Nuba and Ogoni: Genocide in a Shrinking Environmental Space

Abstract

Ill-conceived development dispossesses, impoverishes and displaces people, and ruins their environment. The hardship which people encounter in most such cases is not a result of single-issue grievances (environmental, political or economic), but of the destruction of the basis of their environmental security, which encompasses all of these. The tragedies of the Nuba people of the Nuba Mountains in Sudan, and the Ogoni people of Rivers State in Southern Nigeria, provide clear indications of the association between political oppression and environmental degradation, and compelling evidence of the genocide committed by the Sudanese and Nigerian states against these two marginalised minority groups.