Page:Niger Delta Ecosystems- the ERA Handbook, 1998.djvu/238

Human Ecosystems: Okoroba-Nembe the list of Chiefs' names set out in the Shell minutes is different from the list of Chiefs which ERA has. This does not mean that Shell is wrong in its list of Chiefs, but it does mean that Shell is wrong to assume that a meeting with some Chiefs is the same as a meeting with the Community. The statement continually refers to land which Shell has acquired and that compensation has been paid, as if Shell's assumption that land has been acquired and that compensation has been paid to someone should satisfy the whole community. Okoroba is a gathering, farming and fishing community with a limited supply of good agricultural land. Shell baldly implies that it owns a sizeable chunk of the agricultural land adjacent to the village and that, moreover, it owns the land adjacent to the waterway (which it does claim because it claims the right to dump the dredging spoils on it). This shows a total misunderstanding of the community and an unwillingness to consider the needs of the ordinary people.

As a result, regardless of with whom Shell thinks it has done a deal, and of how much compensation it thinks it has paid, the ordinary citizens of Okoroba, like the majority of ordinary people in the Niger Delta, have lost resources to an oil company and have nothing in exchange. The aerial photographs attached to the statement are misleading and we assume deliberately misleading. For a start they show an apparently limitless green forest in which both Okoroba village and the Shell engineering works have a small impact. What they do not show is: the other villages; the high population in the area and the fact that a great deal of the forest is swamp forest which cannot be used for farming; the other oil installations in the area such as the Agip pipe-line; or the impact of the proposed Shell activities in the area. Neither do they indicate the poor condition of the water in the dredged river. Moreover on the annotated pictures the Okoroba Cottage Hospital is shown, which Shell claims to have built. It looks impressive from the air but on the ground it is no more than an empty shell. In June 1996 when it was visited for the fourth time by ERA staff it had not progressed at all since November 1993. The staff quarters have not been roofed, the main building is already deteriorating and is in need of repair because of bad workmanship, and the site is over-grown. As ERA has stated many times before, Shell spends a lot more time and effort on housing one single expatriate family than it is prepared to give to a hospital serving thousands of people at Okoroba.

Arising from the facts of Shell's relationship with Okoroba, some serious conclusions arise which bear on the attitude which mining companies generally have towards local people. Involvement of the whole community: if Shell seriously wants to do the right thing, then it cannot expect to do a deal with just anyone or any group in the community who is willing to sit down and do a deal, and then expect the rest of the community to accept what has happened. Shell cannot expect to demand rights (as it perceives them) upon this basis and also expect the whole community to be subsequently compliant with its demands. Especially when these demands are not only perceived to be, but which are also sometimes genuinely unfair and unreasonable. A realistic environmental policy: because Shell does not have a proper environmental policy which it can translate into action, it has to treat all  236