\u201cThe execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni land defenders decades ago opened my eyes to what really lay behind the destruction of my home town,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Agbani has adopted a different kind of activism \u2013 planting trees. In 2003, soon after the death of her mother, she established the Lokiaka Community Development Centre, to support female Ogoni farmers in caring for the environment and helping to restore the mangroves, devastated by more than five decades of oil pollution.<\/p>\n
Martha Agbani checking on the progress of the young mangrove trees at her restoration site in Teenama. Photograph: Valentine Benjamin<\/p>\n
Her aim isn\u2019t just to put trees back in the ground but to heal the wetlands, restore livelihoods and peace, and rebuild the sense of ownership Ogoni communities lost along with their mangroves.<\/p>\n
In the swamp flats at Teenama, Joy Lebewi is ankle-deep in mud, holding a sapling in one hand. Trained at Agbani\u2019s centre, Lebewi works alongside a dozen other women, all planting while keeping an eye out for crabs and periwinkles worth collecting. In the wetland of Teenama they have planted more than 150,000 mangrove saplings.<\/p>\n
Joy Lebewi in the swamp flats at Teenama. Photograph: Valentine Benjamin<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to space the mangroves right,\u201d says Lebewi, her brow furrowed with concentration. \u201cThis is our forest.\u201d She knows that restoring a forest is about more than putting a bunch of seedlings into the ground. When the women started restoring mangroves in 2018, they planted them too close together, and the trees\u2019 canopies crowded each other out. Now, they use a stick \u2013 2 metres long, with one end pressed into the swampy ground to mark where the next seedling will be planted. It is a simple tool in a landscape of widespread losses, but each mark is a small act of reconstruction.<\/p>\n
Teenama sits between the Kwawa and Kpean oil settlements in the Yorla oilfields of Ogoniland, a region ravaged by decades of oil production and spills.<\/p>\n
The ecological damage has been felt across the region \u2013 people who relied on mangrove-lined creeks to fish and gather shellfish have lost a valuable food source and income.<\/p>\n
In Bodo, where Shell was ordered to pay \u00a355m<\/a> in compensation to local people after two big oil spills in 2008 and 2009<\/a>, Dr Ferdinand Giadom is deputy project director of the Bodo Mediation Initiative, a stakeholder group overseeing oil cleanups around the region.<\/p>\n Women plant mangroves in the muddy wetlands of Teenama, Ogoniland, using a 2m stick to space the plants. Photograph: Valentine Benjamin<\/p>\n About 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of mangroves were directly<\/a> destroyed in the 2008 Ogoniland spill and Giadom estimates that more than 500,000 barrels of crude oil have been spilt into the environment in under 20 years, an impact felt across generations.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo decades have been lost,\u201d Giadom says. \u201cLivelihoods over that span of time have been lost.\u201d<\/p>\n The wetlands are also being encroached on by the nipa palm, also called mangrove palm, an invasive species from south-east Asia that has spread through disturbed areas of the Niger delta. Thick clusters of nipa crowd out native species and make it difficult for local people to access the wetlands.<\/p>\n Clearing nipa is demanding work. In Teenama, men from surrounding communities are clearing the land to prepare it for the women who will plant the native mangrove saplings. The mangrove ecosystem in the Niger delta region is the largest in Africa<\/a> and the third-largest globally, covering about 1m hectares.<\/p>\n Men clear nipa palms in Teenama, preparing the muddy ground for native mangrove seedlings to be planted. Photograph: Valentine Benjamin<\/p>\n These forests provide habitat for fish, shrimps and molluscs and act as nurseries for other aquatic life. They help protect coastlines, store carbon<\/a> and support communities whose food and incomes depend on the wetlands.<\/p>\n \u201cMillions of people\u2019s livelihoods depend on healthy mangroves,\u201d says Oluwakemi Odufuye, a coastal ecologist at the Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research.<\/p>\n For Agbani, that connection between environmental destruction and human lives is deeply personal. She watched pollution alter her childhood landscape, and saw women losing access to vital forests and waterways.<\/p>\n
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