All For A Smaller Footprint

Mumbai, (Women's Feature Service) - While many discussions on gender at the recent bi-annual conference of the International Society of Ecological Economics, held in Delhi, centred on the theoretical dimensions of eco-feminism - typically, the centrality of reproductivity, as distinct from productivity - there were revealing presentations on ongoing struggles by women around the globe against oppressive and patriarchal systems.

Terisa E. Turner, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, spoke of the campaign against the Shell oil company's depredations in the Niger Delta since 1993. In 1995, writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and others were sentenced to death by the military junta for leading the agitation.

Since 1998, Nigerian women have been at the forefront of a movement to halt Shell's reckless pollution through its oil and gas drilling in the area. According to Turner, who is co-director of an NGO, the International Oil Working Group, "It is the largest source of civilian pollution in the atmosphere in Africa. Nigeria emits more carbon dioxide than the rest of the continent collectively." Roughly 2.5 billion cubic feet of gas associated with crude oil is wasted in this way every day, equal to 40 per cent of all Africa's natural gas consumption in 2001, while the annual financial loss to Nigeria is about US $2.5 billion.

Niger Delta women have staged demonstrations against Shell, in concert with international activists around the world. On Ogoni Day (Saro-Wiwa and others belonged to this tribe) in 1999, Turner recounted, "Business-suited environmentalists raided Shell's UK office and 13 activists barricaded themselves in the general manager's office, from where they broadcast their messages. After six hours, the police evicted them but Shell didn't press charges."

The activists launched Operation Climate Change, calling "all oil companies stop all exploration and exploitation activities in the Ijaw (another tribe) area. We are tired of gas flaring, oil spillage, blowouts and being labeled saboteurs and terrorists. We advise all oil companies' staff and contractors to withdraw from Ijaw territories."

The military regime responded with a state of emergency and clamped down on the protestors; several women were raped. The Niger Delta Women for Justice (NDWJ) was formed. They dressed in black and carried placards, some of which read 'The women are aggrieved, stop the killing', and condemned the oil companies that have 'Love for oil, hatred for the owners'.

Annie Brisibe of NDWJ and Friends of the Earth, Nigeria's climate change project, stated in a 1999 interview that, "I've been involved in organising political awareness workshops for women through the NDWJ movement... We focus on creating awareness about what a polluted environment can do to people. We point out the activities of transnational corporations - the gas flares caused by the oil industry, the improper waste management, the carbon dioxide and sulphur emissions - and make the connections between all of this and the frequent environmental problems in the Niger Delta."

Shell and four other oil companies lost heavily as a result of this campaign. Shell reported a 95 per cent loss in the fourth quarter of 1998 - around US $350 million. London's Financial Times reported, at the time, that of Nigeria's production of 2 million barrels of oil per day, "up to a third of output was halted at one point last year [1998] by piracy and sabotage by activists demanding a fairer share of revenues for the region's impoverished inhabitants". Output interruptions and financial losses were very much greater in 1999. Shell was forced to make a public concession that year - a promise that it would stop all gas flaring in Nigeria by 2007.

In 2002, 600 Nigerian women occupied Chevron-Texaco's Escravos oil export terminal and tank farm for 11 days. This production shutdown coincided with oil consumption boycotts against the impending US attack on Iraq. Owens Wiwa, Ken's brother, said in a September 2006 interview, "It was Ogoni women who were most instrumental in preventing Shell from operating in Ogoniland over the past decade.

"This is a major success because not only have we driven Shell out non-violently but we have set a precedent for all Nigeria and indeed, the whole world: without local people's agreement, no oil company can go in. A tremendous price has been paid in loss of life. But [the] government's revocation of Shell's operating licence is a tremendous victory and it is due largely to the commitment of ordinary village women, mostly organised through the Federation of Ogoni Women's Associations."

A presentation by Michela Zucca from the Centre of Alpine Ecology in north Italy on women and reproductive labour in Alpine society was reminiscent of Garhwal and other mountain communities in India. She singled out three themes from her study: how women were the "custodians of memory"; the ravages of depopulation; and how women have learned to cope with their adverse situation.

"It is one of the most fiercely chauvinist societies," Zucca asserted. "Women are expected to fulfill traditional aims regarding, in particular, children and old people care, family and housekeeping. Nowadays, most young women do not accept this culture, and decide to leave their homeland. Other people join them, mainly the young, thus leaving most of the settlement and surrounding landscape unattended by the traditional works necessary to maintain the ecological balance."

There were still single women living alone in a village, where work outside the home was non-existent. While the towns had witnessed a sexual revolution and the feminist movement, no such emancipation had taken place in the mountains. The Centre's study of these villages between 1951 and 2001 had revealed that there was a vicious circle: because young women in the reproductive age group left, it reinforced the backwardness of these areas. There were now 1.2 men for every woman in the area. A caption on one of her slides read: "When Women Leave, the Mountains Die". Nearly a third of the villages had disappeared off the map in the 50 years under study.

For the women who have remained, little has changed in the past few decades. Typically, men visit their homes, inseminate their wives and leave. "It is because of the women that the old survive," she pointed out. "They don't go off to the bar, like men do. But they are now under severe societal pressure and have reached the point of no return. They suffer from depression and on occasion, commit suicide and even kill their babies." With privatisation, there were fewer jobs for women in social services. Zucca's Centre tried to encourage entrepreneurship, using the community's tendency for women to help each other.

The two case studies - one in Nigeria and the other in Europe - show that social, economic and ecological changes are intertwined. It would be difficult to effect changes in the one without necessary modifications in the other. And women have a critical role to play in bringing about these changes.