From Climate Debt to Ecological Debt: An Earth-Eco-Socialist Reframing of the Niger Delta Crisis

Abstract

The dominant framework for addressing environmental injustice in the Global South is the concept of climate debt. This framework focuses on historical carbon emissions. It proposes remedies through climate finance, technology transfer, and market-based mechanisms. However, it does not adequately capture the broader ecological destruction experienced in regions such as the Niger Delta. This paper argues that the crisis should be understood as an ecological debt crisis, rather than merely a climate debt problem. The study adopts an Earth-Eco-Socialist theoretical framework and uses the Niger Delta as a case study. It employs qualitative and critical analysis of literature on capitalist exploitation, ecological degradation, environmental justice, and sustainability. The paper examines how oil extraction, gas flaring, pollution, and community dispossession reflect deeper patterns of ecological exploitation affecting both humans and nonhuman nature. The findings show that climate debt discourse is limited. It reduces environmental harm to carbon accounting and promotes market-based solutions that fail to address the root causes of ecological degradation. In contrast, ecological debt captures the impacts of extraction, biodiversity loss, ecosystem destruction, and livelihood displacement. The Niger Delta demonstrates how capitalist accumulation generates long-term ecological and social harm that cannot be resolved through financial compensation alone. The paper concludes that Earth-Eco-Socialism provides a more comprehensive framework for environmental justice and sustainability. Moving from climate debt to ecological debt supports more transformative and reparative responses to ecological crises in the Global South.