Environment is the tangible and intangible surroundings and the complex ecosystem that humans share with all beings, human and non-human, living and non-living. It is both visible and invisible. This includes the land, water, and the air, and all that live in them. It includes everything that aids our wellbeing and that includes our culture, spirituality and identity. Our environment is the source of our knowledge and wisdom. It gives us the strategic keys with which we navigate through life and beyond.
When one part of an ecosystem is destroyed, it impacts or destroys all the other parts. This means, nothing exists in isolation of everything else. Thus, the web of life is the interrelationships that hold everything together – something we often do not think about. As bacteria work in the soil, worms aerate the soils, insects eat the worms, trees grow in soils, birds perch on or live in trees. So, when trees die, and insects and bacteria aid their decay. And the decayed trees fertilize the soil and the cycle continues.
For instance, it is known that more than half of all living things on earth live in the soil and when soils are damaged, the impacts extend to the food web, food production, landscape stability and climate change due to altered carbon sequestration qualities.
Many of our communities operated solidarity economies. Everyone’s welfare was largely ensured, and the basic rule was that everyone was basically his brother’s or sister’s keeper. Exploitation of labour was rare, as communal efforts were drawn on in farming seasons as well as when homes were being constructed.
Moreover, farmers engaged in seed development and sharing. There were no patents on seeds and other varieties. If profit was not the driving force in social relations, over exploitation and accompanying pollutions were rarities. We see ourselves as integral parts of Nature rather than as some super being that has Nature prostrate at our feet. Anthropomorphic conception of nature centres actions and considerations on perceived human needs and this has raised many blind spots and birthed exploitative relationships with the land, water, air and the beings we share the planet with.
Other factors that helped healthy living were humility and compassion. Humility opens our eyes to see, that we are not alone on earth and show our dependence through that we are interdependent in a web that cannot be broken. Similarly, Compassion helps us care about the wellbeing of our neighbour by seeing them as our relatives. These values encourage healthy deference to Nature and mandate the roles of stewardship and trusteeship that we must play.
The very first commandment given to man at creation according to the Bible was:
The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. Genesis 2:15 (NLT). This injunction forbids destructive relations within the webs of life.
The complex web of life
Environmental protection?
Formal environmental protection laws can be said to have been codified in Nigeria in 1992. The Koko toxic waste dumping in 1988 led to the establishment of Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) by Decree 58 same year and later amended by Decree 59 in 1992.
It must be said, however, that environmental protection or defense has always been an intrinsic part of our culture and tradition. Notably, Conservation was carried out through taboos in the form of social controls about what was acceptable. and what must not be done. In the same way, Sacred sites were also locations of conservation and species protection. And Our people also use festivals to regulate or mark when certain activities can be carried out. So, Fishing festivals help to prevent fishing and hunting at certain seasons, thus allowing the fish or animals to reproduce and mature before they are caught or harvested.
Simultaneously, Certain species were taken as totems in particular communities and such species became entwined with the communities and were members of the communities. Generally, there were strict protection and usage of the gifts of nature and of lands, forests and water bodies including streams, creeks, rivers, swamps.
Wisdom of the Beings
Wisdom in other than humans can be seen in several phenomena. For our conversation, we will reference migrations of beings as signifying wisdom that should humble humans and demand a duty of care towards these webs of life.
First let us consider the monarch butterflies. Monarch butterflies migrate from Northern America to California or Mexico during winter. Although the butterflies migrate back at the year it is their great-great-grandchildren that make that return journey, not the same butterflies that Chad made on the earlier trip. They can fly over distance of 3000 miles and end up in the exact areas they usually stay in. How do these tiny beings carry out such precise expeditions? Compare them to humans who need a compass or a google map to navigate their way to the next neighbourhood.
And how about the turtles that have specific spots in Lagos for laying eggs. These turtles lay eggs at Elegushi beach, Lagos and can rightly call that area their home. Species found here include endangered turtles’ species, such as the Leatherback Sea Turtle, the Green Sea Turtle and the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle. They come to lay their eggs between October and April yearly. Upon hatching the youngsters would leave and return after four years to lay eggs. The conditions that made Elegushi a desired destination have changed in recent years. Land use and seafront changes have made the area inhospitable. The coconut trees that provided shade are largely gone, and plastic wastes pose peculiar risks. Besides these, persons hunting for sea meat are on the prowl.
Colonial Environmentalism and the Breaking of the webs of life
When the web of life is broken the act overlooks justice considerations and takes down both resilience and dignity. One of the big forces disrupting the webs of life has been colonialism. Colonialism often entails the invasion, annexation of territories and outright stealing of land and resources. Our notion of land is complex because it is more than territory. Land is our history, our culture and that which connects us with our ancestors, our spirituality and our stories. Colonialism is not a mere historical phenomenon, but one that is ongoing in a diversity of modes.
Secondly, the notion that pollution is permissible up to certain “carrying capacity,” or threshold, of soils, rivers, the air and the earth has been very harmful. Although such ideas have been projected as science and provide platforms to certain forms of environmentalism, we believe that they are patently wrong, ignore the right to a safe environment and are intrinsically colonial. The notion of the threshold of pollution has benefitted polluters and exploiters as it offers them the license to pollute.
We all hear about standards measured by levels of contamination and pollution. When it is said that the ground water at Ogale, Ogoni, has benzene, a known carcinogen, 900 times above the World Health Organization’s standard, it simply means that the WHO permits certain amounts of the carcinogen in potable water. The same with the amount of carbon in the atmosphere which is measured by parts per million. This led to the computation of carbon budget that informs that the planet can tolerate up to 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere and that beyond that concentration we risk catastrophic climate change. Following standards of permissible pollution of this sort scientists have produced charts that show where limits have been overshot. Meanwhile entrepreneurs of pollution use the thresholds to promote ideas such as carbon offsets and carbon trading.
What is less considered is the fact that extractivism and accompanying pollution have harmed our soils, swamps, water bodies and the air, generally disrupted the webs of life, displaced, impoverished and killed peoples. In computing pollution thresholds, humans care very little about the heavy impacts on the webs of life because the measure of permissible or assimilative pollution is considered regarding humans and no other than humans.
The promise that pollution can be eliminated through recycling, just like carbon trading, numbs society into thinking that an equilibrium is being maintained in the use of natural resources whereas they lock the world on an imbalanced pathway of multiple overshoots.
The idea of circular economy falls in this same pathway when it comes to overproduction for consumption. The push for capital as a driver of transformation of nature upends any sense of balance, beats consumption rates and yields waste that ought to erase the profits if producers were responsible for the whole of life cycle of their products. Inbuilt obsolescence as well as the concealment of the costs of waste and pollution are political actions.
Pollution in the Niger Delta and Nigeria generally has become so pervasive and has trumped containment. It can be said that there is a pollution epidemic. And it must be political for this level of pollution to be tolerated. Setting thresholds before pollution can be said to have occurred is a dangerous concept of accepting contamination by assuming that it is acceptable to be damaged to such levels.
The Future is in our Roots
Bringing back environmental sanity requires a resurgence of African environmentalism through cultural and political action. This is a subject we will dwell on in a subsequent conversation. The web of life is quite resilient, but persistent degrading actions by certain humans and corporations are testing that resilience to the limits. The School of Ecology aims to waken us to the dangers of further disruption to the webs of life and the need for everyone to be an environmental defender if we must build resilience and ensure socioecological justice.
Guiding thoughts at HOMEF’s School of Ecology on Ecological Justice and Resilience held at Oronto Douglas Hall, HOMEF, Benin City, Nigeria on 24 March 2025
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