A thick, black liquid bubbles to the surface as Anthony Aalo pokes a stick into the muddy ground just outside Bodo, a fishing and farming community at the heart of Nigeria’s oil-drilling belt.
“You see? That’s oil,” the environmental activist said as he examined the sticky residue. “You can see the level of contamination, it’s still in the ground.”
Bodo, like other parts of Ogoniland in southern Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, still bears the scars of repeated oil spills spanning decades – despite being involved in two major clean-up operations over the last 10 years that promised to restore land and repair environmental damage.
Local fishermen say their catches have still not recovered from a massive 2008 oil spill that polluted the community’s water supplies and farmland, and decimated a nearby mangrove forest.
“Before you would have seen a lot of fish,” said Monday Saka, a 50-year-old fisherman, throwing a fishing net into the water from a traditional pirogue. “[Now], as you throw the net, nothing comes out.”
Big Oil’s environmental destruction
Bodo’s plight has become a symbol of the environmental destruction wrought by foreign oil companies in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, and the community continues to fight in the courts for adequate compensation to make up for lost livelihoods, health costs and environmental damage.
Shell agreed to pay the community compensation over the 2008 spill, and funded an environmental clean-up that ended last year.
Several sites in Bodo have also been earmarked for remediation as part of a $1-billion government-led clean-up for Ogoniland, billed by the United Nations as the world’s “most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise” before work started six years ago.
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The site in Bodo where Aalo, the activist, examined the oily ground was included in the first clean-up, but has yet to be reached by the ongoing Ogoniland-wide operation, known as the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP).
HYPREP, which is funded by a group of foreign oil companies and the Nigerian government, followed a damning 2011 assessment of oil-related damage by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The report said it could take 35 years to clean up Ogoniland.
But even as Nigerian President Bola Tinubu and some local leaders push for oil drilling to resume in Ogoniland for the first time in three decades, residents and environmental experts told Climate Home News and IrpiMedia that the government-led clean-up has fallen short of their expectations.
In line with the UNEP report, 65 sites were earmarked for the first phase of HYPREP’s soil and groundwater clean-up operations.
So far, 17 of them have been completed, the project’s leaders said in an update in June, detailing other achievements including the provision of drinking water distribution hubs, a power plant, a university centre of excellence for environmental restoration, and two new hospitals.
It also launched a coastal clean-up – not part of its original remit, which was over two-thirds done by October – as well as mangrove restoration that was 94% finished, according to a more recent statement. In addition, it notes 7,000 jobs have been created and 5,000 local people trained in a range of skills.
Nonetheless, some local activists and residents said HYPREP’s progress has been disappointing, with many blighted communities in Ogoniland not included in the initial list of sites to be remediated.
Others told this investigation that the project has strayed beyond its original remit into high-impact PR activities – such as the new hospitals and university centre, diverting focus from the laborious clean-up work. It takes about two years to clean each of the sites identified in the project’s first phase.
Funding shortfall
At the same time, there has been criticism over the disruption caused by frequent leadership changes.
A lack of money, however, is the biggest problem facing HYPREP today, said Evidence Ep-Aabari Enoch-Zorgbara, an oil and gas development expert and consultant who has previously worked for Shell and the Nigerian government. “Have we done enough? I will say no. Have we used the money well? I will say no. Have we done something? Yes. Are we at ground zero? No,” he said.
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The initial $1 billion in funding was meant to cover the first five years of work, but has not been topped up as planned, he said.
A 2025 UNEP assessment of the project said HYPREP’s long-term impacts depend on the replenishment of the trust fund underpinning the process, calling for the Nigerian government to work towards securing lasting funding for the ongoing implementation of HYPREP.
HYPREP and Nigeria’s Environment Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the project’s finances, but a senior HYPREP official told local media earlier this year that funding was not a problem – without addressing the issue of its future resources.
Doubts over efficacy of clean-up methods
Meanwhile, the labour-intensive work of cleaning contaminated water and farmland inches forward.
At a site near the settlement of K-Dere, contaminated water is pooled in basins, while polluted soil is excavated for treatment. Once the water and soil are cleaned and the pollutants fall below a certain threshold, it can be used again for traditional activities such as farming and fishing.
