By Obiabin Onukwugha
As climate change continues to disrupt livelihoods, food production and ecosystems across the Niger Delta, environmental advocates and community leaders have called for a return to indigenous knowledge, traditional values and community-led solutions to address the region’s growing ecological crisis.
The call was made during a Wisdom Gathering organized by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, HOMEF, under the theme, “Rethinking Climate Change, Food Systems Solutions,” at the Mideecor Ecological Knowledge Centre, Kaani, Gokana local government area of Rivers State, where speakers argued that many of the answers to today’s environmental challenges could be found in the knowledge, languages, cultures and practices that sustained communities for generations.
Speaking, renowned environmentalist and Executive Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Rev. Nnimmo Bassey, said the essence of the gathering was to draw wisdom from indigenous cultures and use it to build a better future.
“Wisdom gathering is a space in which we dish out wisdom from our languages, from our culture, and use them as tools to build the preferred future,” Bassey said.
He challenged participants, particularly young people, to rethink the dominant approaches to development and climate action, arguing that the future cannot be built by completely abandoning the lessons of the past.
“We have seen from experience that the future we are looking at, the seat for building that future is in the past. So the past is also in the future,” he said.
Bassey highlighted that traditional societies were built around values such as honesty, integrity, cooperation, solidarity and respect for nature. These values, he said, offered important lessons for addressing the climate and food crises confronting communities today.
He stressed that communities should not attempt to reproduce everything from the past but should identify and preserve those practices that promoted healthy living, environmental protection and community wellbeing.
“We are not going to take everything from the past to the future, but there are those things that are very excellent — the way our people lived, what gave them good health,” he said.
For Bassey, the climate crisis in the Niger Delta cannot be separated from the destruction of the natural systems that support food production and human health. He questioned the declining quality of life in oil-producing communities despite the enormous wealth extracted from the region.
“Why is 41 years the life expectancy in the Niger Delta? Why are we going into menopause before we get to 30 years old? These are the real questions that must be asked,” he said.
He posited that climate and environmental policies must move beyond statistics and technical interventions, to addressing the lived realities of people whose farms, fishing grounds, forests and water sources have been degraded. “If your environment is sick, you cannot claim to be healthy,” Bassey stressed.
He lamented the fact that environmental degradation has become so severe in some Niger Delta communities that residents are sometimes forced to depend on polluted water for their daily needs.
Bassey recalled seeing residents show him polluted water that they still fetched and drank. “You should be weeping that you are drinking water that is so polluted,” he said.
He maintained that the culture of living in a clean environment should be at the heart of every climate change and food systems intervention.
Delivering the keynote address titled “Role of Indigenous Language and Philosophies in Socio-Ecological Justice,” Chief Magnus Edoo, said indigenous languages must become part of environmental communication and decision-making.
Edoo, who is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Language Cultural Empowerment and Foundation, said communities could not effectively participate in environmental decisions if critical information was presented in languages they did not fully understand.
He advocated the use of indigenous languages in Environmental Impact Assessments, community consultations and agreements between oil companies and host communities.
“We have been advocating that the environment shouldn’t be clean and the people are still suffering. So bringing livelihood into the remediation process is a welcome development. It is improving on the people and reducing insecurity in Ogoni,” he said.
He called on oil companies undertaking projects in communities to communicate the terms and implications of their activities in languages understood by the people.
Edoo also urged government to develop policies that would support the teaching of indigenous languages in schools, warning that the loss of a language represents the loss of part of a people’s cultural identity.
He cited the decline of the Ibani language and argued that consistent use of indigenous languages at home and in schools could help preserve them for future generations.
Earlier, the Team Lead of Miideekor Development Initiative, Dr. Celestine Akpobari, said Niger Delta communities had the right to organise themselves and work towards reclaiming degraded environments.
He pointed to the Ogoni struggle against oil exploitation as an example of community action, recalling the mass resistance that led to the withdrawal of oil companies from Ogoni in 1993.
According to him, some areas of Ogoni have demonstrated the capacity of nature to recover when destructive activities are stopped. “If you go to some places in Ogoni, the land has fully recovered by itself,” he said.
Akpobari noted that mangroves had returned in some areas, while fish and other forms of biodiversity were also reappearing. The development, he said, demonstrated that ecological restoration does not always have to depend solely on the government, whom he said has always turned blind eyes to the plights of host communities.
He said communities, supported by appropriate policies and resources, can play a central role in allowing damaged ecosystems to regenerate.
“Show me one community that has been better because they have oil,” he asked.
The question captures one of the central concerns raised during the gathering: whether an economic system can truly be described as successful when communities surrounded by valuable natural resources struggle with polluted water, degraded land, declining livelihoods and food insecurity.
For the speakers, rethinking climate change and food systems therefore requires rethinking development itself.
The Wisdom Gathering underscored the need to place people, culture and ecosystems at the centre of climate solutions. It also demonstrated that climate action in the Niger Delta cannot be reduced to carbon figures, technological interventions or externally designed projects.
It must also involve listening to communities, preserving indigenous languages and knowledge, restoring ecosystems and rebuilding the values of cooperation and collective responsibility that once governed relationships between people and nature.
For a region whose survival has long depended on its rivers, forests, mangroves, farms and fishing grounds, the message from the gathering was simple: rethinking the future may require first remembering the wisdom that sustained the past.
Highlight of the event was the unveiling of the Mideecor Ecological Knowledge Centre, by Rev. Nnimmo Bassey.
