A report coming out of the University of Lagos (https://UniLag.edu.ng/) has examined the environmental effects of British colonial rule in Africa and has asked that this value be included in all reparations conversation. The report, titled CO2lonianism, Ecocide, Reparations, argues that the long-lasting ecological harm caused by British colonial rule on its former African colonies constitutes a separate and vast category of damage, distinct from the humanitarian harm of the slave trade, with a valuation that could exceed hundreds of trillions of dollars.
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The report’s lead author, Professor J. G. Nkem Onyekpe, PhD, Head of the Department of History and Strategic Studies at the University of Lagos stated that: "The report documents that valuation exercises of comparable ambition and scale have already been attempted successfully.". He cited a peer-reviewed 2022 estimate that valued resources appropriated from the global South through unequal exchange at over $10 trillion per year in 2015 alone. "If the same order of logic, that large-scale, structurally unequal appropriation of resources is capable of rigorous monetary valuation, were extended backward across the full duration of colonial rule and across the full set of affected African states, the resulting figure would run into the hundreds of trillions of dollars, and quite possibly beyond." – he added.
The report was presented to a distinguished audience of academics, legal experts, and public activists at the press conference in Lagos University on August 28, 2026. The report has now been formally submitted to the African Union’s newly established sub-commissions - the Committee of Experts on Reparations (AUCER) and the Legal Reference Group on Reparations (AULER). These bodies, now operational under the AU’s Decade of Justice and Reparations (2026-2035), are tasked with developing a harmonized methodology for evaluating and advancing a common African position on reparations claims.
Another case separately mentioned in the report argues, that land degradation in Kanungu District, Uganda found a statistically significant relationship between land degradation and farmer livelihoods (Spearman’s r = 0.530, p < 0.01), with deforestation identified by local respondents as the primary driver, and with local officials and farmers directly attributing resulting “hunger, famine related resource constraints, and insufficient food.
The legal and institutional environment for such claims has shifted markedly since 2021, creating a unique window for advancing an African-led claim. Key developments include the adoption of a working legal definition of ecocide by the Independent Expert Panel, followed by binding or soon-to-be-binding instruments at the Council of Europe (2025) and the European Union (2024), and a proposal before the International Criminal Court. Most critically, the African Union’s own decision in July 2025 to establish an ad hoc committee to examine the classification of “massive destruction of environmental ecosystems” as a crime provides direct institutional support for the report’s premise.
Speaking about the report, “Colonial reparations cannot stop at counting the lives taken, the people enslaved, the resources extracted and indigenous survival altered. 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.” said Ogunlade Olamide M., an Associate Director at CAPPA NGO.
The report also documents a directly on-point international legal precedent: the 1990s Certain Phosphate Lands in Nauru case before the International Court of Justice. In that case, a formerly colonized state successfully brought a claim against its former colonial administrator (Australia) specifically for environmental devastation caused by colonial-era phosphate mining. This landmark ruling provides a template, however imperfect, for what an African claim of this kind might look like in practice.
“The Nauru case proves that such claims are not merely theoretical but are grounded in established international law,” remarked Dr Karibi-Whyte, a legal expert familiar with the report. “Africa is now building on that precedent to address a harm that is orders of magnitude larger.”
The submission comes at a time of an increased interest for the reparations movement, with the African Union having declared 2025 as the Year of Reparations and formally established the AUCER and AULER mechanisms to guide the continent’s strategy. Authors hope this report to become an important document framing environmental repair as an essential element of restorative justice for the continent.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of University of Lagos.
Media Contact:
Prof. J. G. N. Onyekpe
Lead Academic / Head of the Department of History and Strategic Studies
University of Lagos
Email: jonyekpe@unilag.edu.ng
Website: https://UniLag.edu.ng