“We have a lot of work to do and we are trying to do it to the best of our abilities,” said team lead Israel Siglo, walking around the site in orange overalls and a protective helmet.
UNEP has rated such work positively, but independent monitors such as the NGO Stakeholder Development Network (SDN) have questioned some of the clean-up methods and their effectiveness.
Paul Samuel, from the SDN, said the group’s monitoring had found that treating soil with cleaning chemicals before transplanting it back does not tackle groundwater pollution nor make the land fit for agricultural use.
Without tackling contamination deeper in the ground, some experts fear progress made in the first phase could end up going to waste.
“We are about 20-30% of the way through the project, because groundwater remediation is still completely missing,” Enoch-Zorgbara said.
President: “Put this dark chapter behind us”
Last September, when announcing the push to resume oil production in Ogoniland for the first time since protests led by environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa in the 1990s, President Tinubu urged the Ogoni people to “put this dark chapter behind us and move forward as a united community”.
In a reminder of the persistent tensions between local people and government authorities 30 years since the execution of Saro-Wiwa by Nigeria’s then-military junta, security personnel with rifles slung over their shoulders keep guard at HYPREP’s headquarters in Port Harcourt.
In June, Tinubu’s government granted a posthumous pardon to Saro-Wiwa, whose killing sparked international outrage.
But for many Ogoni activists, such gestures are a government ploy to access the territory’s hydrocarbon reserves, as oil continues to leak from the aging pipelines criss-crossing the region.
“If there is anyone who needs a pardon, it is the federal government, not the Ogoni people who committed no offence,” said Celestine AkpoBari, a veteran environmental campaigner and coordinator of the Ogoni Solidarity Forum.
Not everyone in Ogoniland is opposed to new oil drilling, seeing it as a source of potential wealth for the region – as long as the lessons of the past are heeded.
Speaking to reporters from his palace in Port Harcourt, King Godwin Bebe Okpabi, the ruler of the Ogale community, said leaving the region’s oil riches in the ground “makes no sense” – even as the world strives to transition away from fossil fuels.
At the same time, King Okpabi is representing his community in a UK lawsuit against London-headquartered Shell and its former Nigerian subsidiary, which was taken over by Renaissance Africa Energy Company.
Having extracted oil in the area for decades, fossil fuel giants including Shell and Italy’s Eni are now accused by the local community of washing their hands of the responsibility for its aftermath by divesting from the region without adequately compensating for the pollution their activities caused.
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Shell has denied this, saying Renaissance will remain accountable for any clean-up and remediation work, while Eni has said that, at the time of the sale of its onshore operations, it had remediated “100% of the spills” on its joint venture assets.
TotalEnergies said it had fully met its financial obligations on remediation funding for environmental clean-up and site restoration purposes, including by contributing to HYPREP.
Oil firms blame spills on thieves
Energy companies have often blamed the frequent oil spills in Ogoniland on local oil thieves who drill holes in pipelines.
“This criminality is the cause of the majority of spills in the Bille and Ogale claims, and we maintain that Shell is not liable for the criminal acts of third parties or illegal refining,” a Shell spokesperson said.
But Enoch-Zorgbara and environmental activists say that the spills in Ogoniland were primarily caused by corrosion of aging oil infrastructure.
UNEP’s 2011 environmental assessment came in the wake of the devastating 2008 spill in Bodo, which took place when a decades-old pipeline, then operated by Shell, ruptured and leaked 3,900 barrels of oil for 72 consecutive days.
Black waves of crude swept through the fishing village and the surrounding areas, polluting rivers – a primary source of livelihood – contaminating fields, and destroying natural habitats.
After a group of Bodo residents took Shell to court, it acknowledged the environmental disaster had been caused by the erosion of the pipeline. Shell also agreed to restore the mangrove forest, which had shrunk by two-thirds as a result of the spill, and to pay £55 million ($72 million) in compensation to the community.
The 15,600 people behind the lawsuit received £2,200 each, with £20 million earmarked for community benefits, including a medical centre.
But for Saka, the fisherman in Bodo, the money does not make up for what the community has lost.
“Compared to what the oil destroyed in our river, the compensation is small – it cannot help us,” he said.
This article was published in partnership with IrpiMedia and Afrique XXI.
