Report Urges Africa to Put Colonial Ecological Damage on Reparations Agenda

By Mintesinot Nigussie  |  September 7, 2026

A University of Lagos report has called for environmental destruction linked to colonial rule to be formally included in Africa’s reparations claims, arguing that ecological damage represents a distinct and largely unaccounted cost of colonialism.

The report, CO2lonianism, Ecocide, Reparations, argues that the environmental consequences of British colonial rule across Africa should be assessed alongside the human and economic losses traditionally considered in reparations debates.

It estimates that the value of such damage could reach hundreds of trillions of US dollars. The figure is an extrapolation by the report’s authors rather than an established liability or compensation amount.

Professor J.G. Nkem Onyekpe, head of the Department of History and Strategic Studies at the University of Lagos and lead author of the report, said existing research demonstrated that large-scale resource transfers could be subject to monetary valuation.

He cited a peer-reviewed 2022 estimate that valued resources appropriated from the global South through unequal exchange at more than 10 trillion US dollars in 2015 alone. Applying a similar methodology over the duration of colonial rule and across affected African countries, he argued, could produce a figure in the hundreds of trillions of dollars.

The report was presented at a press conference at the University of Lagos on August 28 and has been submitted to the African Union’s Committee of Experts on Reparations and Legal Reference Group on Reparations, which are involved in developing a common African approach to reparations.

The authors argue that environmental degradation should not be treated solely as a contemporary climate or development issue. In their view, some of the ecological damage associated with colonial extraction continues to affect agricultural productivity, livelihoods and the vulnerability of African economies to climate shocks.

The report cites research from Uganda’s Kanungu District that found a statistically significant relationship between land degradation and farmer livelihoods. Local respondents identified deforestation as the main driver of degradation and linked its consequences to food insecurity and resource constraints.

"Colonial reparations cannot stop at counting the lives taken, the people enslaved, the resources extracted and indigenous survival altered," said Ogunlade Olamide M., associate director at CAPPA, an NGO. "The ecological destruction that made those systems possible and whose consequences continue to shape Africa’s climate vulnerability today, must be recognized as part of the debt owed to African peoples."

The report also points to changes in international environmental law as creating greater scope for governments to pursue claims involving severe ecological destruction. It cites the development of the concept of ecocide and recent efforts in international and regional institutions to strengthen legal protections against extensive environmental harm.

Another case examined is the Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru dispute involving Australia before the International Court of Justice. Nauru brought claims concerning environmental damage associated with phosphate mining during its period of external administration.

The case was ultimately settled before the court ruled on the substantive claims, but the report argues that it demonstrates that environmental damage arising from a period of colonial administration can form the basis of an international legal dispute.

Dr Karibi-Whyte, a legal expert familiar with the report, said the Nauru case showed that environmental claims arising from colonial-era activities were not purely theoretical.

The report comes as the African Union seeks to develop a coordinated position on reparations. The AU designated 2025 as the Year of Reparations and has established mechanisms intended to advance work on reparations and develop common approaches among member states.

For the report’s authors, bringing ecological damage into the discussion would expand the reparations debate from historical losses to the continuing economic consequences of environmental degradation.

The proposal also raises a more difficult question for African governments and international institutions: how historical ecological damage should be measured, attributed and translated into a legally and economically credible claim.

Source: FSX Business News