CRG Seminar: Living With Toxic Extractivism: Women's Lifeworlds with Oil in Nigeria’s Niger Delta

Africa’s resource-extraction localities have persistently suffered adverse environmental and social transformations arising from the operations of extractive industries. While these negative transformations endanger local livelihoods and the health of resource-rich communities, vulnerable groups are disproportionately impacted, particularly women, who encounter pollution in their daily lives. Despite this, the ways women experience and respond to toxic extractivism remain poorly understood. Drawing from ethnographic accounts of women’s lived experiences with oil extraction in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, this paper provides insights into the numerous ways they are affected by and respond to toxic oil pollution. Inspired by ecofeminist theory, the paper traced women’s disproportionate vulnerabilities to oil pollution to their particular connectedness to nature and heavy reliance on natural-resource-based livelihoods such as fishing, farming, and mangrove harvesting. This notwithstanding, the authors argue that women in the Niger Delta are not passive victims but mobilizers of collective action through local gender-based institutions to confront pollution, foster livelihood adaptations, and environmental justice.

This seminar is given by Dr. Better Jack and organised by the Collaborative Research Group Governance, entrepreneurship and inclusive development.