The post For blighted Niger Delta communities, oil spill clean-ups are another broken promise appeared first on Climate Home News.
For blighted Niger Delta communities, oil spill clean-ups are another broken promise
The Turkish government and the International Renewable Energy Agency have called for a stronger global push to run vehicles, industry and buildings on electricity rather than fossil fuels, ahead of this year’s COP31 climate talks.
COP31 President Murat Kurum told the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial on Wednesday that governments should be “decarbonising the way we generate electricity, but also expanding electrification into every sphere of life”.
“We must make the technologies of the future accessible at scale – and we must ensure that no one is left behind,” he told the gathering of climate diplomats and ministers from around 40 countries in the Danish capital.
Kurum said that the percentage of final energy consumption which is met by electricity – the key metric of electrification, which is currently around 20% globally – should be increased “as much as we possibly can”.
The head of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Francesco La Camera, also addressed the Copenhagen gathering. While his comments to ministers were not public, IRENA released a statement ahead of the talks calling for a goal to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% by 2035.
The two officials did not reference the war with Iran and the price hikes in oil and gas as a result of related supply disruptions, but UN and other leaders have used this as an argument in favour of transitioning away from planet-heating fossil fuels towards clean, domestically produced renewables.
35 by 35 goal
“The world must adapt to a new energy reality,” La Camera said in the IRENA statement. “Beyond the goals of tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency [by 2030] lies the wider challenge of transforming entire energy systems and reducing fossil fuel use across supply and demand. Electrification and fossil fuel phase-out are inseparable and must advance together.”
He said electrification, which can be achieved through technologies like electric heat pumps, vehicles and cookers, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance energy security and bolster economic competitiveness.
A new “transitioning away from fossil fuels” roadmap released by IRENA says this 35% by 2035 electrification goal is vital if the world is to “remain” on a pathway to limit global warming to 1.5C. Electrification should reach at least 50% by 2050, it adds.
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To enable this goal to be met, the amount of money invested in power grids each year should double from $0.5 trillion in 2025 to around $1 trillion each year until 2035. Significant investment in electricity storage and demand flexibility is also needed, the roadmap says.
Clémence Dubois, campaigns manager for green group 350.org, welcomed Kurum’s remarks but added that electrification and energy justice should be funded through large developed countries taxing the windfall profits of fossil fuel companies.
Collective goal or coalition?
It is not yet clear whether the Turkish government, or the Australian government which is tasked with leading the COP31 negotiations, will attempt to get all countries to agree to an electrification goal at November’s climate summit in Antalya.
If so, such a goal could be collectively endorsed by all nations in a COP decision, as with the COP28 targets to triple renewables capacity and double the rate of growth in energy efficiency, both by 2030. Where there is narrower support, other goals have been voluntarily launched at COPs, backed by coalitions of countries, including pledges to boost nuclear energy, biofuels and grid investment.
A source with knowledge of Türkiye’s priorities confirmed that electrification is important to the COP31 host, alongside energy storage, energy security, clean cooking and resilient and clean energy systems.
The post Electrification emerges as Turkish COP31 priority appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
Cropped 20 May 2026: Deforestation roadmap | Melanesian Ocean Summit | Returning pet parrots to the wild
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter.
Subscribe for free here.
Key developments
Deforestation talks
COP30 ROADMAP: Brazil’s global roadmap away from deforestation will involve countries producing their own voluntary pathways to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030, according to a first outline covered by Climate Home News. At the COP30 climate talks in Belém last year, some 93 countries called for a deforestation “roadmap” to be part of the summit’s formal outcomes. Despite this, countries failed to agree to one – leading host nation Brazil to promise to bring forward a voluntary roadmap as a compromise.
FOREST FORUM: Speaking at the UN Forum on Forests earlier this month, Juliano Assunção, an advisor to the COP30 presidency on deforestation, presented a first outline of the roadmap, said Climate Home News. According to the publication, Assunção said the roadmap “will not prescribe a single model”, but would instead invite countries to convert their pledges “into forest roadmaps grounded on regional and national diagnosis”. Elsewhere at the forum, Indonesia announced carbon-offsetting plans involving the restoration of 12m hectares of degraded land, said Reuters.
