TITLE:
GMOU TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT TRUST: ANY PLACE FOR CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY REGULATION UNDER NIGERIAN PETROLEUM INDUSTRY ACT?
AUTHORS:
Beimonyo Vivien Brisibe
KEYWORDS:
Corporate environmental responsibility, Host community development trust, Corporate social responsibility, Global Memorandum of understanding, Petroleum Industry Act
JOURNAL NAME:
Beijing Law Review,
Vol.15 No.1,
March
18,
2024
ABSTRACT: Due to the negative environmental effects from petroleum operations, International oil companies (IOCs) operating in the Niger Delta voluntarily carried out CSR to address the negative impacts of their operations. This led to the adoption of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) or the Global memorandum of understanding (GMOU) as a model for carrying out their CSR. However, with the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), IOCs are mandated to establish a Host Community Development Trust in the communities where they operate. The quesion is: what is the status of the GMOU under the new regime in the PIA and from an environmental standpoint, is there an improvement in the capacity of the new regime to address environmental concerns? Thus this paper seeks to examine the extent to which the new framework for CSR under the PIA addresses the negative environmental externalities of the petroleum industry in Nigeria.