Oil Injustice

Oil Injustice examines the mobilization efforts of four communities with different oil histories in response to the construction of an oil pipeline. Using multiple sites in Ecuador as case studies, Patricia Widener examines the efforts of grassrootsgroups, non-governmental organizations, activist mayors, and transnational advocates that mobilized to redefine the country's oil path and to represent the voice of many local communities and organizations that sought to offer an alternative to the nation's oil dependency and to the use of its oil wealth. These groups generated divergent and at times rival reactions to the pipeline, though at their core, the multiple campaigns developed from a shared history and awareness of a number of marginalized communities and degraded environments in areas most important to the oil process. Widener shows that global environmental justice demands are bound within a capitalist political system, where community activists, national NGOs and their international allies are forced to seek local change rather than attempt to defeat a disabling and unequal system.

Oil Injustice examines the mobilization efforts of four communities with different oil histories in response to the construction of an oil pipeline. Using multiple sites in Ecuador as case studies, Patricia Widener examines the efforts of grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, activist mayors, and transnational advocates that mobilized to redefine the country's oil path and to represent the voice of many local communities and organizations that sought to offer an alternative to the nation's oil dependency and to the use of its oil wealth. These groups generated divergent and at times rival reactions to the pipeline, though at their core, the multiple campaigns developed from a shared history and awareness of a number of marginalized communities and degraded environments in areas most important to the oil process. Widener shows that global environmental justice demands are bound within a capitalist political system, where community activists, national NGOs and their international allies are forced to seek local change rather than attempt to defeat a disabling and unequal system.

In this in-depth analysis of First Nations opposition to the oil sands industry, James Heydon offers detailed empirical insight into Canadian oil sands regulation. The environmental consequences of the oil sands industry have been thoroughly explored by scholars from a variety of disciplines. However, less well understood is how and why the provincial energy regulator has repeatedly sanctioned such a harmful pattern of production for almost two decades. This research monograph addresses that shortcoming. Drawing from interviews with government, industry, and First Nation personnel, along with an analysis of almost 20 years of policy, strategy, and regulatory approval documents, Sustainable Development as Environmental Harm offers detailed empirical insight into Canadian oil sands regulation. Providing a thorough account of the ways in which the regulatory process has prioritised economic interests over the land-based cultural interests of First Nations, it addresses a gap in the literature by explaining how environmental harm has been systematically produced over time by a regulatory process tasked with the pursuit of ‘sustainable development’. With an approach emphasizing the importance of understanding how and why the regulatory process has been able to circumvent various protections for the entire duration in which the contemporary oil sands industry has existed, this work complements existing literature and provides a platform from which future investigations into environmental harm may be conducted. It is essential reading for those with an interest in green criminology, environmental harm, indigenous rights, and regulatory controls relating to fossil fuel production.

The Standard Oil Company emerged out of obscurity in the 1860s to capture 90 percent of the petroleum refining industry in the United States during the Gilded Age. John D. Rockefeller, the company’s founder, organized the company around an almost religious dedication to principles of efficiency. Economic success masked the dark side of efficiency as Standard Oil dumped oil waste into public waterways, filled the urban atmosphere with acrid smoke, and created a consumer safety crisis by selling kerosene below congressional standards. Local governments, guided by a desire to favor the interests of business, deployed elaborate engineering solutions to tackle petroleum pollution at taxpayer expense rather than heed public calls to abate waste streams at their source. Only when refinery pollutants threatened the health of the Great Lakes in the twentieth century did the federal government respond to a nascent environmental movement. Organized around the four classical elements at the core of Standard Oil’s success (earth, air, fire, and water), Refining Nature provides an ecological context for the rise of one of the most important corporations in American history.

