Environmental Security Threats and Policy Response in the Niger Delta, Nigeria 1990-2016

Abstract

In recent years, environmental security in the coastal Niger Delta has had a growing scholarly interest from divergent perspectives seeking for broader elucidation and understanding of State policy response. These security threats notably oil spill, water and land pollution, gas flaring, acid rain, mangrove deforestation, etc are linked to the Multinational Oil Corporations (MNOCs)and oil resource exploitation. These have been perverse, resulting in ecological breakdown, vulnerability, emergency and environmental insecurity challenges since at least the 1970s when oil in the region became the main stay of Nigeria's economy. This conceptual paper builds on the political ecology framework which discusses the impact of global power asymmetry on natural resource extraction and extensive body of work in the broad field of environmental security to explore salient indicators which demonstrate the evidence of environmental insecurity threats and poor State policy response and made some recommendations.