuguese as "extractivismo" in 1996 to describe the for-profit exploitation of forest resources in Brazil.
Sokari Ekine is a Nigerian activist, blogger and author. She worked as a journalist at the Pambazuka News and has also written for Feminist Africa and New Internationalist. Ekine kept a blog between 2004 and 2014 in which she covered a number of topics including LGBTI rights, women's rights, and environmental issues. She has co-written or edited four books, and taught English to school children in Haiti.
The biogeographic regionalization of Earth's terrestrial biodiversity, known as Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (TEOW), is made up of 867 ecoregions that are divided into 14 biomes. In addition to offering a comprehensive map of terrestrial biodiversity, TEOW also provides a global species database for ecological analyses and priority setting, a logical biogeographic framework for large-scale conservation strategies, a map for enhancing biogeographic literacy, and a foundation for the Global 200.
Fikile Ntshangase was a South African environmental activist who was assassinated on 22 October 2020. She was a leading member of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation (MCEJO), which is taking legal action against the proposed expansion of an open-cast coal mine operated by Tendele Coal Mining (Pty) Ltd, near Somkhele, situated near Hluhluwe–iMfolozi park, the oldest nature reserve in Africa.
Environmental Rights Action (ERA), sometimes referred to as Friends of Earth Nigeria, is a Nigerian advocacy non-governmental organization, with a focus on the environmental human right issues in Nigeria and protection of the human ecosystem. The organization which was established in 1993, is the Nigerian chapter of Friends of the Earth International. The goals of the organization is to help promote environmentally responsible government and communities in Nigeria. The top priority areas for the organization include advocating for waste and plastic policies and regulations, building coalitions and strengthening alliances, regional and international advocacy to expose the violations connected to industrial plantation companies, who are drivers of biodiversity loss at all levels of work.
