Theorising Environmental Justice in the Niger Delta: An Original Framework Beyond the Compensation Paradigm

Environmental justice advocacy and policy in the Niger Delta has been overwhelmingly framed around monetary compensation for oil spill damage, yet this compensation paradigm has systematically failed to address the structural injustices underlying environmental harm and has generated new social pathologies around compensation allocation. This doctoral study develops an original theoretical framework for environmental justice in the Niger Delta that moves beyond the compensation paradigm, grounded in six years of research across Rivers, Bayelsa, Ondo, and Delta States. Research combined community-based participatory research with nine affected communities producing insider environmental justice analyses, ninety-three in-depth interviews with community members, environmental activists, oil company representatives, and government officials, ethnographic analysis of community mobilisation against environmental harm, and genealogical analysis of environmental law development in Nigeria. The original framework, termed Relational Environmental Justice, proposes that environmental justice in the Niger Delta requires reconceptualisation across four dimensions absent from the compensation paradigm: ontological justice recognising indigenous relationships between community identity and ecological environment that cannot be financially compensated; procedural justice requiring community governance of environmental decisions rather than post-damage compensation negotiation; distributive justice addressing structural wealth inequality between petroleum companies and communities as a justice demand independent of specific spill events; and restorative ecology justice positioning ecosystem restoration rather than financial payment as the primary justice outcome. The doctoral contribution advances both environmental sociology and Niger Delta studies through original theoretical departures grounded in extensive community-based evidence. Keywords: environmental justice, Niger Delta, oil spill, compensation paradigm, relational justice.