Environmental justice advocates have called on leaders across West Africa to unite against environmental degradation and resist the commodification of nature.
The advocates made the call on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Abuja in separate interviews on the sidelines of the West Africa Climate Justice Roundtable.
The dialogue was part of preparations for the 30th Conference of Parties (COP30) coming up in Brazil.
The Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Dr Nnimmo Bassey, said that Africa should demand the recognition and payment of climate debt.
He explained that western countries that exploited resources in Africa and destroyed the environment in the process should be made to pay.
“African countries should demand for the recognition and payment of climate debt because the continent has been raped for hundreds of years and it is time for someone to pay for it.
“Climate financing will not do it, it is a pre-colonial, colonial and ongoing climate debt, it should be recognise for what it is and we should demand for it.
“We must demand that our environment is treated with respect, our people have the right to live with dignity,” he said.
Bassey said that there is need for climate justice for Nigeria with regard to gas flaring, oil spillage and an audit of the entire oil producing belt.
Also speaking, Mr Kwami Kpondzo, Team Lead from the Centre for Environmental Justice in Togo, said that countries across West Africa face a common plight.
He said that pollution and environmental destruction were caused by oil and gas extraction, large-scale mining, and industrial plantations, destruction of biodiversity, polluted waters, loss of community land across the subregion.
The activist warned against the increasing use of monoculture plantations such as palm oil and eucalyptus, promoted under carbon market schemes.
According to him, these plantations are marketed as climate solutions but are destroying livelihoods and ecosystems.
Ahead of the COP30, Kpondzo called for a united front among grassroots, agroecology, gender justice, and anti-extraction movements across West Africa.
“We cannot fight in isolation, we must speak with one voice, because climate change is connected to agriculture, to food security, to women’s rights, to everything,” he said.
Kpondzo said that, as activists, they were not waiting for world leaders to change the system, saying that they will continue to raise voices, build movements, and demand justice, for silence in the face of oppression was not an option.
By EricJames Ochigbo