by Tracy Kirkland
October 06, 2005
Greengrants has been supporting the work of West African groups for the past decade. Extractive industries are exploiting the region’s oil, mineral, and timber resources in ways that benefit corporations and government officials, but provide little benefit to the general public. In addition, these industries damage vital lands and bodies of water.
Our grants help bring accountability to government and business by supporting grassroots networks and coalitions that represent large numbers of communities and local groups. Greengrants grants also help communities protect ancestral lands, sustainably manage forest resources, and improve local livelihoods. For example, Nigeria’s Cross River National Forest, identified by Conservation International as a biodiversity hotspot (one of the 25 most ecologically rich and threatened places on the planet) is continually threatened by extractive industries. Grants to Nigerian groups such as Rainforest Resource and Development Center and Akpabuyo Bakassi Green Movement are helping forest communities defend and protect their rich forest homes against the destructive and illegal practices of a foreign timber industry.
The West Africa Context
West Africa has long been the source of many of the world’s minerals, petroleum, and forest products. Yet despite the vast wealth generated by these natural resources, West Africans have seen few, if any, benefits. In the case of mining, not only are there serious environmental problems like deforestation, biodiversity loss, and toxic pollution, but also concerns about human rights violations by mining companies and local governments, impoverishment and displacement of people living near gold deposits, and increased health risks to local communities.
Research has found that mining is unlikely to improve rural poverty because it generates little local employment and therefore does not make a substantial contribution to the local economy. If anything, mining operations can in fact serve as a “de-developing force,” increasing problems of health, agriculture, and poverty for local populations rather than contributing to improvements. At the national level as well, mining often fails to deliver on its promise of contributing to economic growth. For example, the incentive structure built into Ghana’s mining laws permits foreign companies to take up to 95% of mining profits out of the country, and it does not require corporations to pay income taxes or other duties. Because gold extraction in Ghana is done largely through surface mines that are capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive, gold mining accounts for only 2% of employment nation-wide.
As for the petroleum industry, the long history of oil and gas exploration and exploitation in Africa indicates that few countries have been able to use their natural resource wealth to build a healthy economy, nor has that wealth helped them to create or retain democratic institutions. In fact, petroleum has more often than not become the seed of conflict and, in many cases, civil war. Despite being a major world producer of oil since the 1950s, Nigeria is poorer today than it was at the time of independence.
The oil industry is shrouded in mystery, and it brings with it many opportunities for corruption and the weakening of democratic institutions. The combination of petrodollars and governments lacking in transparency and accountability is one that over and over again has left citizens worse off than before. This does not have to continue into the future, but a key to turning this situation around is a healthy set of citizen institutions that can inform the public and hold governments and corporations accountable to the public good.
Strategies of the West Africa Advisory Board
The West Africa Advisory Board gives priority to grants that enable community voices to be heard on the social and environmental effects of extractive industries, especially mining, oil and gas production, forestry, and fisheries. The important issues that Greengrants’ regional advisers seek to address include problems of land and water pollution, community livelihoods, economic justice, and environmental diversity—all of which are affected by extractive industry. Our advisors understand that small, well-timed grants can make a big impact on issues of national importance.
A major focus of the West Africa Advisory Board has been increasing the public voice in environmental decision-making. The majority of grants have sought to level the playing field for communities faced with the greater wealth and power of both extractive industry firms and the government. The main strategies have been research and documentation, meetings with policy makers, community consultation and organizing, networking and advocacy, and legal action.
Examples of West Africa Grantees
In Nigeria, Greengrants’ grantees have supported community-based research on the results of gas flaring, the inadequate clean up of oil spills, and company and government collusion in seizure of community lands. The Akwa Ibom Research and Information Organization (AIRORG) documented two sites in Akwa Ibom State where oil wells were capped improperly. With this documentation, AIRORG was able to review with local people the potential hazards that these wells present, issue safety alerts to nearby residents, and begin to put pressure on oil companies and the government to remediate these dangerous facilities. Similar abandoned capped oil well sites in Akwa Ibom have begun to spill crude oil directly into the local environment, causing a host of ecological and health problems.
Other grantees have been able to meet with policy makers to discuss important issues and present the positions of communities with which they work. The Network for Environment and Development Africa in northern Ghana was able to bring together a wide variety of civil society and government representatives to discuss the proposed government Poverty Reduction Strategy, which guides national government policy on a variety of issues and is the basis for discussions with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The first meeting was so successful that an expanded version was co-sponsored by local government and the Ministry of Agriculture to review specific issues.
On the international level, representatives from Africa Network for Environment and Economic Justice in Nigeria and Fondation Camerounaise d’Actions Rationnalisees et de Formation sur l’Environnement in neighboring Cameroon were able to meet with World Bank officials to discuss the Bank’s Extractive Industry Review and to take a broad look at the World Bank’s support for extractive industries. This was a unique opportunity for Africa-based groups to influence a funder of many controversial projects across that continent.
A number of grants supported NGOs in consulting with communities, informing them of the large infrastructure projects headed their way, and getting their ideas on how such existing and planned projects affect them. In northern Ghana, Guards of the Earth and Vulnerable came together to unify a number of villages affected by a gold mine planned by Newmont Mining. Simple purchases, such as bicycles to promote communication between villages and infrastructure for a basic office, allowed the villages to come together sufficiently to negotiate a number of important issues with the company, such as just compensation for land and other resources.
Grants in West Africa have supported an increasingly sophisticated set of networks, as groups have come together in common cause against some very powerful opponents. The Ghana National Coalition on Mining brings together two dozen groups in Ghana concerned about the effects of mining on communities and on national policy. Groups range from affected communities, such as the Wassa from western Ghana, to urban-based NGOs, such as Center for Public Interest Law and Third World Network-Africa. This group has been very successful in maintaining a link between NGOs and communities directly affected (positively and negatively) by mining, and in presenting common policy positions to government and the mining industry. Currently the Ghanaian government is considering changes to its mining code, and this coalition is recognized as the major player for the civil society sector in these debates.
While increasing the public voice is the primary goal for the West Africa Advisory Board, a second goal is protecting and improving environmentally sustainable livelihoods. Most work here has focused on improved management of forests. The Naaha Soviala Women’s Group in the dry regions of northern Ghana was able to: 1) purchase bicycles to allow them to reach communities and local government officials more quickly and easily; 2) organize four workshops and three community meetings with extension officers on new ways to nurse seedlings for transplanting; and 3) increase anti-bush fire awareness, illustrated by the fact that two communities cleared “anti-fire belts” around their forests.