CLIMATE CHANGE AND CHALLENGE OF HUMAN ACTIVITIES: BY MOSES AMADI

The environment is the life support system for human survival, and it provides much of the raw materials required for socio-economic progress.

In recognition of this, there have been steps taken by the previous governments and the current administration to safeguard the environment, prominent of which is the ugly state of environmental degradation in Ogoni land and its subsequent fill-up and clean-up under the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP). The present administration launched the Ogoni clean-up programme in 2016 in line with the UN Environment Programme’s recommendations. Statistics show that about 21 sites have been remediated; a number of them being certified clean by the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA). Ogoni clean-up is a massive project that incorporates skill acquisition and provision of water for the four Local Government Areas of Ogoni land to enable the people go on with their livelihood after the clean-up. Equally embedded in the Ogoni project are funds for the restoration of mangrove in the Niger Delta.

The Ogoni scheme is a massive laboratory for learning, as there has not been such a clean-up anywhere else in the world at that scale. We have to keep in mind that Exxon spill which occurred in 1989 was also followed up with massive clean-up. Some of the species that were destroyed by the spill have not returned to that area. The same scenario played out in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil spillage also occurred at the Ororo One Oil Well off the coast of Ondo state in April 2020, and this resulted into flames.

Another policy of the federal government is aimed at addressing gully erosion challenges particularly in the southeast, and degradation in the north. These are captured under the Nigerian Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP). Sources reveal that last year, NEWMAP had over 30 projects across the country. Normal budgetary provision may not be able to handle massive gullies which are prevalent in the southeast as the land in that zone is easily waterlogged. NEWMAP handles the bigger projects and it’s a collaboration between the federal government and the World Bank.

The National Clean Cooking Scheme (NCCS) is also an initiative to eliminate cooking with solid and fossil fuels such as firewood and kerosene which are detrimental to health and the environment. Through the scheme, clean cooking products have been distributed across various states in the country with Kwara and Akwa Ibom states as pilots.

Grasses also pose challenges in the environment. But grasses choking some wetlands have been cleared. For instance, grasses obstructing flow of water from Nguru-Jigawa wetland to Lake Chad Basin have been cleared. Now, water flows all the way to recharge Lake Chad as a result of such navigation channel. This sounds good because a lot of security issues emanated from the drying-up of Lake Chad. If Lake Chad continues to shrink, it has an impact on the violent conflicts we are seeing.

With the banning of the production and export of charcoal in the country, comes the Nigerian Sovereign Green Bond. The bond is a financial instrument that provides support for investments in clean energy and clean environment-friendly projects. Under the Green Bond initiative, is a programme called “Energising Education” which ensures that a number of federal universities are energized with solar power. The first two that have been commissioned are in the University of Nigeria Nsukka and Bayero University.

There is the National Forest Policy because there is a need to increase forest cover in the country.

There are indications that some state governors have agreed to gazette some lands that will be kept as forest reserves. In fact, the Federal Ministry of Environment has started receiving these parcels of land, with plans to enforce the law to safeguard the forest cover.

With the minimum forest cover for any country put at 25% by the UN, the reforestation agenda of the federal government, championed by various agencies including the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), is targeted at boosting tree planting campaign. It is a bold attempt to address the challenge of deforestation with the reported planting of 25 million trees in the country. The Great Green Wall is a pan-African project formulated to address land degradation, desertification, among others. The scheme is implemented in eleven frontline states. But nationwide reforestation is supposed to take place in all the states of the federation. The intention is to meet the UN standard. There is also a deliberate plan by managers of Nigeria’s environment to key into the UN’s Decade of Ecosystem Restoration to prevent, halt and reverse degradation on land and seas in the country.

In terms of recycling plants and solid waste management, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved two policies, namely, the National Solid Waste Management Policy, and the National Plastic Waste Management Policy. Embedded in the National Plastic Waste Management Policy is what is referred to as ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’ (EPR), which ensures that manufacturers of plastics will be responsible for pollution caused by the use of plastics or plastic-related products. The objective is to reduce the amount of plastic waste by reusing, recycling, repairing and recovering. This is intended to also have a trickledown effect on the sub-nationals with specific understanding that they will work with the private sector for sustainability. It is an economy that should be robustly supported by the private sector to create more jobs unlike now that the biggest employer in Nigeria seems to be the government.

It is worthy to note that through the intervention of the Federal Ministry of the Environment, the Cross River State Government rescinded its proposed super highway that would have taken 25% of the landmass in that state. The highway which was eventually realigned and reduced to less than 10%, would have destroyed communities, protected areas and forests. It is a good way to resolve issues using environmental impact assessment law.

While these strides in the environment sector are commendable, more still needs to be done especially towards the completion of the first phase of the Ogoni clean-up. Desertification, bio-diversity and degradation have also been identified as challenges to the environment across the country.

