Original subtitles

This week on Vice:

the battle raging in Nigeria over control of oil.

This is just a stream of fuel

going out into the waterways.

This entire town has been flooded.

And then, scientists team up to save the world's reefs.

Can you describe what the world looks like without coral reefs?

If we don't mitigate at all, coral reefs will not be

the thing that we're worrying about.

It will be the survival of our species.

Go, go, go!

We are not animals!

Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer.

For over half a century,

fossil fuel companies and the Nigerian government

have collectively made billions of dollars,

but the wealth has not trickled down

to the majority of the population.

This has led not only to an armed rebellion,

but also local people stealing oil

and sabotaging infrastructure

to reclaim what they felt was rightfully theirs.

In season one of Vice,

we traveled to the heart of the Niger Delta,

the epicenter of their oil production.

So, right behind me are three illegal oil refineries.

Now at that time, an amnesty

between the government and militants had been in place,

bringing relative peace to the region.

But in 2016, the newly elected president,

suspended the amnesty program

prompting a resurgence of oil piracy and militancy.

So, we sent Gianna Toboni back to the Niger Delta

to follow this ongoing story.

We're riding through the Niger Delta right now.

Nigeria's oil reserves are under us,

so we're right at the center of Nigeria's oil production.

Shell, Exxon... all these big companies have pipelines,

and this is where oil theft is rampant.

Illegal oil refineries are buried deep in the creeks

of the Niger Delta and are notoriously difficult to get to.

Local oil businessman Don Wizaro

helped us secure access to one

under the protection of a paramilitary group

that provides security for the oil thieves.

This looks post-apocalyptic out here.

I mean, everything is burnt to the ground.

This entire town is black.

Oh, man. The smell of oil here is overwhelming.

Everything's rotting. I mean, this entire town is covered in oil.

What are these guys doing?

That's the refining in there?

So, this diesel is ready to be sold now.

So, they're just starting to pump the crude

from the ship through these hoses

into what they're calling the crude oven.

That's where the refining process happens.

And then it goes through these pipes into the cooler...

they use water to cool it down...

and then through these pipes into the reservoir.

That's the diesel there.

Then they pump it again into those drums,

and that's where it's exported from.

Just a couple of years ago,

operations like these were on the decline,

in part due to an amnesty program

where the Nigerian government paid militants

to stop refining and selling the oil beneath their land.

But in 2016, the new government reeled back those subsidies,

so now, the black market is once again thriving.

Why do you do this work?

Has the military ever come through here?

As night fell, they allowed us to watch

the most crucial and dangerous part of the process.

Oh wow. They just started the fire.

Look at this.

Holy shit. Huge plumes of smoke.

I mean, this fire is huge, and all these guys are here,

making sure they contain it, 'cause we're surrounded by oil.

This is the most combustible environment you could be in.

What are they pouring in there?

So hot. I mean, this fire is relatively far away,

and the heat is just... the heat is really strong.

Holy shit! Look at this thing. It's massive.

So, they do this every night, huh?

Yeah.

While Nigeria sits atop

one of the largest oil reserves in the world,

the majority of the Nigerian people

have seen little benefit from this multi-billion dollar industry.

The result has been rampant oil theft

and sabotage of infrastructure,

which has transnational oil and gas consultants,

like Ifeanyi Izeze,

concerned about the effects on global oil markets.

What is Nigeria's role in oil production globally?

What was the amnesty program?

Why have people turned to violence?

Militant activity reduced Nigeria's oil output last year

to its lowest level in 22 years.

And as we saw in a local village,

the illegal oil market is once again central to their livelihood.

We have the whole village coming with us.

If you could get a job, would you be doing this?

Just two days later,

the Nigerian military raided the very same village.

So, they're coming to bust this dump site.

Oh look. They're just destroying everything.

Oh my God. You can smell it.

Look at this. Jesus.

So, tell us what's happening here.

You can tell that it was refined out in the bush?

So, how often are you coming across

warehouses or markets that are selling illegal fuel?

This can't be good for the environment.

And why is that?

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Just slashing all these bags up.

I mean, look at this, though. This is just a stream

of fuel going out into the waterways.

This entire town has been flooded.

After years of military raids,

illegal oil operations, and pipeline spills,

the effect on the local environment here is catastrophic,

contaminating what was a main source of fishing,

agriculture, and drinking water.

So, you just threw your net in to catch fish,

and it's covered in oil now?

This isn't just a result of the war

between the militants and the government.

In 2011, a landmark UN report showed

widespread contamination of the Niger Delta

by Shell and other oil companies.

I noticed that it's black all around us.

What has been the effect on this community?

In 2015, after being sued

by a local community affected by oil spills,

Shell agreed to a payout of $84 million

and maintains that it's committed

to the cleanup of oil in the Niger Delta.

There have been several other lawsuits against Shell here,

a number of which are still pending.

We went on an aerial patrol with Shell's pipeline surveillance team,

who believe that it's the oil thieves and militants

who are largely responsible for this widespread pollution.

What is this right here?

Oh wow. Look at that. That's a big one.

