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Testimony of Stephen Mills, Sierra Club Human Rights and Environment Campaign Director, before the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Africa July 17, 1996 Good afternoon. My name is Stephen Mills and I am the Human Rights and Environment Campaign Director for the Sierra Club. I appreciate the opportunity to present to the Committee the observations of the Sierra Club's International Program on the issues we believe pertinent to Africa's environmental future. I will concentrate my remarks today on West Africa, particularly on Nigeria, and the issue there on which the Sierra Club is currently most active. I will summarize my testimony but ask that the full text be submitted for the record. This afternoon I would like to discuss, in part, the role that the multinational oil company Shell has played in Nigeria, and their collusive relationship with a brutal military dictatorship. I believe that this case provides a good example of the challenges faced by Africans across the continent as they strive to develop and manage their natural resources. It is also the story of a heinous double-standard utilized by of one of the world's most recognized multinational corporations. The Sierra Club aims to hold Shell up as an example of how development should not occur in Africa. I will close with some recommendations for preventing future Nigerian tragedies. Madam Chairman, in February of 1994, in an Atlantic Monthly article entitled, "The Coming Anarchy," Robert Kaplan wrote that the cities of West Africa at night are some of the unsafest places in the world. He wrote that West Africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real "strategic" danger. The intention of his article was to stimulate readers to understand "the environment" for what it is: the national security-issue of the early twenty- first century. "The political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and rising sea levels in critical overcrowded regions," he said, "will be the core foreign-policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate." For example, Kaplan noted that when Sierra Leone achieved its independence, in 1961, as much as 60 percent of the country was primary rain forest. Now six percent is. In the Ivory Coast the proportion of forest has fallen from 38 percent to eight percent. The deforestation has led to soil erosion, which has led to more flooding and more mosquitos. As a result, it has been reported that virtually everyone in the West African interior now has some form of malaria. Kaplan said that to mention "the environment" or "diminishing natural resources" in foreign-policy circles was to meet a brick wall of skepticism or boredom. To make matters worse, there are those who even believe that what Africa really needs in order to help give it an economic boost is, in fact, more pollution. In a January 14, 1992 internal memo to World Bank chiefs, economist Lawrence Summers wrote, "I've always's thought that the underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted...just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [lesser developed countries]." It is within this mix that we dwell when consider Africa's environmental future. Fortunately, some of this mentality appears to be changing. In April of this year Secretary of State Warren Christopher in a speech at Stanford University announced his intention to place environmental issues in the mainstream of American foreign policy. He said that "environmental forces transcend borders and oceans to threaten directly the health, prosperity and jobs of American citizens." He noted that "addressing natural resource issues is frequently critical to achieving political and economic stability, and pursuing our strategic goals around the world." That day in California, Secretary Christopher announced a series of initiatives that will not only help protect the environment, but also protect U.S. interests. After all, it is certainly in America's best interest to help encourage economic development in Africa's developing countries. Very few poor Africans can afford to buy expensive American products. The Sierra Club commends Secretary Christopher for announcing these new environmental initiatives and we look forward to assisting in their implementation. We will urge, however, that the State Department's new initiatives extend additionally to individual citizens in their right to protect the environment, and their right to clean water and clean air. This is because the Sierra Club believes that environmental rights are directly linked to human rights -- that everyone has a right to a clean and healthy environment. We believe that no country can feign environmental awareness when its citizens are forbidden to speak freely, when they are forbidden to assemble, or when they are persecuted, and as I will later discuss, in some instances executed, for protecting the environment. For more than 100 years, the Sierra Club has worked to preserve and protect North America's environment by empowering individuals at the local and national level. Part of the organization's strength has been the political activism in its grassroots campaigns for strong environmental protection laws. While the Club's first priority has always been to urge the United States to get its own house in order, it is also imperative that we keep the U.S., other wealthy nations, and multinational corporations, from preying on indigenous communities in the developing world. When environmentalists like Chico Mendes of Brazil are murdered, or like Wangari Maathai of Kenya are harassed and beaten, or like Ken Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria, are hanged because of their political and environmental activism, the relationship between human rights and environmental protection becomes all too clear. Madam Chairman, I am certain that this subcommittee has been following the recent events in Nigeria. I am sure that the subcommittee members, like the rest of us, were shocked by the November execution of playwright and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa. So I am sure that most of the information I am about to discuss will not come as news to you. I will tell you though that it has been a most enlightening period for the members of the Sierra Club. Though we have been active on international