As any child educated in Nigeria will tell you, oil was discovered in Oloibiri, Nigeria in 1956. Oil spills in Nigeria date back to those early days of exploration and production and increased significantly with the expansion of infrastructure onshore and offshore in 1970s. All the more shocking then that Mike Cowing, the UNEP’s leading expert on…

The top story in The Guardian today is the global outrage at a UNEP study which ‘exonerates’ Shell for oil spills in Nigeria. What started as an environmental audit of Ogoniland has become another manipulative PR strategy. A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in…

There are some things that the debate over oil spills in Nigeria cannot change. Under Nigerian law, Shell has principal responsibility to clean up all spills from its facilities, regardless of whether the cause is sabotage or neglect. And Shell has all the resources and technology to stop these spills from happening. If the UNEP…

9.40am at the Stephen Lawrence Centre and all is quiet, waiting for participants to arrive and the final day’s work to begin. Yesterday 6 of them had to go to their schools and colleges to receive their A or AS level results. Quite a heavy experience, and I really felt for them, especially with the…

My name is Ed, and I teach about politics, religion and philosophy, and one of the other things I do is volunteer at PLATFORM. For Most of the past few weeks I’ve been enjoying the privilege of summer holidays, but this week I’m participating in an experiment. It’s a course for young people called Shake!…

My name is Ed, and I teach about politics, religion and philosophy, and one of the other things I do is volunteer at PLATFORM. For most of the past few weeks I’ve been enjoying the privilege of summer holidays, but this week I’m participating in an experiment. It’s a course for young people called SHAKE!. Conceived by…

Monday 16th sees 14 participants aged between 16 and 25 meet with artists DJ Eric Soul, poets Zena Edwards and Simon Murray from African Writers Abroad, and Ana Tovey from Chocolate Films at the Stephen Lawrence Centre in Deptford, for SHAKE! Ben Amunwa, Jane Trowell and Ed Lewis from PLATFORM are coordinating… https://remembersarowiwa.com/events-2/ This week-long…

A new report produced by conservative thinktank Policy Exchange – described as David Cameron’s “favourite”, promotesupstream carbon taxes as more effective than market-based cap & trade in reducing emissions. The report “Greener, Cheaper”, by Oxford based academic Dieter Helm, proposes an upstream fuel tax “levied on coal, gas and oil weighted according to their carbon content. Such a tax has…