Nigeria’s population estimated at 200 million, makes the management of solid waste quite an enormous task, and this places a huge demand on all concerned agencies and individuals to forge better strategies that can successfully lead to the management of solid waste in the country.

The massive deforestation and logging going on in Cross River state seem not to have any form of control. Closely related to this, is a High Court declaration in 2005 that gas flaring is against human rights because it affects the health of the Nigerian people. It is a win-win situation to stop gas flaring. If gas flares are brought to a halt, not only will the pollution stop, a byproduct of the flaring which is methane, can be used to produce some form of electricity. Sadly, gas flaring has continued to be a major thorn in the flesh. It is not clear when this kind of environmental monstrosity will come to an end.

We tend to think that we know much about biodiversity in terms genetic engineering. A law signed in 2015 has made it possible for a number of genetically modified organisms and crops to be endorsed, approved and allowed to be experimented on. It is possible that genetically-engineered beans have been released to farmers to cultivate. If such engineering technology is left unchecked, it could expose biodiversity to serious risk. What remains to be seen is how the cold letter of the various government policies will translate to actual reality.

If it goes wrong with the environment, every other thing goes wrong. There should be a level-playing field in terms mining solid minerals and oil exploration. We can’t afford to have one kind of law for one sector and another one that is totally disruptive of the relationship with the people and communities in another sector.

When nature is destroyed, it takes us back. Without humans, the environment is a better manager of itself. The planet does not necessarily need us but human beings cannot live anywhere else outside of the planet. Many nations are beginning to understand that mother earth or nature itself has the right to exist, to maintain her natural cycles, and we have the obligation not to disrupt any of these cycles. However, people have done certain things to the environment that they are not able to remedy. For example, a chemical called ‘hydrochlorofluorocarbon’ introduced by scientists has been discovered to be eating up the ozone layer.

Human activities have tampered with earth’s balance for the last 200 years since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Such report has attracted the attention of the United Nations which in December, declared through its Secretary-General: “Mankind is committing war against nature and this is suicidal.” Nature always fights back, and if we continue with actions that are disruptive of nature, it may be catastrophic.

Efforts should be made towards returning to nature-based solution. The forests, mountains, rivers, among others, are aspects of the structural support system of the planet, and they should be maintained.

Countries like Bolivia and Ecuador have the rights of nature in their respective constitutions. Uganda also adopted the right of nature in its governance structure. This should be considered in Nigeria so that those who carry out negative actions on the environment will be treated as offending the very basis of our existence.

Maintaining the forest is one of the most important projects to be undertaken to reduce the effect of climate change. There is a need to have regular state of the environment reports. That way, advocacy about ‘reuse and recycle’ could be increased.

 

 

 

Decluttering Nigerian Cities with a Functional Plan: By Moses Amadi

 

In the past few years, economic losses due to natural and man-made hazards such as flood, pipeline vandalism, building collapse, oil and gas explosion, have increased. Some buildings collapse with their occupants trapped in them while others are gutted by fire, leaving casualties in their wake.

No fewer than 23 persons died from the pipeline explosion in Abule Ado in Lagos, not long ago; scores were injured and well over 50 buildings were either destroyed or damaged in the blast. This was according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). Rev. Sister Henrietta Alokha, the Principal of the Bethlehem Girls College lost her life while trying to rescue students of the school whose buildings was engulfed by the fire.

The Lagos State Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) official statements confirmed that the explosion occurred when an articulated vehicle transporting fuel got stuck while trying to enter a particular street. And in the process of getting out, it made contact with NNPC pipelines within that corridor which led to the explosion. There were reports that the articulated vehicle which usually conveyed the product, may have belonged to a gas processing plant in that area.

It is clear that a cocktail of issues does not quite conduce to the safety of persons and buildings in that environment. The same is the case in some parts of Lagos and other places in the country where pipeline fire incidents are fairly frequent and have also resulted in fatalities. Earlier this year in Kaduna state, there was an explosion that took the life of an atomic energy expert.

Disasters of this nature pose serious challenge to the Nigerian economy with direct consequences of migration, epidemic, job loss, among others.

Part of the problem is the co-location of industrial and semi-industrial activities in residential areas in clear violation of the Right of Way guidelines. Available statistics from the Office of the Surveyor General of the Federation indicate that for any environment, the rights of way are usually stipulated. The Office draws a rundown of the designated right of way for some infrastructure across the country: for Federal Government roads, the right of way is about 45.72 metres; gas pipeline is about 12.5 metres on either side which gives 25 metres right of way; water and sewage is about 3.81 metres; high tension for 132kva is about 15 metres on either side which is 30 metres; 330kva is about 50 metres; 760kva is about 42.5 metres which gives about 85 metres right of way.

