19 



conform to U.S. standards while operating there, and paid com- 

 pensation to the peoples 



Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Mr. Mills, if we could ask you to wrap it up. 

 Thank you. 



Mr. Mills. I will just finish by saying that in the time we have 

 been working on this, we have all been impressed with the great 

 work being done now by Assistant Secretary of State, John 

 Shattuck. We are aware that Nigeria is now a top priority of his 

 office and appreciate his willingness to work with him. 



The Sierra Club is a strong supporter of H.R. 2697, the Nigerian 

 Democracy Act, as sponsored by Congressman Payne. I understand 

 that Congressman Payne is eager to have hearings on the bill and 

 we encourage your committee to schedule them as soon as possible. 



Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. We have had many hearings on the issue of 

 human rights in Africa. We have had many hearings on Nigeria, 

 but we are here to talk about another issue. 



Mr. Mills. I will conclude by saying that Nigeria's human rights 

 and environmental crisis can, we believe, only be solved together. 



[The prepared statement of Mr. Mills appears in the appendix. 1 



Ms. Ros-Lehtenen. Thank you. 



Thank you very much, gentlemen. 



If I could ask you what you believe are the three highest prior- 

 ities for our investment in environmental protection and restora- 

 tion in your many years of experience in Africa environmental is- 

 sues, if you could focus in on that. If you were to make rec- 

 ommendations to our government, what would you say would be 

 the three highest priorities for our tax dollars to go into, whether 

 it is rural, agricultural kind of concerns; urban environmental pro- 

 tection programs. What kind of recommendations would you make? 

 And we are speaking about environmental priorities here. 



Mr. Wright. 



Mr. Wright. I think, ultimately, the conservation and environ- 

 mental issues of Africa are going to have to be solved by Africans. 

 So I think we have to start at the top and say that building African 

 institutions through training and through the policies that em- 

 power them to make the right decisions. So policy change, helping 

 African Governments re-think their environmental policy, and 

 helping train the Africans that are going to carry out those policies 

 has got to be very high, if not top of the list. 



I think a second one is the one I mentioned at the end and I 

 think it has come up in several cases which is the question of de- 

 mocracy and building civil society in all its aspects. One of the iro- 

 nies that we found in particularly Latin America but also in Asia 

 is when they started moving toward democracy and you started 

 having more citizen activism, there was some concern on the part 

 of environmentalists that citizen demands to open up lands, open 

 up parks for resources was actually going to be a threat to the en- 

 vironment and we found exactly the opposite. The explosion of a 

 non-governmental movement and a democratic society holding gov- 

 ernments accountable is really fundamental to environment. So I 

 think we, in a way, want to focus the democracy more into the 

 NGO and environmental area. Perhaps a little more emphasis on 

 that. And I think that applies to us as well. 



