Title : Green promises, dirty realities: Corporate sustainability communication as a mechanism of environmental justice in Nigeria
Abstract:
Corporate sustainability communication has become a central mechanism through which multinational oil companies in Nigeria especially the Niger Delta region manage public perception, yet the relationship between such discourse and substantive environmental justice outcomes remains contested and under examined. This study critically interrogates the gap between the “green promises” articulated in corporate sustainability reports, advertising campaigns, and stakeholder engagement initiatives, and the “dirty realities” of continued oil spills, gas flaring, and ecosystem degradation experienced by host communities in the region. Employing a critical discourse analysis approach, the study examines how corporate actors deploy sustainability communication strategically, framing environmental commitments in ways that emphasize incremental technical achievements and philanthropic gestures while obscuring the scale, persistence, and structural causes of environmental harm. The study argues that such communication often functions less as a vehicle for accountability than as a legitimating narrative that manages reputational risk, forestalls regulatory intervention, and pacifies international stakeholder’s scrutiny, even as it fails to translate into measurable improvements in community wellbeing or ecological restoration. Particular attention is given to the disjuncture between the audiences targeted by sustainability communication, primarily international investors, regulators, and consumers, and the affected populations of the Niger Delta, whose lived experiences and grievances are frequently marginalized or symbolically incorporated without corresponding material redress. The analysis further explores how greenwashing practices intersect with existing power asymmetries, reinforcing rather than disrupting the structural conditions that produce environmental injustice in extractive contexts. By situating corporate sustainability communication within broader debates on environmental justice, accountability, and postcolonial resource governance, this study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that questions the adequacy of voluntary, discourse-based corporate responses to environmental harm, and calls for more robust regulatory and participatory mechanisms capable of holding corporations accountable to the communities most affected by their operations.
