The Burning Ground

Overview

They killed her father for speaking out

For decades, the oil-rich Niger Delta—an important wetland and farming region—has seen its environment devastated by oil extraction that has brought little economic benefit to its people. After a nonviolent campaign for environmental and human rights, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues were executed by the military dictatorship in 1995. Their deaths sparked an armed insurgency marked by sabotage and oil theft in a bid for “resource control.”

Thirty years after Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death, his daughter Noo traces the rise of this insurgency and how it became entangled with politics, further damaging the environment and upending social hierarchies. In The Burning Ground, she travels across the delta to examine its aftermath, speaking with former militants, highlighting the undervalued role of women, and meeting individuals working toward sustainable development. Along the way, her sharp, humane reporting brings to life a region where environmental damage, political conflict, human-rights pressures, and accelerating climate threats converge in ways the world cannot ignore.

Read CGR Director Nicholas Lemann’s Letter to the Reader