Socio-Ecological Responsibilities of Shell in Nigeria in the Era of the UNGPs: Potentials of a Textual Study

Shell’s presumed notoriety in the operating environment of the petroleum industry of Nigeria, especially when it comes to managing and responding as well as being responsible for the social (human rights), ecological, and climate change impacts of its externalities, seems infamous given the extensive literature that has reviewed and analyzed the responsibility of Shell from several perspectives. While Shell has been fighting back on all fronts to portray itself as a sustainable player in its operating environments globally and precisely in Nigeria, the question remains whether sustainability is only a window dressing for Shell or otherwise. More so, how Shell responds to climate change, ecological harm, and the human rights impact of its operation have been subjects of continuous constructive discussions.

However, given the unanimous adoption of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in 2011 by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), which stipulated some basic principles of business responsibilities for human rights and remediations, this paper focuses on a qualitative study of Shell’s operation in Nigeria to gain an insightful understanding of how Shell has been managing and responding to its externalities vis-à-vis implementing the UNGPs over ten years. Amongst the responsibilities required of business enterprises include respect for human rights and remediation of harm or violation of human rights based on the thresholds of contribution, attribution, and direct linkage. However, there is an emerging understanding that such violations can also emanate from ecological and climate change impacts, hence the need for a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to responses to climate change and ecological harms, including ecological restoration efforts.

Therefore, the focus of this study is to understand the responses of Shell to these challenges and highlight the relevance of documentary study as a research methodology. Ecological harms continue to threaten the Niger Delta communities' human rights seriously and the environment, exacerbating the climate change impacts in the region. Hence, how to respond to these threats by providing remedies to the victims becomes an uphill task for Shell, which usually adopts either an evasive approach to the ESG issues or resorts to questionable settlements, thereby promoting human rights standards that are based on the peculiarities of an individual, financial, or negotiating power, which is not ideal, but inevitable in reality. Thus, the primary focus of this study is to project an argument that Shell, in the light of global efforts to normalize business responsibilities for its eternality's harms, businesses can assume responsibility for the ecological restoration in the Niger Delta as a means of providing a remedy both to the people and to the environment given the usefulness of ecological restoration to human rights and facilitating of ecosystem services.