environmental issues for nearly 30 years now, mostly on development bank lending and on international trade issues, never has an international environmental issue so captivated our members. I suppose it is because the members of the Sierra Club across America could so readily identify with the struggle of one of Nigeria's minority people, the Ogoni. Their desire for freedom from pollution is something we all seek. The Sierra Club campaign to support the Ogoni people of Nigeria in their fight for environmental justice has given rise to an entirely new perspective in the Sierra Club. Our Nigeria campaign is now part of a larger agenda in which we will be looking at the role of multinational companies in developing countries. We aim to inform the public as to whether the influence of certain corporations in various developing countries has ultimately been a good or bad thing for the local communities. We have already determined that in the case of Shell's operations in Nigeria it has been a bad thing. While Shell and the brutal military dictatorships have gotten rich, the Ogoni people have had their lives destroyed. First some background on Nigeria. It is the most populous country in Africa, with a population of approximately 100 million. One in every four Africans is Nigerian -- and the population there is set to double during the next twenty-five years, while the country continues to deplete its natural resources. Nigeria is one of the world's largest exporters of oil, producing some 2 million barrels of oil each day, bringing about $10 billion a year to the military leaders and accounting for about 97 percent of export revenues. (Half of that total is pumped by Shell, making the company by far the dominant economic force in Nigeria.) Yet Nigeria remains one of the world's poorest countries, suffering from frequent paralyzing gas shortages. Someone must be getting rich, but it isn't the Nigerian people. The average Nigerian income is less than $300 a year, as Joshua Hammer reported in the June 1996 issue of Harper's magazine. "While the country's oil elite dwell in lavish compounds with fleets of Mercedes, imported food and wine, and fat overseas bank accounts,"he said, "agriculture which once accounted for 90 percent of Nigeria's export income, is in ruins." Nigeria's cities, says Hammer, "swollen by the mass migration from rural areas during the 1970's oil boom, are smog-choked zones of anarchy." Nigeria also has a reputation for being one of he most corrupt and criminal countries on the planet. Even before the country's latest human rights transgressions occurred, direct flights between the United States and Nigeria were suspended by order of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation because of ineffective security at the terminal and its environs. A State Department report cited the airport for "extortion by law-enforcement and immigration officials." This is one of the few times, reported Hammer, that the U.S. government has embargoed a foreign airport for reasons that are linked purely to crime. State Department officials increasingly note Nigeria's involvement in heroin trafficking. In June of 1993, General Ibrahim Babangida annulled Nigeria's democratic presidential election. Five months later General Sani Abacha seized power, abolished all democratic institutions, shut down newspapers, and jailed most of the opposition, including the winner of the 1993 presidential election, Moshood Abiola. Mrs. Kudirat Abiola, her husband's most vocal supporter, was assassinated last month, many believe in yet another attempt to silence an outspoken military critic. The tragedy that occurred on November 10, 1995, however, stunned the world. In the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the Nigerian military. A military tribunal found Saro-Wiwa guilty of inciting a riot in which four people were killed, even though he was miles away in another town. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Sierra Club and many other human rights and environmental organizations declared the trial a sham, responding that Saro-Wiwa had been convicted on trumped up charges. Of the nineteen prosecution witnesses called, two of the most damaging would later admit to having been bribed by the military junta. Within hours of the execution, the Nigerian military had deployed some 4,000 troops throughout Ogoniland, beating anyone caught mourning in public. School headmasters were arrested as a warning not to discuss Saro-Wiwa in the classroom. Pastors were arrested because they prayed for Ken Saro-Wiwa. Ken Saro-Wiwa was the President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, or MOSOP, a volunteer-based democratic organization governed not unlike the Sierra Club. MOSOP was organized as a response to the environmental devastation which has occurred in Ogoni as a result of 38 years of oil exploitation. Ogoni demands include an end to the pollution caused primarily by the oil spills and gas flares of Royal/Dutch Shell. The Ogoni are also demanding a share of the oil revenues from their land. The Sierra Club has come to believe that a boycott of Shell Oil and an embargo of Nigerian oil exports are the best way to stop the environmental and human rights abuses in Nigeria. The participation in, and endorsement of, boycotts is a rarity for the Sierra Club. But despite repeated meetings, letters and pleas, Shell International continues to deny any complicity in the persecution of the Ogoni people. Though their pollution and poisoning of Ogoni is well documented, Shell continues to refuse to accept responsibility. Ogoniland has a population of approximately 500,000, in an area of just some 400 square miles. It contains 96 oil wells, four oil fields, one petrochemical plant, one fertilizer plant, and two refineries. By some estimates the region has produced about 600 million barrels of crude oil during the past forty years. Since 1958, Royal/Dutch Shell has extracted some $30 billion worth of oil from the lands of the Ogoni people. While royalties from these sales fill the coffers of the Nigerian military, the rich farmland of Ogoni has been laid waste by oil spills and the venting of toxic gases. Meanwhile, the Ogoni lack running water, electricity, adequate schools or healthcare. Even though Nigeria accounts for some 14 percent of Shell's production, between 1982 and 1992, nearly 40 percent of the company's