In the fight for healthy environment and livelihood, extractivism has been identified as one of the factors promoting ecocide and oil theft.
Nnimmo Bassey of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), described Extractivism as the appropriation of natural and human resource wealth in ways that damage or deplete the source in potentially irreversible ways.
According to him, extractivism thrives in contexts of inequality and promotes accumulation of capital and centralization and monopolisation of power and trade.
Bassey, gave the lecture on the topic ‘’Counting the Ecological Cost of Extractivism’’ at the first session of the School of Ecology which started on March 1st and ended on March 2nd.
He said that extractivism has promoted ecocide, which he described as an unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.
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Speaking on oil theft, he said that oil theft is an industrial activity which practice has been long sustained in Niger Delta communities because of the logic that extractivism brings revenue.
He said, “When extractivism is allowed in your community it becomes a museum place, just like the Oloibiri Museum which has been approved for construction by the federal government after 3 decades.’’
Citing the Santa Barbara explosion as an example of ecological cost of extractivism, Bassey said that ecological cost is extremely high.
‘’The cost multiplies as the year goes and there’s no sustainable money for it.’’
Further speaking on the ecological cost of extractivism, he mentioned water pollution, gas flaring, mining, Insecurity via militarization and militias, Internal colonialism, Human rights abuses, Stigmatization — shenanigans of regulators and co-travelers, Indignity, Victimhood (self doubt) and erosion of agency.
Bassey advocated healing in territotories that have been affected by extractivism.