Oh my God! They're everywhere.

Oh my God! Another one.

So, these bush refineries were just set on fire by the military.

You can see two areas close by that are burning.

The plumes of smoke are black and massive, going into the sky.

As we found out for ourselves,

operations to destroy illegal refineries

are routine for the Nigerian military.

The civil defense forces just went in.

It looks like they're firing at the militants in there.

So, they just arrested somebody.

He was running an oil refinery right over here.

There are several ovens here. Oh my God. Look at this.

It goes all the way down there.

I mean, it's like, probably, half a mile of refineries.

So you'll destroy these now?

This entire camp is being lit on fire.

You can see the smoke in the sky already.

These guys are all about to fire...

Okay.

As the government continues their assault

on illegal refineries and barges carrying stolen oil,

they're often met with retaliation from local militias.

and one of the most notorious militias here.

is the Niger Delta Avengers

They attack pipelines and infrastructure,

significantly affecting both the environment and the economy.

It's been incredibly hard getting any militants from the NDA to talk to us,

but we've finally tracked a few down

who have agreed to talk to us

as long as we conceal their identities.

Why are you doing this? What do you want to accomplish?

What kinds of missions does the NDA carry out?

These attacks forced the government

to resume amnesty payouts to the militants,

and the government also recently announced

a move toward legalizing these illicit refineries.

Despite that, the attacks and protests continue

as locals demand more jobs and development,

without which there may be no end in sight

for the devastating environmental damage

and the escalating cycle of violence in the Niger Delta.

Coral reefs are one of the Earth's

most precious natural resources.

They harbor over a million species

and provide food for at least 500 million people

around the world.

But corals are dying at an alarming rate,

primarily due to rising sea temperatures.

Most experts believe that we're set to lose

90 percent of the world's reefs by 2050.

Ben Anderson traveled to Palau, Hawaii, and Curacao

to see how a few small groups of scientists

may have found a solution

to this increasingly serious environmental crisis.

Their habitats still look beautiful,

but corals are dying at a staggering rate.

Warming waters, pollution, and overfishing

have led to the loss of 50 percent of the world's corals

in the last 30 years.

If this is allowed to continue,

its impact on the planet will be devastating.

Reef ecologist Eric Hochberg and his team

want to prove exactly why this is happening.

They have been photographing major reefs around the world

and are finishing their project here in Palau.

These underwater tests are conducted to verify information gathered

by a state-of-the-art NASA sensor attached to the team's plane.

Is your hope that once this is done,

you can then understand what's damaging

each reef in each different part of the world?

Or is it also to understand what could prevent further loss?

Yes and yes. So, we're gonna visit

hundreds of reefs with the airplane.

I'm gonna look for patterns.

This is an exploratory science.

First time we're getting this data set,

so we don't know what we'll find.

When the project is finished, they will have mapped

more of the world's coral reefs than ever before.

This is the leading-edge sensor

for ocean remote sensing in the world.

This is PRISM. We have it here. We're using it.

So far, the amount of reef that's been studied

this comprehensively is point-zero-one percent of the world's.

That's what I would say.

So, we're gonna get to about two percent.

The only way to do it is with this technology.

I'm amazed this hasn't been done before.

When you think of something so valuable and so...

It's been done at Mars, and it's been done at the Moon.

We just haven't done it here on Earth.

Exactly.

This is the most extensive

uniform reef survey that has been conducted.

What's already known is that corals are being stressed

by extreme changes to their environment.

When this happens, they lose their algae and turn white

in a phenomenon known as bleaching.

There have been three worldwide bleaching events in the last 20 years.

The most devastating began in 2014,

resulting in the loss of 4,600 square miles of coral.

The Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest living structure,

lost 30 percent of its coral,

threatening the many species that rely on it for survival.

Richard Vevers is a former ad exec

who believes he can help by raising awareness.

He launched a project called 50 Reefs,

which will identify and help document

the 50 most protectable reefs around the world.

Working with Google, Richard has designed

a 360-degree virtual reality camera

that can capture remarkably detailed footage.

The camera we developed was originally an idea of...

"Well, let's reveal the underwater world."

The scientists heard about the camera

and saw that this was a way of potentially revolutionizing

the study of coral reefs.

Richard's footage is detailed enough for scientific study,

and his team has designed an algorithm

that automatically analyzes the images,

which means work that would've taken years

can now be completed in hours.

And is your footage available to the scientific community?

It is literally Google Street View underwater,

so anybody in the world can go to

any of the locations that we've been to.

The idea is these 50 reefs become a catalyst for action.

The 50 Reefs team also take their underwater imagery

and, with VR headsets, show local communities what they have to lose.

A lot of these local communities don't get underwater.

And so, with this technology, we can come into villages

and show people exactly what's under there.

Wow!

And is the idea to get them to love what they see first

and then be more interested in protecting it?

Yes. I mean, you can have that one moment

when you're growing up, when you see something new for the first time,

and it sticks with you for the rest of your life.

You can't protect an environment like this

without a hundred percent local support.