This book explores the relationship between oil pollution laws and environmental justice by comparing and contrasting the United States and Nigeria. Critically, this book not only examines the fluidity of oil pollutions laws but also how effective or ineffective enforcement can be when viewed through the lens of environmental justice. Using Nigeria as a case study and drawing upon examples from the United States, it examines the legal and institutional challenges impacting upon the effective enforcement of laws and provides a contrasting view of developed and developing countries. Focusing on the oil and gas industry, the book discusses the laws and international acceptable standards (IAS) in these industries, the principles behind their application, the existing barriers to their effective implementation, and how to overcome those barriers. Utilising an environmental justice framework, the book demonstrates the synergy between policy-making, human rights, and justice in oil-producing regions as well as addressing the importance of protecting the rights of minorities. Through a comparative analysis of the United States and Nigeria, this book draws out enforcement approaches and mechanisms for tackling oil-related pollution with a view to reducing environmental injustice in developing countries. Examining the role of NGOs in pursuing environmental justice matters, the book showed the regional courts as one avenue of overcoming the enforcement challenges faced by the developing countries. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental law, environmental justice, minorities' rights, business and human rights, energy law, and natural resource governance.

The Niger Delta of Nigeria is a boiling cauldron and a pandora's box that has exploded in the past and will continue to simmer for many generations until drastic steps are taken by all stakeholders to end the current political,economic and environmental impasse in the country's economic basket. Nobody doubts that Niger Delta is the real (not proverbial) goose that lays the golden eggs in Nigeria.Approximately 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings and 80 percent of federal revenues for the last 45 years come from oil,the so called Bonny,sweet 'light' oil.The Niger Delta is believed to hold at least twenty billion barrels of oil reserves. Nigeria pumps 2 million barrels of oil daily from the Niger Delta. Although Nigeria has earned more than $280 billion dollars over the past 40 years from oil exploration, the environmental and living conditions of the oil producing communities is a misery tale of unparalleled proportions. For the inhabitants of the oil producing communities,every day basic activity is a gargantuan struggle. They cannot drink water because of oil pollution; cannot enjoy gainful employment because their traditional sources of livelihood have been destroyed; cannot hunt because their wildlife is gone; cannot send their children to school or enjoy basic healthcare because of abject poverty and; cannot enjoy basic transportation, electricity and telephone services because of the ''Nigeria'' factor.The Nigeria's current political experiment will continue to be hounded by the environmental, health and economic morass of Niger Delta. The Niger Delta issue is a complex web of political betrayal at all levels of government (federal,state and local), endless economic marginalization, and massive environmental insensitivity and neglect. More so, the Niger Delta question is not amenable to quick organizational fixes, Amnesty, political expediency, and inflammatory rhetoric or double talk.Indeed, Niger Delta represents the rot of Nigeria's polity and its chicanery tendencies, and the diabolical machinations of unrepentant elite both from the Niger Delta and the corridors of power in Abuja. The Niger Delta question also transcends the usual Nigerian past time of simplistic ethnic jingoism,atavistic political leadership, cult and personality following, and self-imposed immunity from personal and collective responsibility.The pertinent question at this juncture is very simple : Should Nigerians that occupy the source of our enormous national wealth enjoy an equitable standard of living, pursue economic freedoms with minimal discomfort, and live a life free from avoidable environmental hazards ? It is not believed that any Nigerian or multinational conglomerate can argue otherwise or respond in the negative.Consequently, this book attempt to answer the following rational questions : What went wrong in the Niger Delta since oil was discovered in the region i 1956 ? How and when did it go so wrong ? Can anything be done to remedy the wrong and assure that it will never happen again ? The writer believes that the die is cast for Niger Delta. No present or future government in Nigeria can ever neglect the unjust situation in the Niger Delta without major repercussions.The book is divided into eighteen chapters. Chapter one deals with relevant review of literature on the Niger Delta challenges. Chapter two examines two theoretical frameworks expounded by two eminent scholars on the relationships between resources and conflicts. The rest of the chapters cover wide range of issues as they relate to Niger Delta questions on injustice perpetrated on the people of the region. My joy in writing this book will derives much from the contribution that it's able to make in removing the mystique around the Niger Delta region thus, leading to a better understanding of the problem. It is my hope that this book will be an asset to the readers.

This book is an historical examination of environmental justice struggles across the globe from the perspective of environmentally marginalized communities. It is unique in environmental justice histography because it recounts these struggles by integrating the actual voices and memories of communities who grappled with environmental inequalities.

The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode. In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.