Participation In Petroleum Development …Towards Sustainable Community Development in the Niger Delta

Continued from last Monday May 17, 2010.

The book “Participation in Petroleum Development, Towards Sustainable community Development in the Niger Delta” by Alabor Dr. Edward Bristol-Alagbariya is essential for key oil industry experts, administrators, scholars and students who wants to gain further insight on how the Niger Delta can benefit from oil exploration and exploitation. The Tide, beginning from this edition, run excerpts of the book. Enjoy it.

In Part E, comprising

            Chapters 8 and 9, discusses CI in the IA of oil and gas development projects in the Bonny kingdom. One significant finding of this part is that through IA, the poor and marginalised petroleum resources-producing communities of the Delta region are able to derive IA benefits from the MNOCs. Thus, as in other areas of the Delta region, due to the lack of GSR in Bonny kingdom, the EIA mitigation measures of oil and gas development projects are directed by the MNOCs more towards providing social investments which are lacking in the kingdom. Emphasis on the provision of social investments thus tends to undermine the environmental stewardship of the MNOCs which is crucial in the effort towards SD in the Delta region.

Among other things, Part F (Chapter 10) concludes the book by recommending the need for interactive CI in petroleum resources development in the oil-producing areas, fostered by GSR, and improved CSR and Community Social Responsibility (ie, social responsibility of the communities – SRCs), in the course of the resources development in these areas. The chapter recommends the need for improvement in PI in decision-making processes in Nigeria, so as to achieve greater accountability, transparency and responsibility in governance, towards achieving SD vis-à-vis the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, in the interest of the citizens and humanity at large.

Foreword

Company-community conflict has come to define natural resources development in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In particular, the vast oil and gas Delta region in southern Nigeria, one of the largest petroleum-exporting areas in the world, is an extreme example of this human, environmental, and economic tragedy. For over half a century, petroleum development has been occurring in this ethnic minority region – despite protests, demands for participation, and resistance by the affected local people. Mind-numbing charges proliferate of human rights violations, assassinations, kidnappings, arrests, forced relocations, property destruction, central government corruption, corporate force, failed efforts at compromise, and grave environmental and public health crises.

This book is a fresh voice with impeccable credentials and compelling solutions. Dr. Edward T. Bristol-Alagbariya is the paramount chief of the Bristol-Alagbarigha royal house of Grand Bonny kingdom – one of the most impacted oil-producing areas in the Niger Delta. Dr. Bristol-Alagbariya is a blood-descendant of King Perekule, and Priest-King Alagbariya (founder of Grand Bonny and one of the four founding fathers and premier-kings of Grand Bonny kingdom). Dr. Bristol-Alagbariya discusses Grand Bonny kingdom as occupying a significant place in the political economy of Nigeria, from the pre-colonial era. He describes the coast of Grand Bonny as one of Nigeria’s most strategic seaports from the period of the Atlantic trade between Western Europe and West Africa. He discusses Grand Bonny as the first seat of the government of Rivers State when the state was created in May 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War. He demonstrates Grand Bonny Island city as playing host to Nigeria’s premier crude oil export terminal as well as Nigeria’s premier LNG plant located at Finima, along the Island city. The perspective of this book is reinforced by case studies on Grand Bonny kingdom.

Dr. Bristol-Alagbariya is a member of the Historical Society of  Nigeria, the Nigerian Bar Association and the International Bar Association, including the International Association for Public Participation, International Association for Impact Assessment, Society of Petroleum Engineers, and Friends of the Earth Scotland. He is also a member of the Social Impact Assessment Center, New York, and an associate of the Calabash project (of Southern African region) on citizens’ participation in environmental assessment. He has served on significant government committees in Nigeria. This book is the outgrowth of his PhD Thesis (which I assessed as external examiner) at the world-famous Centre for Energy, Petroleum & Mineral Law & Policy (CEPMLP), University of Dundee. He is, therefore, not only an academic and legal expert of note on the issues discussed in this book, but also a genuine  stakeholder’ of the Niger Delta – the book’s area of focus. 

Dr. Bristol-Alagbariya brings to the protracted conflict in the Nigerian Delta region a commendably positive, solution-oriented perspective, seeing both the cause and the cure in  the weakness of environmental democracy’ in the region. As to cause, he presents impressive empirical and scholarly research on the historical, ethnological, and political realities of the oil-rich region and nation and finds that the crises are caused by inadequate public participation or community involvement on two levels – both in the regional development process and in national government decision-making processes.

Public participation is now widely viewed as one of the fundamental prerequisites for the achievement of successful sustainable development. It is recognised as a critical component in numerous international legal authorities and studies, including Principle 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration, Rio’s Agenda 21, the 1998 Aarhus Convention, and other sources, which the author analyses in depth. Public participation is not just limited to Western liberal democracies, as the author carefully shows by documenting the centrality of citizen participation in the Delta communities’ historical and social framework. However, as he illustrates in various case studies, public participation has followed a failure model in the course of petroleum development in the Niger Delta, ranging from nonexistent to superficial ‘consult-then-ignore’.

The solution, Dr. Bristol-Alagbariya concludes, is that change is needed in how both the companies and the central government engage in public participation with the affected communities.  Mere  consultation’ without  implementation’ is not sufficient. He persuasively details the reforms needed both in corporate social responsibility and in government social responsibility to resolve the crises and to proceed with sustainable development of the resource in a way that protects the environmental, social, and public health values of the Niger Delta communities.

This is an extraordinary book which can and should be read by statesmen, government regulators, resource development interest groups, policymakers, and academics. Its groundbreaking approach constitutes a path for constructive engagement and sustainable development not only for the Niger Delta but also a potential blueprint for all resource-rich developing nations.

George (Rock) Pring

(Professor of Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Denver, Colorado, USA, & Principal, Global Environmental Outcomes LLC, Consultant on Environment, Natural Resources, and Access to Justice), June 2009.

Introduction

It was my privilege and my pleasure to be the principal supervisor of the PhD thesis which has been revised and transformed into this book. While supervising this thesis at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum & Mineral Law & Policy (CEPMLP), University of Dundee, I realised that it had the potential to be published in the interests of a wider public outside the immediate academic community. I am therefore delighted that it has, in the course of the author’s post-doctoral studies, emerged as a highly-accessible contribution to the study of the sustainable development of the oil-producing communities of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, especially the communities of the oil-rich Delta ethnic minority region of the federation. 

To be continued.