Recent Actions toward a Post-Oil Civilization
On the Ground in Nigeria and Ecuador

Two recent developments in Africa and Latin America reveal concrete challenges and advances in today's struggles toward a post-oil civilization. 

From Africa, the recently-released Analysis of Nigeria’s 2024 Regulations for the Upstream Petroleum Environmental Remediation Fund exposes the inadequacy of currently-contemplated measures to finance the remediation and rehabilitation of territories subject to pollution resulting from upstream oil and gas operations by transnational companies in the Niger Delta.

Under present plans, contributions to the relevant fund are to be made by companies holding upstream licences for the extraction and production of petroleum, but not for pipelines, since these are supposed to be covered by a parallel fund. The report finds that total annual contributions are estimated at just US$2.7 million under 2024 regulations. Using conservative estimates of cleanup costs, this would cover only 107,000 litres of oil — just 11 per cent of the one million litres spilled from upstream infrastructure in 2023 alone. Moreover, total corporate contributions are estimated to be only half of those proposed in a 2022 draft of the regulations.

In a more encouraging development, Latin America recently saw the completion of the First International Conference on the Closure and Dismantling of, and Reparations for, the Yasuni-ITT oil field (https://www.reparacionyasuni.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/AGENDA-FINAL...). The oil field is located in the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador, which is estimated to be the most biodiverse territory on earth and is defended by several Indigenous nationalities. In an August 2023 referendum, the Ecuadorian people decided by an overwhelming margin to shut down oil operations in the field and leave the remaining oil in the ground.

The conference brought together participants from numerous countries to share ideas and experiences regarding the technological, financial, social, cultural, legal and economic actions integral to moving beyond the devastation associated with oil operations in Yasuni and other territories.

Documents prepared for the meeting include a book translated into English entitled 100 Steps for the Closure and Dismantling of Block 43-ITT and the Repair of the Yasuni. Providing additional background are other documents linked to above: two recent editions of the newsletter Ecos del Yasuni in English translation, plus Spanish-language essays on Yasuni as a space of socio-environmental conflict and on Yasuni in a Feminist Key.