The interface between law and renewable energy in the mitigation of environmental violence in the Niger Delta

Abstract

Niger Delta region of Nigeria is naturally endowed with huge oil and gas deposits, fauna and flora. However, unsustainable exploitation of its oil and gas since 1956, has led to breaches of environmental standards, human and environmental rights. The existence of obnoxious laws have all contributed to the huge destruction of its ecosystem, endangered its biodiversity, human health and its people's means of livelihood. These have created a two-pronged environmental violence problems; namely; violence against renewable natural resources within the environment by MNOCs and violent agitations by indigenous people against the degradation of ecological biodiversity within their environment. The use of physical violence to stop protests against renewable natural resource exploitation has not helped but compounded the problem. A plethora of literature on Niger Delta research including Niger Delta environmental degradation, Conflicts and Niger Delta, Internationalisation of the conflict, Niger Delta and human rights, Bill of Rights and Resource control has proliferated but there exists a gap in the literature, which this research fills. It is the utilization of combined legislation and renewable energy regulation in the mitigation of iger Delta environmental violence. This study contributes to this knowledge as a multidisciplinary new perspective on Niger Delta research. The study establishes a nexus between the contributory legal loopholes, energy crisis and unsustainable mining activities as joint causations of the Niger Delta environmental violence. This necessitates the meeting of legal and energy solutions at an equilibrium point for effective mitigation of the crisis. The objectives of this study include developing resource control based and environmentally friendly legal reforms in Nigeria; evolving a renewable energy policy and legal regimes that promote energy mix and mitigate environmental violence in Niger Delta. This study adopted both quantitative and qualitative research methods where. Primary data were generated through questionnaires and interviews while secondary data were sourced through books, journals, articles, newspapers and the internet. About 280

people constituted the sample size of the population of the study, as well as Focus Group Discussion (FGD). Findings from respondents reveal that 90% of MNOCs and Government resource exploitations are below international best practices in oil exploitation; 47% do not consider dialogue for resolving the problem. Over 96% are convinced that Government's failure to ensure M OCs compliance with standards is a major cause of the crisis. Focus Group Discussants (FGD) were in consensus that resource control based legal reforms and development of huge renewable energy resources in Nigeria (particularly in the Niger Delta and Northern Nigeria) could mitigate Niger Delta environmental violence. In conclusion, Niger Delta's two pronged environmental violence could effectively be mitigated using a multidisciplinary problem-solving model that combines legal reforms and renewable energy solution driven approaches. The researcher recommends that Nigeria should commence a legal reforms process in favor of fiscal federalism and resource control; pass into law the pending Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB); enact a renewable energy law and establish a regulatory authority to set renewable standards, create massive employment opportunities to engage restive Niger Delta youths, create forest harvests to implement reforestation and afforestation projects for the mitigation of effects of emissions. Finally, strict enforcement of existing environmental laws and standards is also recommended.