Image: Gas pipeline running through Assa to Awara and Omoku with a major impact on livelihoods
In early July we hosted our final IEC Projects-in-Progress session, with presentations from Jeffrey Insko’s ‘Oil and Water Don’t Mix’, and Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi’s ‘Exploring the Ethics of Communalism in Oil producing Communities of the Igbo-South East Nigeria and the Environmental Justice Implied‘. Over the last two years, members of the IEC Working Group have been meeting for bi-monthly workshops to update each other on their projects and share reflections, research outcomes, and questions with the wider group. This month we were delighted to welcome two projects to share their work, each dealing with the direct impacts of the oil and gas industry on local communities in distinct global contexts.
Jeffrey Insko presented on his ongoing collaboration with the grassroots coalition Oil and Water Don’t Mix. The group are campaigning to shut down Line 5, a 70-year-old pipeline that transports oil from Canada into Wisconsin and Michigan and which has been branded “America’s most dangerous pipeline”. The pipeline’s movement through the Straits of Mackinaw and the Great Lakes has been the locus of opposition and resistance and, following the Kalamazoo River spill of 2010, groups have campaigned for the line to be permanently decommissioned. Insko, who is a Professor in American Studies at Oakland University, Michigan, became involved with the movement when Enbridge announced plans to rebuild the pipeline along a route that would pass through his own backyard.
Image: Enbridge Line 5 Liquids Pipeline
In the presentation Insko shared updates from project, particularly emphasising how the issue of Line 5 is ultimately a problem of Indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty. On its journey through Wisconsin, Line 5 passes through the territory of the Band River Band of Chippewa, who have called for the removal of the pipeline from their reservation to protect their watershed and Lake Superior from a possible rupture. Despite a court judge ruling in 2023 that Enbridge is trespassing on tribal lands, Enbridge has so far continued to operate the pipeline on Bad River’s territory.
One of the main outcomes is the pedagogical implications of the history of Line 5 and the opportunities that it offers for engaging students around broader the topics of environmental justice, energy transitions and Indigenous rights. Having taught classes about Line 5, Insko observes that, “it is astonishingly easy and heartening to energise young people about an issue like this, because it relates to things that matter to them so deeply. They care about the great lakes, they care about the environment, they’re worried about climate change and – perhaps most of all – they care about Indigenous sovereignty”.
The next steps are to explore how to engage and mobilise students across Michigan and beyond, while ensuring that any action is Indigenous-led. Insko observed the importance of providing a basic education on the history of Line 5, as well as highlighting plans to integrate arts-driven forms of engagement that include film screenings and storytelling workshops. He reflects: “It feels like there’s a kind of power there that could make a real difference”.
Our second presenter Lawrence Ogbo Ugwuanyi joined us from a rainy Abuja, Nigeria, to speak about the oil-producing Igbo communities that he works with in South East Nigeria. While there is a significant amount of research into oil and gas production in the Niger Delta, there is very little work to date on the oil and gas development in the rest of the country, particularly in Ohaji Egbema: the site of the largest gas deposit in Nigeria. Ugwuanyi’s project focuses specifically on Igbo environmental ethics, to understand the forms of community that are emerging in oil producing regions and whether they reflect the central ideals of Igbo communitarianism and environmental justice.
Working with two communities in Ohaji Egbema, the project set out to explore three research questions: First, what is the state of community or communitarianism in this place? Second, how does the oil industry participate in the life of the community? And finally, to explore the state of the belief in Ala: an Earth Deity that is central to Igbo worldviews, cultural customs and social laws. Ugwuanyi held interviews with the Obile and Assa communities in the community square, including participants of all ages and genders in the study.
Image: Community Partnership at Assa Ohaji Egbema
Presenting his conclusions, Ugwuanyi described that communities feel they are being neglected, while their futures are being determined by a coalition between the elites – the oil industry and the government. He also found that the concept of the Earth, or Ala, is being downplayed through the development of oil and gas, which in practical terms means that cultural customs and sacred traditions are being undermined. Finally, he found that there is a desperate need for data within the community to help them to self-advocate for their own interests. These findings together detail how the presence of oil and gas industry disrupts the fabric of the community and, further, that emergent modes of communitarianism do not protect their interests. While the project is highly critical of the way that oil and gas industry operates in the region, this important study on a scarcely studied context provides vital data that will allow local communities to self-advocate and challenge ongoing environmental injustices.