Coral reefs are the foundation

of the world's underwater ecosystems.

If they die, so will the many species

that depend on them, and the entire food chain,

up to the fish that we consume, could be lost.

Does it surprise you that this isn't front-page news,

that this isn't more of an urgent issue to most of the public?

People still seem sort of obsessed

with conservation of a single species.

Yet we've got a million species under a more rapid threat

that's happening right now.

And I think most conservation needs a bit of a rethink.

One of the world's leading marine biologists

is doing just that,

pioneering research which could help coral survive.

You know, one thing that we're exploring

is that corals might be more entrepreneurial

in terms of their partners

very early in their life history.

We try to challenge them

with new types and see if they're...

"Oh yeah, I'll give this one a try."

Put the right sperm and egg together and create the...

- the super coral. - Yeah.

She calls this process "assisted evolution."

Once Ruth has identified the strongest species

in the lab and helped them breed,

the samples are placed amongst reefs

that have already been badly damaged.

These corals were selected,

because one coral of the same species,

sitting side-by-side,

one of them was healthy and one of them was white bleached.

And our question is, "Why?"

So, these are the ones that are really the survivors.

You know, I always think of the planet as a jigsaw puzzle,

and there are all these pieces that must fit together

to create the picture that is our planet.

And when you start pulling pieces out,

like the coral reef or the polar ice sheet,

and that lack of connection and understanding

of the way the planet's system is being affected

will ultimately wipe us out as a species.

Species go extinct when they can no longer

be supported by the place where they live.

And that's what we're doing to ourselves.

Back in Ruth's lab,

she uses a multi-million dollar microscope

which shows in stunning detail

exactly how corals react to increasing stresses.

That's the first time I've seen them where you can really see

that they're living things.

You're almost communicating with the corals,

'cause you can push it until you see levels of stress...

- That's right. - ... and then pull it back in again.

They tell you exactly what they feel.

And that's... you know, that's kind of crazy, isn't it?

You're looking at a living organism.

A reef would cross its strongest members,

naturally, over a 30- to 50-year period.

We don't have 30 to 50 years.

These images help Ruth experiment

with ways to build stronger species.

You know, originally this project was called the Super Coral Project.

Okay, I'm going out on the reef,

I'm finding my best coral performers.

I bring it into the lab,

I train it on an environmental treadmill

to improve its capacity to withstand these temperatures.

We then do what human athletes often do,

which is to meet somebody in the gym of the opposite sex

and have extremely gifted offspring.

And we do exactly the same with our corals.

There is an urgent, urgent problem

that needs to be met with a very, very creative solution.

And I'll use an example, like, the closure of the ozone hole.

That was a radical change in planetary behavior

that enabled that to occur...

and we all did it.

Ruth's work is looking like a viable solution,

if it can be applied to scale.

In Curacao, we met with a team of scientists

called SECORE who are trying to solve the problem of scalability.

They're here to gather the larvae of a brain coral,

their first step in a plan to repopulate reefs worldwide.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Once in the water, they rely on the sea life

to point them in the right direction.

Once the butterfly fish have identified the right corals,

Dirk and his team cover them in tents

to collect the sperm and eggs which are about to be released.

After they've collected enough samples,

they need to get them back to the lab for fertilization.

In nature, the coral's reproductive success rate

is just point-two percent.

It's a huge step in solving the problem of scalability.

So, how close are you to getting

the potentially hundreds of thousands of coral that are there

to be hundreds of thousands of coral in the ocean?

Yeah.

The next problem is how to spread

these hundreds of thousands of fertilized eggs

across a wide area.

These easily made cement tetrapods are covered with coral larvae.

The tetrapods can then be easily distributed wherever they are needed,

and the coral can grow.

Once you've figured it out

and once you know you can do it to scale,

all you have to do is get enough of these somewhere

that you can essentially push them into the areas where they need to be.

That's the idea, yeah. That's it.

That's it.

It's another huge step

in finding a solution

that can be applied on a worldwide scale.

- So, you have a blueprint. - Yes.

What would you actually need to put that in place?

- Resources. We need money. - So, how much?

A collective hundred-million-dollar project

that would create the networks,

that would enable the science

to be convened with practitioners quickly.

If the scale and cause

of the corals' destruction can be perfectly understood,

if its most resilient species can be selected or bred,

and if those species can then be spread

wherever they are needed on a massive scale,

these scientists may have solved

one of the most significant environmental problems of our age.

Can you describe what the world looks like

- without coral reefs? - A world without reefs is

a world where there are places without food,

places where there's nowhere to live.

They are critically important to coastal security and economies.

The rates of change in our environment

are far outpacing the intrinsic capacity

of coral reefs to survive.

If we don't mitigate at all,

coral reefs will not be the thing that we're worrying about.

It will be the survival of our species.

This sounds like the perfect project

crying out for someone to come in and say,

"Okay, I'm gonna coordinate a global effort"

- to do exactly what you're saying. - Absolutely.

How do we make these tools make a difference on-site in many places?

We have to be absolutely functional in 10 years.

We have to stop planning, and we need to start doing.