Oil Exploration and Gas Flaring in Nigeria: Building unsustainable Future through Environmental Degradation

• In Event: Unearthing Environmental Justice: Energy Development and Indigenous Communities

Abstract

Nigeria’s Niger Delta environment has been pillaged at the instance of oil exploration since the discovery of oil in Oloibiri in 1956. Gas flaring and its effects on the environment have elicited scholarly inquiries (Watts 2008, Robertson and Chilingar 2017, Allen 2012, Ike and Oronto 2001, Leeuwen 2010). However, there hasn’t been a practical collective effort to guarantee sustainable environment in the region in tune with the principles of Global Goals. Cases of oil spillages abound that has in no small measures retarded the environment and decimated aquatic lives. Yet, there have been no concerted efforts at cleaning the environment. The centrality of the environment towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) cannot be overemphasized hence; none of the goals from sustainable cities and communities to climate action will be realized in the face of gas flaring and other climate injustices in the Niger Delta. This paper looks at the nexus between unethical oil exploration, gas flaring, environmental degradation and climate change in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. As a globalised world, climate change does not discriminate between global North and global South as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. The health of the global environment must be proactively pursued to ensure not only a sustainable environment through ethical standards and huge infrastructural investment but sustainable future where climate justice will be the new normal. Data for this paper will emanate from primary, secondary and tertiary sources while they will be qualitatively analyzed.

Author

• Livinus Ikwuako Okeke, Imo State University, Nigeria