GOALS REPORT: Amid the talks, the UN published its latest assessment on achieving six global forest goals for 2017-30, concluding that “progress is evident, but insufficient”. Down to Earth reported that, according to the report, the world remains off track on two of the “key” targets: ending deforestation and eliminating extreme poverty among forest-dependent populations. Sustainability magazine reported that the goals set a target of increasing global forest area by 3% by 2030, but that, in reality, forest area has declined by more than 40m hectares since 2015.
Melanesian Ocean Summit
SEA SOLIDARITY: The leaders of Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu signed a declaration to establish the Melanesian Ocean Corridor of Reserves, reported the Pacific Islands News Association. The corridor will “establish joint border governance, enforcement and marine science frameworks” across five Pacific nations and territories, said the outlet. Vanuatu’s prime minister, Jotham Napat, told the Melanesian Ocean Summit that the corridor “reminds us that our solidarity, not the legacy of colonial rule, determines our future”, according to Vanuatu’s Daily Post.
SEA SOVEREIGNTY: Part of the Melanesian corridor is a new marine protected area the size of the UK, announced by Papua New Guinea at the summit, said Oceanographic magazine. The new MPA will “prohibit all fishing within its boundaries”, reported the outlet. Meanwhile, Tuvalu’s Post Courier reported that the country is “currently developing its first-ever national-security policy, which will place maritime conservation and management at the absolute centre of the country’s strategic architecture”. Prime minister Feleti Teo stated: “The ocean is our sovereignty.”
CONSIDER THE OCEAN: In a comment article in the journal npj Ocean Sustainability, Dr Carlos García-Soto from the Spanish National Research Council wrote that there is a “structural weakness” in UN climate processes. He noted that the final decision text from COP30 “omitted the ocean entirely”, despite the summit “deliver[ing] the strongest ocean-related initiatives ever presented at a UN climate conference”. García-Soto also outlined five key priorities for integrating ocean considerations into climate governance.
News and views
- CANADA OWN GOAL: The Canadian government has no plans to enshrine into law commitments meant to ensure the nation meets its international nature goals, despite hosting the pivotal COP15 biodiversity summit less than four years ago, said CBC News.
- CREDIT CHANGE: Brazil’s national monetary council has postponed a regulation that would have blocked farms involved in deforestation from receiving rural credits, reported Folha de São Paulo. The change occurs “following pressure from agribusiness groups to relax the rules”, said the outlet, and means the requirement will now not take effect until January 2027.
- SAND CRISIS: A growing global appetite for sand is outstripping demand and threatening ecosystems, according to a new UN report covered by Reuters.
- LAOS DAMMED: A natural world heritage site in northern Laos is being put at risk by a $3.5bn dam project, reported Nikkei Asia.
- RAPID RESPONSE: The European Commission released its fertiliser action plan to “provide rapid support to farmers…and prevent rising food prices” amid the conflict in the Middle East, said Agenzia Nova.
- MARSH REVIVAL: Rising water levels are “beginning to revive” southern Iraq’s Cibayish marshes following a years-long drought and “drawing buffalo herders and fishermen back to areas once abandoned”, said Reuters. The country’s water ministry was able to “release growing volumes” of water from reservoirs following heavy winter rains, added the newswire.
Spotlight
Returning pet parrots to the wild
This week, Carbon Brief visits a conservation project working to return former pet parrots to the wild in Colombia.
Beautiful feathers. The playfulness and intellect of a small child. On occasion, the ability to partake in some pleasant conversation.
Parrots have captured the attention of humans for centuries. But their unique qualities have also contributed to their decline in the wild.
Some 16m parrots were moved across borders to be sold as pets over 1975-2016, according to one study, making them the most internationally traded bird in the world.
In Colombia, the world’s most biodiverse country by area, the introduction of tougher laws in 2016 means keeping a wild animal as a pet is now viewed as a “crime against the environment”, punishable with monetary fines.
These stricter rules led to greater numbers of wild parrots being seized by the police and more people giving up their birds voluntarily.
But this clampdown created a new conundrum: What will the Colombian authorities do with their growing population of these, formerly pet, parrots?
A charity called Fundación Loros – “Parrot Foundation” in English – hopes to have the answer.
Parrot rehabilitation
The foundation is based on 33 hectares of tropical dry forest in Bolívar – around a 40-minute car ride from the popular tourist city of Cartagena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.
