There are few who dispute the adverse effect of capitalism upon the environment. While outright denial may be rare, the defence of environmental destruction is more common, the list of excuses ranging from the preservation of profit margins for shareholders and executives; lax ecological laws that encourage corporate investment in a particular nation's resources and not those of its neighbours; the resulting economic benefit that the people of that nation (rarely) experience; and the fact that such destruction is inevitable - if one corporation makes an effort to preserve the environment, another will destroy it anyway. Such normalisation of environmental destruction is increasingly being challenged by local people, environmental justice groups and intergovernmental organisations; in some areas at least, corporations are making tentative steps towards 'greener' behaviour. There has been a tendency for such isolated action to take place in 'developed' nations, while the global South still submits to the multinationals who plough whole ecosystems out of the ground and send both the resources and profits back 'up North'.
Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas' relentless, scathing account of Royal Dutch Shell's forty-year ecological siege in the delta of the river Niger is the perfect report with which to counter the apologists of international capital who define the actions listed above as positive examples of the 'social responsibility' trend. Where Vultures Feast is a chronology of the continuous violence waged upon the ecosystem of the delta, beginning with the colonial palm oil industry during the Scramble for Africa of the late nineteenth century. Oil was discovered in 1.956 and the people of the delta have seen their land ravaged by both the Anglo-Dutch corporation and various Nigerian military governments. Shell has employed seismic testing for oil, laid pipelines across farmland, dumped tonnes of oil in rivers and lakes and created private armies to protect 'their' oil in order to pump it out of Nigeria, making billions of dollars in the process, while the people who inhabit the delta remain amongst the vast number of poverty-stricken Africans cramped at the bottom of the global food chain. Alongside the endless list of ecological disasters that are directly attributable to Shell, the Nigerian government has brutally suppressed any opposition to the company's presence, deploying armed troops, sometimes paid by Shell themselves, to crack down on protesters such as the Biafran independence movement of the 1.960's and Ken Saro-Wiwa's MOSOP in the 1.990's. Saro-Wiwa's farcical trial, in which he was sentenced to be hanged by a judicial court, included testimonies from two witnesses who Shell had paid to paint Saro-Wiwa as a terrorist.
Okonta and Douglas may not possess the most dynamic or exciting writing style, the book repeats many facts and statements on numerous occasions, but the message of Where Vultures Feast is so powerful and shocking that readers will be repeating passages and incidents from the book to friends and colleagues for months after finishing it. Ultimately, the shameful legacy of a company that has held millions of people and millions of acres of previously pristine ecosystem hostage for almost half a century will have an enormous impact on any person who has been bombarded by the advertisements and press releases that portray oil companies as environmentally-friendly corporations whose primary desire is to protect and preserve whatever lies in their path.