oil spills have occurred there. Shell's high-pressure pipelines were constructed above ground through villages and crisscross over land that was once used for agricultural purposes, rendering it economically useless. Many pipelines pass within a few feet of Ogoni homes. In one case a Shell subcontractor destroyed a village hospital to make way for pipelines. Six years later all that remains is the framework of a new hospital the community was promised. In Nigeria there are few or no requirements to conduct environmental impact studies, recycle oil waste or lay subterranean oil pipes instead of cheaper above ground pipes. Waste oil is haphazardly buried in makeshift pits -- only to bubble again to the surface during the rainy season. Madam Chairman, you asked that I address the issue of property rights in my testimony. Well in 1978, the military declared all land in Nigeria the property of the federal governments. This had the effect of freeing the oil companies from having to negotiate with locals whose property included vast oil reserves. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature in the U.K., 76 percent of the natural gas pumped up with crude in Nigeria is burned off, compared with .6 percent in the United States. A World Wildlife Fund study also revealed that gas flares in Nigeria emit 34 million tons of carbon dioxide and 12 million tons of methane, making petroleum operations in Nigeria one of the world's largest contributors to global warming. Gas flaring in Ogoni villages has destroyed wildlife, plant life, poisoned the air and water, and left residents half-deaf and prone to respiratory diseases. According to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the nearly four decades of oil extraction in the Niger Delta, home to coastal rain forest and mangrove habitat -- has left it the most endangered river delta in the world. In May, many of the claims of environmentalists against Shell were vindicated. Bopp van Dessel, Shell's former head of environmental studies revealed in a British television interview that the company broke its own rules and international standards and failed to respond to his warnings. "Wherever I went I could see that Shell were not operating their facilities properly," Van Dessel said. "They were not meeting their own standards, they were not meeting international standards. Any Shell site that I saw was polluted. Any terminal that I saw was polluted." It was in response to this exploitation, that in 1990 Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders formed the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. On January 4, 1993, Saro-Wiwa drew international attention to their cause by leading a peaceful protest march of 300,000 people through Ogoniland. Again, that was 300,000 people in a community of 500,000. Their resistance has been met with repression. In May 1994, the Nigerian Internal Security Task Force attacked, and virtually destroyed, over 30 Ogoni villages, killing more than 100 people and arresting hundreds more. In the years since MOSOP was founded, more than 1000 Ogoni have been killed during clashes with the Nigerian military police. The Ogoni are a peaceful people. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no protest-related deaths of any person associated with Shell or the Nigerian military. An internal memo obtained by MOSOP later revealed that the military government had in fact decided to escalate its efforts against the community. A May 5 memo written by Major Paul Okuntimo, head of the regional arm of the military, the Rivers State Internal Security Force, warned of what was to come: Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless military operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence... Recommendations: Wasting operations during MOSOP and other gatherings making constant military presence justifiable. Wasting targets cutting across communities and leadership cadres especially vocal individuals of various groups. The full text of the memo is attached to my testimony. Shell's general manager in Nigeria Nnaemeeka Achebe, told Harper's magazine in June that "[f]or a commercial company trying to make investments, you need a stable environment. Dictatorships can give you that." The Sierra Club believes that Shell should feel considerable responsibility for the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni activists. Shell's massive pollution, repeated denial of responsibility for it, its refusal to clean up the Ogoni territory, and its appeals to the Nigerian military to silence the protestors is what incited the civil unrest. More than ninety percent of Nigeria's foreign revenue comes from oil exports. Nearly 50% of this oil is exported to the U.S.. Americans are the largest consumers of Nigerian oil. Yet, Nigerian oil represents only 3.5 percent of America's total oil consumption. It is both economically possible and morally imperative that we stop our consumption of the oil that fuels the current regime. Shell makes approximately $200 million a year in profits from Nigeria and has begun work on a $4 billion natural gas joint venture with the military regime. An international embargo on Nigerian oil would hurt the country's generals -- who pocket most of the country's $10 billion oil revenue. A boycott would hold Shell accountable for its environmental abuses and tolerance of injustice. On January 30th of this year, Dr. Owens Wiwa, brother of Ken Saro-Wiwa, testified before a joint briefing of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and Congressional Black Caucus. Dr. Wiwa told of an April 1995 meeting with Brian Anderson, Chairman and Managing Director of Shell Nigeria. Dr. Wiwa asked Mr. Anderson if he would use his influence to stop the trial of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight colleagues, and free Ken so that negotiations could start between Shell and the Ogoni people. According to Dr. Wiwa, Mr. Anderson replied that this would be "difficult but not impossible". However, in return for Shell's help, he would require a press release from MOSOP saying that there was no environmental devastation as a result of Shell's activities in Ogoniland. The Ogoni rejected this offer. Nine days after the Ogoni were executed, the Sierra Club Board of Directors voted to support an embargo of Nigerian oil and a consumer boycott of Shell products until