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United Press International
June 7, 2001, Thursday
SECTION: GENERAL NEWS
LENGTH: 1188 words

HEADLINE: Blue Planet: Enviros react to Shell prize

BYLINE: By JOE GROSSMAN, UPI Science News

The awarding of an environmental achievement prize to Shell Oil has sparked a chorus of criticism from environmental and human rights groups. Most at issue is Shell's record in Nigeria.

The prize, given by the U.N.-founded World Environment Center for "international leadership in sustainable development," was presented in Washington last month at an $800-a-plate dinner in the soaring Great Hall of the National Building Museum. Clustered outside were about 50 protestors, most Nigerian-born.

Accusations of Shell's environmental abuse go back more than 10 years. Protests within the Niger Delta led to repressions at the hands of the Nigerian police. Human Rights Watch has reported that more than 2000 unarmed villagers were killed, and dozens of groups and individuals allege Shell conspired with police forces to suppress dissent.

Shell, as an oil-production business partner with the Nigerian government, did repeatedly call on a Nigerian national police brigade some call the 'kill and go" police to intervene in trouble spots. The company also provided them funding and logistical support. Shell maintains it is not responsible for any killings, however.

The chairman of the WEC prize jury, Joel Abrams, said the past was weighed against present and future in honoring Shell.

"One of the major reasons was its development of a very major framework and structure for sustainable development, which is integrated with all their business practices and the environmental issues and many issues of social responsibility," he said. "Shell's actions in the Niger Delta are something that we were aware of. This had happened in the past and we firmly believe that Shell has taken some very significant steps to improve that situation."

Yet one WEC jury member, Andre Marsan, indicated to United Press International he was not aware of Shell's record in the Niger delta.

"I don't recall anyone bringing that up," said Marsan, an environmental consultant who was formerly assistant deputy minister in Canada's ministry for the environment. "Their strong points to me were their letters of performance that their managers have to sign -- one on environment, safety and health, one on human rights, one on profits."

But Journal of Ethics editor Angelo Corlett argued, "With any organization, you need to look at the whole record. Would it make any sense to say, 'Let's give the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) a humanitarian award because it's different than it used to be, they no longer kill people, or at least they don't kill as many as they used to, or not in such obvious ways'?

"I think most people would find that morally repugnant. Why? Because of the history," Corlett, who is also professor of ethics and philosophy at San Diego State University, told UPI.

The award sponsor, the World Environment Center, was started in 1974 with a grant from the United Nations Environment Program and is now funded by more than 350 corporations. The director of the U.N. Environment Program, Klaus Topfer, made this year's award presentation.

Topfer, speaking by telephone from his office in Nairobi, said, "It is without any doubt that Shell developed quite a clear and a very positive environmental profile. You must be aware that they are in the forefront of those companies giving backing to the Kyoto Protocol.

"This is also linked with the fact that the CEO of Shell, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, is a co-chairman of the G-8 task force on renewable energy. All this together gives me the clear signal that it was the right decision of the jury to present to Shell this award," he told UPI. "I was asked by Shell, by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, to be there and to make this presentation and I did it."

A spokesperson for Shell, Michael McGarry, added, "When you talk about, generally, Shell's environmental record in Nigeria it's really been quite good, and that's a fact that came to light once foreign journalists were allowed to enter the country, and to see for themselves that allegations of environmental abuses were unsubstantiated."

He continued, "That's not to say there has never been any kind of incident with some of Shell's operations but frankly, some of those are a result of sabotage."

Presented with a list of 17 recent oil spills that 38 groups and hundreds of individuals were circulating in protest of the award, McGarry declined to review each allegation separately, but did identify some he said were not from Shell operations.

UPI asked McGarry to comment on a lawsuit now being brought in New York that seeks damages for such actions.

"As you might expect, since this involves pending litigation we cannot comment on specific allegations that are presented in the lawsuit. Generally, our response to the lawsuit is that the allegations made against Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell Transport and Trading are false and unsubstantiated," McGarry said.

Nevertheless, "Sierra Club is currently boycotting Shell for atrocities they committed in Nigeria. So, certainly Shell would not be at the top of my list," said the director of Sierra Club's human rights and the environment program, Alejandro Queral.

Amnesty International's director of human rights and the environment program, Folabi Olagbaju, told UPI, "The links between Shell and the Nigerian military dictatorship, at that point in time was very close. They were implicated in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta. ... I just think that giving Shell this kind of award is not the right thing to do."

The president of the U.S. branch of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Vincent Idemyor, agreed, saying, "The simple truth is that Shell's very recent anti-environmental behavior is so extreme that no degree of action could possibly qualify them for an award at this time."

The Ogoni region is in Nigeria's Niger Delta. The Nigeria-based organization, Environmental Rights Action, refers to Ogoni as an "an ecological wasteland reeking with hydrocarbon and other dangerous chemicals from Shell's aged pipes (and) pipelines."

One week ago, 36 groups from the Niger Delta wrote to James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, expressing concern that the bank was planning to support a Shell project in the Delta.

"Media campaigns have not resulted in improvement in practice of the company in the Niger Delta of Nigeria," the letter contended. "Oil spills continue regularly as a result of breakdown of old, ill-maintained pipelines, oil wells and other facilities. Shell and her contractors continue to disregard even basic environmental precautions in the forests, wetlands and community farmlands as oil spills are burnt openly and waste products are disposed of indiscriminately."

Daphne Wysham, director of the Washington-based Sustainable Energy and Economy Network toured the Niger Delta last year. Wysham told UPI that the subsistence fishing catch was depleted from oil pollution and that she saw signs of protein deficiency in local children.

For environmental and human-rights advocates, it seems the hinge is not simply whether present can overcome past, but whether present and past are still the same.

LOAD-DATE: June 8, 2001

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