Offloading Climate Responsibility on the Victims of Climate Change with Nnimmo Bassey

As oil dependent nations seek to shore up their supply while the war between Russia and Ukraine rages, some African Nations seem eager to provide more access to fossil fuels. This was evidenced during the September minister’s meeting in Egypt, when representatives from various African nations called on world leaders to “avoid approaches that encourage abrupt disinvestments from fossil fuels.”

But many in Africa have been fighting for justice in the face of abuses by companies that damage the environment and make the continent second only to Russia when it comes to the hazardous practice of gas flaring.

In this episode of Breaking Green we will talk with renowned Nigerian architect , author and activist Nnimmo Bassey, about what it really means for the health of Africans and the planet when it comes to the exploitation of the so-called resource rich continent. We will also discuss the history of colonialism’s impact on Africa and how the 27th Conference of Parties, that will be held this November in Egypt, is likely to promote false solutions to climate change and refuse to deal in a meaningful way with the climate debt owed to the global south in general, and Africa in particular.

Nnimmo Bassey is a Nigerian architect, environmental activist, author and poet, who chaired Friends of the Earth International from 2008 through 2012 and was executive director of Environmental Rights Action for two decades. His is director of the ecological think-tank, Health of Mother Earth as well as a board member of Global Justice Ecology Project. Nnimmo Bassey was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize.” In 2012 he received the Rafto Human Rights Award. He was also one of Time magazine's Heroes of the Environment in 2009.

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Listen to previous Breaking Green episodes critiquing false solutions to climate change promoted by the UN Climate COP and various corporate actors:

• False Solutions to Climate Change

• Carbon Colonialism and REDD

This podcast is produced by Global Justice Ecology Project.

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Photo of Nnimmo Bassey by Anne Petermann/GJEP

Release date

Lydbog: 17. oktober 2022