such time as the company has cleaned up the pollution it has caused in Nigeria, agreed to conform to U.S. standards while operating in Nigeria, and paid compensation to the peoples adversely affected by their activities. The Sierra Club is calling on the United States government and all other governments around the world to impose economic sanctions against the military government of Nigeria. We believe that sanctions should be taken against Nigeria and that these sanctions should remain in force until such time as the Abacha government resigns, steps are taken to restore democratic government to Nigeria, and the bodies of the nine Ogoni victims who were executed November 10, 1995, are returned to their families for burial. Shell now claims that the company is spending $100 million on environmental improvement, and $4.5 million for the "Niger Delta Environmental Survey". To the first, we say it's about time. It is believed that old and faulty equipment is to blame for much of the oil spillage. The Sierra Club considers the latter, the "Niger Delta Environmental Survey" to be nothing more than a public relations gimmick. The head of Shell's commission set up to investigate the environmental destruction, Prof. Claude Ake, has already resigned, citing his doubts about its impartiality and his concern about the disclosure in British newspapers that Shell imported weapons into Nigeria to help arm the police to protect its oil installations. If Shell indeed wanted to help improve Ogoni, they would clean up the environmental devastation they have already caused before proceeding with new ventures. They would reimburse the farmers and homeowners who have been brutally forced off their land to make way for oil wells and pipelines, and they would pay reparations to the thousands of Ogoni who suffer health problems as a result of Shell's massive pollution. If Shell was really concerned about Nigeria's environment, they would adhere to the same environmental standards in Nigeria as they are held to in Europe and America. We do not accept that Shell can perform in an environmentally responsible manner in Europe and America, but not in Nigeria. We cannot understand how such a well-respected company could pay millions of dollars to the most corrupt regime in Africa and stand helplessly by as men, women and children were slaughtered to protect Shell's installations. I should point out here that the Sierra Club strongly supports H.R. 2697, the "Nigeria Democracy Act" sponsored by Rep. Donald Payne, and the Senate companion bill, S.1419 sponsored by Sen. Nancy Kassebaum. Our members have been writing letters and making phone calls to their representatives to urge cosponsorship of this important legislation. I understand that Congressman Payne is eager to have hearings on this bill and we encourage your committee to schedule those hearings as soon as possible. A unique coalition of organizations, in the form of the International Roundtable on Nigeria, has come together to support the passage of these two bills. This is probably the first time that organizations such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Teamsters, TransAfrica, the Service Employees International Union, the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, and many Nigerian democratic organizations, have all worked so closely together. We have all been impressed of late with the tremendous work now being carried out by the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, John Shattuck. We are aware that Nigeria is now a top priority of his office and we appreciate his willingness to often include members of our coalition in policy discussions. However, I must admit a great deal of frustration and disappointment that the Clinton administration has not been able to produce more in the way of real sanctions against Nigeria -- either multinational or unilateral. Administration officials have told us they are still consulting with other countries on these long-promised sanctions. The fact is, America is seen as the defender of democracy, and the world is waiting for the U.S. to act. Other countries will follow our lead. Another 19 Ogoni arrested with Ken Saro-Wiwa remain in jail and are awaiting trial. Unless some actions are taken soon by our country, they and many others are sure to suffer the same fate as Saro-Wiwa. In early March, President Clinton quietly returned U.S. Ambassador Walter Carrington to Nigeria. The Sierra Club believes that this action sent the wrong message to the military government of General Sani Abacha. Returning our ambassador sent the message that the U.S. will not take decisive action against those governments that persecute, and in this case, execute, environmental activists. In meetings with Nigerian environmental activists I often heard that the U.S. Embassy was not a place they felt they could turn to for support. That no one from the embassy had been outspoken in defense of environmental protection in Nigeria. I hope this has since changed. We must impress upon our country's official representatives abroad that they not only represent America's business interests but its moral interests as well, that of protecting the environment and human rights. We hope that Secretary Christopher's recent remarks in California are acted upon by State Department staff in the field. Nigeria's human rights and environmental crisis can, we believe, only be solved together. Without respect for human rights, the Nigerian government will continue to repress Ogoni demands for justice from Royal/Dutch Shell and other multinational oil companies. At the same time, the powerful democratic spirit unleashed in the Ogoni struggle for environmental justice will contribute mightily to the broad campaign for democracy and human rights in Nigeria. The Sierra Club will not allow the crusade of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni activists to quietly fade away. Our goal is to send a message to the Nigerian government that all citizens have a right to speak freely, the right to assemble, and the right to a clean and healthy environment. Our goal is to hold Shell accountable for its actions and demand that it adhere to strict international codes of conduct. Thank you again very much for allowing me to testify today. I look forward to answering any questions you might have. Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
