Fertile fields and desert despair

Twenty-three years ago, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed. The convictions were spurious and condemned around the world; Saro-Wiwa’s main crime appeared to be that he agitated on behalf of his Ogoni people against the Nigerian Government and the oil companies contaminating their land and water.

Royal Dutch Shell was a major business involved in an industry vital to the Nigerian economy. It had considerable influence. Pressure was applied to use it but the company chose to do nothing. Saro-Wiwa was hanged and the oil kept flowing.

Quite some way north, a large group of people face their own slow demise in the desert hell that is ‘‘The Devil’s Garden’’. The Saharawi have been illegally forced out of their Western Sahara homeland by Morocco, which has established its own kind of pipeline – a 100-kilometre conveyor belt – and a lucrative trade in mined phosphate.

The Moroccan occupation is maintained in part by the patronage of two New Zealand fertiliser firms: Ballance Agri-Nutrients and Ravensdown say they are ‘‘aware’’ of the political situation in Western Sahara, but they defer to the United Nations process for sorting it out. Ballance chief Mark Wynne says the conflict is beyond the remit of a Kiwi co-operative: ‘‘It’s way above any issue we’d get involved in in our station in life.’’

Clearly, however, it is involved, as one of only three companies providing justification for Morocco to maintain its illegal presence and ignore United Nations efforts to resolve Saharawi claims. Such a disingenuous response recalls Shell’s strategy to place one’s hands firmly beneath one’s buttocks.

The wider issue is that, as a small nation with a global reputation in the advocacy of human rights, New Zealand is contaminated by that indifference. As Erik Hagen, of Western Saharan Resource Watch, points out, ‘‘New Zealand stands alone now as the main funder of the illegal occupation’’.

Australian companies have stopped trading with OCP, the company mining the phosphate, as have the Americans; Canadians will call it quits at year’s end. So we do stand alone, and that sense of isolation will only grow as the focus moves to court actions in various international tribunals.

It has to be acknowledged that those other countries are not as dependent as we are on that trade: Western Sahara supplies about 70 per cent of New Zealand’s phosphate, for an industry that feeds and fuels many people around the world and in this country. Also, there are few viable alternatives to that steady conveyor belt of product.

In this, the Government can play a key role in working towards a ‘‘just transition’’ – for the people whose suffering was witnessed first-hand by our prime minister during a visit in 2008, and an industry expected to make its own sacrifice in the interests of doing what’s right.

The Productivity Commission has signalled the need for dramatic land-use shifts and changes in primary production to combat climate change. The Government has the opportunity to play an even bigger role in that process, backing it with help for farmers while supporting the Saharawi campaign and maintaining this country’s good global name.

That’s a plan, and it’s the only thing we should execute.

‘‘Australian companies have stopped trading with OCP, the company mining the phosphate, as have the Americans; Canadians will call it quits at year’s end. So we do stand alone.’’