ISSUE #31 - March 2021 A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION OF HEALTH OF MOTHER EARTH FOUNDATION Standing on Living Soils Looking back from the Future BUILDING WEBS OF EXAMINING THE EXTINCTION REBELLION AND RESISTANCE AND CHANGE ANTHROPOCENE FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE EDITORIAL TEAM PUBLISHED BY Nnimmo Bassey Nduka Otiono Health of Mother Earth Foundation Cadmus Atake-Enade Joyce Ebebeinwe 30 19th Street, off Ugbowo-Lagos Road, Stephen Oduware Benin City, Nigeria Mfoniso Antia P.O. Box 1057 Ugbowo, Benin City, Magdalene Idiang Nigeria Daramfon Bassey Oluwafunmilayo Oyatogun +234 817 370 6095 Zaid Shopeju www.homef.org GUEST EDITOR Kingsley Oluchi Ugwuanyi CONTACT INFO EDITOR All mails, inquiries and articles should be Ogechi Okanya Cookey sent to ADMINISTRATION [email protected] Dotun Davids Olatundun Elvis Omorogbe [email protected] Kelechi Okoede Mabel Obaseki FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA LAYOUT/DESIGN Otoabasi Bassey (Base X Studio) @EcoHomef COVER IMAGE /EcoHomef Photo by Dylan de Jonge on Unsplash @EcoHomef CIRCULATION Health of Mother Earth Foundation Shehu Akowe ADVISORY BOARD The Advisory Board is composed of women and men who have distinguished themselves in the struggle for environmental justice and the rights of Mother Earth Chris Allan (USA) – Environmental health campaigner and philanthropy activist Akinbode Oluwafemi (Nigeria) – Environmental justice campaigner Siziwe Khanyile (South Africa) – Environmental justice campaigner George B.K. Awudi (Ghana) – Climate justice campaigner Evelyn Bassey (Nigeria) – Environmental justice campaigner Esperanza Martinez (Ecuador) – Environmental justice/Political ecologist Nnimmo Bassey (Nigeria) – Environmental justice advocate Pablo Solon (Bolivia) – Climate justice campaigner, diplomat and movement builder Liz Hosken (UK) – Mother Earth rights advocate Lim Li Ching (Malaysia) – Agro-ecologist and rights advocate Kwami Kpondzo (Togo) — Environmental justice campaigner Mariann Orovwuje (Nigeria) — Food sovereignty advocate 2 / ECO-INSTIGATOR #31 Contents 04 Home Run 19 Building Webs of Resistance and Change 05 Standing on Living Soils... Looking back from the future 22 School of Ecology: HOMEF Partners with Ecole Urbaine de 08 HOMEF Trains Fishers in Bayelsa Lyon 10 Notes from Dialogue with 24 Examining the Anthropocene Smallholder Farmers 28 Accountability and 13 They Feed Us - A Celebration of Transparency in the South Smallholder Farmers Sudan Oil Industry 16 Lawsuit Against Biosafety 31 Poetry - At Home - The Move Agency Plods On 32 Outcomes from the Polluter’s 17 Poetry- Net Zero Comes to Zero Judgement Roundtable 35 Ororo-1 Well Fire Continues Months After 38 Field Reports - Floating Dead Fish in Odual Communities 41 Field Reports - AGIP’s Gas Pipeline Leaks in Emuoha, River State 44 Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future: New Entrants in the This edition of Eco-Instigator is supported by Climate Movement Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) and Brot fur die Welt (Bread for the World). This publication or parts of it can be used for free as long as the user 47 Books you should read provides a proper reference to the publication. The content of the publication is the sole responsibility of HOMEF and does not necessarily reflect the position of RLS and Bread for the World 48 Upcoming Activities ECO-INSTIGATOR #31 / 3 Home Run Thomas Sankara was led by Isaac ‘Asume’ Osuoka, a renowned scholar/activist. Our partnership with Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean (ATALC) in hosting the Sankara Conversation added to its significance. Building solidarity between regions and like-minded groups through shared knowledge is the route we plan to walk This is our Year of Building not only in keeping faith with Alliances and Resistance. We our theme for 2021 but also are strengthening our capacity going forward. Reports on the NNIMMO BASSEY, to break barriers to the Conversation will be featured Director, Health of Mother recovery of climate resilience, in the June Edition of the Eco- Earth Foundation to defend communities, stop Instigator. destructive extraction and promote food safety and Join us to congratulate our justice. Fellow and supporter, Firoze Manji, on his winning of the In January 2021, we partnered Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén with Ecole Urbaine de Lyon Batista Lifetime Achievement (Urban University of Lyon) in Award. Firoze Manji was Building solidarity France to host our first School awarded the prize for his between regions of Ecology (SoE) for the year. years of dedicated work as It was a truly enlightening the founder of Daraja Press and like-minded session with a general focus and his continuous global groups through on the Anthropocene and activism and involvement a detailed look at the rot of in the building of global shared knowledge resource exploitation in the networks committed to the is the route we plan areas of food, extractivism and promotion of dignity, freedom ecology. The debates were to walk not only and liberation. We are proud intense as we examined “Who of you, Firoze Manji. Keep in keeping faith feeds the planet,” “Plantation” inspiring! with our theme for and “Extractivism” as well as “Green Colonialism.” In this As you enjoy reading the 2021 but also going edition, we bring you a short reports, articles and poems in forward. report on the School. this edition, remember to drop us a line or share your stories, In February 2021, we took a articles, photos or poems at giant leap in our Conversations [email protected]. We always series, beginning with the look forward to hearing from first series for the year titled you. “Conversations with Thomas Sankara”. This series on Until Victory! 