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LAGOS: Nnimmo Bassey, a prominent figure in the decades-long environmental struggles in Africa’s largest oil-producing country, will next month attend yet another UN climate summit, this time in Brazil.
“Unfortunately!” smiles the Nigerian 67-year-old, who harbors little hope for the outcomes of this “ritual” in which states participate “while knowing that nothing serious will come of it.”
Bassey, a longtime environmentalist, will only attend meetings among environmental activists on the sidelines of the official COP30 talks.
“For us as activists, the COP provides spaces for solidarity, for meeting other people, sharing ideas, and organizing in a different way,” he told AFP in an interview in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.
Yet he is hopeful that one day “the outside space may become the real decision-making space, while the politicians become the observers.”
Oil pollution that has ravaged the Niger Delta for decades is a textbook example of environmental struggles against extractivism and fossil fuels.
Since the 1950s, when crude was first discovered in southern Nigeria, between nine and 13 million barrels of oil have been spilled into the Delta, according to an independent group of experts who conducted a study in 2006.
Between 2006 and last year, the Nigerian National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency reported over 130 million liters of crude oil spilled in what Bassey describes as the “sacrifice zone.”
That is not enough to deter Nigerian authorities, who want to increase national production. The government early this month announced that the number of active drilling rigs rose from 31 to 50 between January and July.
“I believe that oil should be kept in the ground, that nobody should extract not even one drop of oil,” said Bassey.

- ‘Young people rising up’ -

Africa’s most populous country is vulnerable to climate change, even though the continent as a whole only contributes about four percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
“Every region has peculiar environmental issues,” said Bassey, who won the 2012 Rafto Prize, a Norwegian award given to human rights defenders.
He lamented “increased desertification” in Nigeria’s north; “gully erosion” in the south, “deforestation” and an “environmental crisis from illegal mining” across the country.
“Everything is really horrible.”
“The seeds for the degradation that we’re seeing today, especially in the oil fields and the mining fields, were sown even while I was a child,” said Bassey, who was born the same year Nigeria exported its first crude oil, marking the start of “a continuum of disaster upon disaster.”
Bassey grew up in a small village in southeastern Nigeria, in a family of farmers and traders. His childhood was marked by the “horrors” of the civil war, commonly called the Biafra War, which ravaged the region between 1967 and 1970 and claimed at least one million civilian lives.
An architect by training, the writer and poet first became involved in defending human rights and opposing the country’s military authorities before working hand-in-hand with Ken Saro-Wiwa, a “martyr for environmental justice” who was executed by hanging by Sani Abacha’s military regime in 1995 for his fight against the abuses of oil companies in the Delta.
After more than three decades of activism, the demands remain the same: hold governments and the polluting companies “responsible,” restore the environment and pay reparations to affected people.
With his nearly 30-year-old foundation, Health of Mother Earth, Bassey is backing a lawsuit filed by a traditional monarch against the British oil giant Shell, demanding $2 billion in damages.
King Bubaraye Dakolo is also seeking to stop Shell from divesting from its Nigerian assets without fixing decades of pollution.
Oil companies always deny allegations of pollution, arguing that oil spills were caused by sabotage by local criminals.
Despite believing the situation worsens by the day, Bassey maintains there is still hope, thanks to a new crop of budding young activists.
“There’s a big groundswell of people who are rising up... young people rising up,” he said.
“I’m really very inspired. That’s positive.”

COPENHAGEN: Drastic aid cuts, notably by the United States, have made it vital for Europe to better manage health resources, the director of WHO Europe told AFP.
“We have a huge challenge, because the majority of our programs were funded by USAID and the US,” Hans Kluge of the World Health Organization Europe told AFP in an interview days before a meeting of the 53 countries of the WHO European region.
Since taking office in January, US President Donald Trump has slashed US international aid and effectively dismantled USAID, the world’s largest humanitarian aid agency.
Kluge said the WHO was experiencing an “existential” crisis with countries such as Britain, France and Germany, in addition to the United States, contributing significantly less.
Despite a 20-percent budget cut, WHO Europe wants to boost its role within domestic European health administrations.
“The WHO Europe of the future... is healthier, stronger, trusted, evidence-based, and politically neutral,” he said.
Kluge’s plan is based on restructuring the organization and prioritising its missions.

- Mental health crisis -

Kluge said WHO Europe needed a “dual track” approach needing to manage “manage a current crisis — (it) can be war, flooding” while keeping “core public health programs operational.”
“This is the biggest lesson learned from (the) Covid-19” pandemic, he said.
In Ukraine, for example, Europe is focusing its efforts on defense and “not enough on health.”
Europe must also tackle its mental health problem, aggravated by war, loneliness, anxiety and the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, he said.
“That’s one of the big things, the hottest issues,” he said, stressing the need to build up “citizen resilience.”
One European in six and one child in five will experience mental health problems at some point in their life, according to the WHO.
Kluge said his organization also needed to address worrying regional trends including youth addiction, a lack of online protection, the climate crisis and non-infectious diseases.
“We can channel our few resources in those directions,” he insisted.
Vaccinations are also crucial, he said, pointing out that in 2023, there were 366,000 children who had never received any kind of vaccine. In 2024, that number had risen to 440,000.
Mainly reasons such as the need to travel for vaccinations, costs and a lack of qualified health personnel led to this, he said, adding that medical misinformation was rampant as well.
Vaccination is “the most cost-effective public health tool which we have. So, we cannot afford to lose it.”
Prevention was also key to ensuring Europeans’ health, Kluge stressed.
“You put one euro in prevention, you get seven euros out of it,” said the 56-year-old doctor.
“It is time that Europe should take care of Europe.”