The deafening screeches of parrots when entering through the site’s gates were impossible to ignore.
Inside, foundation guide Corina walked Carbon Brief through the various stages of pet parrot rehabilitation.
Former pet parrots that are released directly into the wild are unlikely to survive. This is because they often lack the necessary skills, such as how to find food or stay away from predators, including monkeys and coatis.
Parrots arriving at the foundation follow a seven-stage process.
First, they are checked over by a vet and given a tag, so they can be continuously monitored.
Following this, they are kept in a large enclosure and slowly reintroduced to the types of food they might encounter in the wild, including wild fruits and nuts.
After this, they undergo “flight training” – many of the parrots will have been kept in a small cage and never learned how to travel long distances. This involves workers encouraging the birds to fly greater distances in exchange for rewards.
They also join other birds for “flock cohesion” lessons. In the wild, parrots are highly social animals who rely on their group to survive and raise chicks.
Following these steps, parrots are taken deeper into the foundation’s forest reserve – away from loggers and poachers.
There, they spend some time in an enclosure getting acquainted with their new surroundings.
After this, the door to the cage is opened – allowing them to fly free, but return for shelter and food if they need. Eventually, the birds settle back into the wild.
Waiting list
In addition to their parrot rehabilitation programme, the charity built a series of nest boxes and installed them high in the tree canopy across the reserve.
Their continuous monitoring of the birds has shown that many of the former pets have started raising wild chicks.
The work is hugely rewarding, said Corina, but the charity currently has a waiting list that is “months long”, given the growing number of wild animals needing rehabilitation across Colombia.
Despite helping the authorities with their wild animal problem, the charity largely relies on private donations to continue, she said. The hope is to develop an eco-tourism model to make more revenue in the future, she added.
Watch, read, listen
CARBON CONSULTATIONS: The Diplomat explored whether local residents were properly consulted on a carbon-offsetting programme in Cambodia.
FISH FIGHTS: The Ghanaian Times examined the tensions surrounding marine conservation in the country and how it is unduly burdening small-scale fisherfolk.
DELTA WORK: Mongabay reported on how the world’s “great deltas” are sinking, leading to the loss of a “global food system”.
LITHUANIA PEAT BOGS: The New York Times reported on Lithuanian efforts to restore peat bogs in order to “reinforce the border” and “lock away” carbon.
New science
- Coastal marshes are encroaching on uplands “nearly twice as fast” on agricultural land as they are on forestland, suggesting that agricultural practices are “accelerat[ing] the impacts of saltwater intrusion” | Nature Sustainability
- Fungi that cause diseases in plants will approximately double in abundance around the Antarctic Peninsula by 2100 under a moderate emissions scenario | Global Change Biology
- Conserving Ethiopia’s protected areas currently involves managing “trade-offs between nature and people” that are “central to whether global biodiversity commitments can be delivered” | Nature Ecology and Evolution
In the diary
- 20-22 May: Informal consultations of parties to the UN Fish Stocks Agreement | New York City
- 30 May-6 June: Meeting of the Global Environment Facility Assembly | Samarkand, Uzbekistan
- 31 May: Colombian presidential elections
- 8-18 June:Subsidiary body meetings of the UNFCCC | Bonn, Germany
Cropped is researched and written by Dr Giuliana Viglione, Aruna Chandrasekhar, Daisy Dunne and Orla Dwyer. Please send tips and feedback to cropped@carbonbrief.org
The post Cropped 20 May 2026: Deforestation roadmap | Melanesian Ocean Summit | Returning pet parrots to the wild appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Climate Change
Prescribed Burns and Forest Thinning Averted Millions of Tons of Emissions and Billions in Damages
In addition to preventing an estimated 2.7 million tons of carbon emissions and $2.8 billion in damages, UC Davis researchers determined that fuel treatments prevented nearly 60 premature deaths.
Work to reduce excess flammable vegetation in forests warded off the release of 2.7 million tons of carbon dioxide, averted nearly 60 premature deaths and avoided $2.8 billion in damages in the Western U.S., according to a new study from the University of California, Davis.
Prescribed Burns and Forest Thinning Averted Millions of Tons of Emissions and Billions in Damages
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