4 / ECO-INSTIGATOR #31 Standing on Living Soils... Looking back from the Future BY NNIMMO BASSEY We have got to the stage in the world where selfishness has been exalted as a national interest. It is a sad platform where inequalities have been hoisted as a virtue. Humans have become so “smart” that we think machines can replace us, replace relationships and replace agriculture. We even think we can relocate to destinations on asteroids or somewhere else in space! And the truth is that we do not seem to be diminished by all that. The Years of Repair, a short Looking back from the future from the hands that promote animated film, challenges us enables us to lay the paving our entangled dreams. to jump into the future and stones that ensure we are look at the paths by which not trapped in the quicksands We cannot afford to dream we got there. It shows us the of toxic relations with alone. And after a good dream, power of our imaginations Nature. It helps us escape it does not make sense to and underscores the fact the entrapment inherent remain prostrate in dreamland. that we can get to our in the pursuit of primitive Rather after a good dream, preferred destinations by accumulation of capital and it is time to get up and jump acknowledging the strength of power. It helps us show how into the struggles to build the going together in movements sterile racism, colonialism and dream. powered by love and imperialism are. It takes us to solidarity. the end, restores our faith in We learned a few critical humanity, and takes us back lessons from the pandemic… Looking back requires that penitent and renewed. Brave smallholder farmers we step forward. Looking hold the key to feeding the back from the past is an Washing hands should not world. They are ignored uninteresting, unimaginative stop us from seeing each everywhere, never bailed out and unproductive enterprise. other’s hands and learning and never helped even as they ECO-INSTIGATOR #31 / 5 Looking back from the future enables us to lay the paving stones that ensure we are not trapped in the quicksands of toxic relations with Nature point the right way forward healthy crops that are strong These building blocks hold as agriculture gets to the enough to resist pests. One corporations accountable for crossroads. clear trouble is that humans ecocide — whether they are operating behind corporate in the extractive or colonial Real farming frames the shields are not just the worst agricultural sectors. It all boils imaginations of today and pests but are incurable and down to building systems of tomorrow … Real farming insatiable predators… care and repair to ensure that brings back to life soils killed Mother Earth is not sacrificed by agro-toxics. Real farmers Farmers are essential workers. and that our peoples are fight against seed laws The time has come to insist not sacrificed on the altar of that criminalise the use of that essential workers must capital. indigenous seeds and stifle no longer be discounted and knowledge and local wisdom. overlooked Life-sustaining Soils Real farmers halt the erosion of native species that are truly Sparks change things. We Soil is the skin and flesh of climate-smart and reject the are the spark needed for the the Earth. It is a source of life. promotion of alien species that change and transformation We are sons and daughters are truly climate-dumb. that must happen ... We truly of the soil. Earth rootedness need to repair relationships holds the key to building Agri without culture is global citizenship, securing the the highway to disease, At personal levels: pay the commons and propagating pandemics and extinctions. debt of love love both for humans and for the Earth. This mindset tramples on At collective levels: pay the Mother Earth and ignores climate and ecological debts A handful of fertile soil critical creatures such as contains thousands of species, worms and a variety of The building blocks to the billions of bacteria and other pollinators that labour to future on the finite planet microscopic organisms. Each ensure we stay alive. reject the destructive organism in the soil system exploitation of nature, and has a function in the food web, Healthy soils produce healthy refuse any act that promotes with some specialising in the foods and healthy populations species extinction and trashes decomposition of matter while ..