Read Also: Special Status for Lagos: In Whose Interest?

The purpose of right of way is to create access for relevant authorities in case of catastrophes so that the people as well as infrastructure can be secure. Regrettably, right of way has been sufficiently abused in many built environments in the country because urban planners have failed to enforce compliance. Structures are now put up in right of way even though the cost of destroying such structure or any loss that might be incurred, is borne by property owner. Assessing disaster sites have become problematic. Many markets are not fire-compliant, and fire service authorities find it difficult to access disaster sites to bring infernos under control.  

It is instructive to state that most of the towns in the country were well planned even before the colonial times. A lot of the cities had general plans and masterplans to guide development. Records show that town planning or regional planning started at least 300 years before the arrival of the British. Before that time, the Portuguese had been to the Benin Empire and found that there was no city as better planned as Benin city in the 15th century.

In recent history, these laudable achievements have been undermined by a plethora of issues. The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) can be used as a pointer to the disorderliness that takes place in some other towns in the country. From inception though, every square inch of the 250 square.km land of the FCT was planned. The planning was supposed to be systematic; development was supposed to start from phases one, two, three, four and now phase five. But the development process was not systematic.

The movement of the seat of government from Lagos to Abuja was supposed to be systematic but it was not. It was hurriedly done. As a result, certain policies that are not supposed to be implemented are now receiving approval. That is why there are issues of squatter settlements and unauthorised developments springing up by the day. Also, the resettlement programme has not been systematic as planned because some indigenous settlements have not been moved to where they should be, with many pedestrian walkways in the Federal Capital Territory being turned into parking lots.

Nevertheless the FCT has a good document that is supposed to guide the coordination of the activities in the city and also serve as a model for sub-national entities. But the FCT lacks up to date maps to work on. Therefore, it’s difficult to have current planning, and if there is planning at all, there are always issues of inadequate funding, and lack of equipment. There is also the absence training and retraining programmes to retain manpower and to implement the FCT plans. If an environment is not mapped, it cannot be well managed. It is said that the Department of Development Control, the organ statutorily responsible for enforcement of development, also has limited capacity to carry out enforcement through the FCT.

Authorities have disclosed that the last time the FCT had a base map was in the 90s. It is hoped that the current effort by the Director of Survey and Mapping in the FCT to get an up to date base map will be successful. With that, the city can monitor implementation, its settlements and plans.

Sometimes, there are areas designated for residential, light industries, heavy industries, among others. But you find that even within the residential areas, there are factories which put a lot of pressure on the limited utilities and facilities which have been provided based on a given population.

That is why there is epileptic power supply. It is the reason why pipes provided for sewers are clogged; people resort to boreholes because public water supply has been converted to industrial use.

There are low density, medium density and high density areas but people change these land uses at will. In the FCT for instance, streets like Adetokunbo Ademola, Ladoke Akintola, Aminu Kano Crescent; Usman and Gana streets in Maitama, are purely low density areas but they have been converted into other uses hence the heavy traffic build-ups that are noticed in some of these areas.

In some saner climes, if a garden is to be converted into other uses, consent of neighbours will be sought, and if they don’t approve, you don’t convert. In Nigeria, there are enough plans and laws but they suffer enforcement glitches partly because some enforcement agencies are compromised. Many times when underground cables are dug, they disrupt water and energy supply, among others, and officials look the other way. The underground engineering cadastral maps for water, that show connection points in the FCT are largely disregarded. 

Authorities have made efforts to disabuse the minds of people about the existence of silos mentality among the different professional bodies. For instance, the Surveyor General’s office wrote a memo to the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in 2005. One of the conclusions of the Council was the approval of the office as an Extra-Ministerial Department which empowers it to have units in water resources, works and housing, transportation, environment, and other human activities and development purposes. This is in addition to the monthly Technical Coordination Committee meetings chaired by the executive secretary of the FCDA, and attended by stakeholders in technical departments for planning, engineering, survey and mapping, land, fire service, water board, among others.

These are huge claims of purported right linkage among relevant agencies that are involved in urban planning and the people who are the end-users of the products of their interaction. What cannot be denied is the existence of urban chaos with disasters in several locations throughout the country. Buildings come down, and everybody goes on blame shopping. If an area is designated a new city, before long, everything is overrun.

Fire hydrants in communities are almost non-existent. What we find especially in the FCT is that the fire truck is accompanied by a water tanker which is also painted in the colours of the fire service to provide water even though the capacity of the water tanker cannot take much. This calls to question whose duty it is to construct or designate the location for fire hydrants. Clearly, this cannot be the objective of agencies that are working with collaboration in mind.

All these factors suggest that the authorities do not to have a clear sense of how to control our layouts. It is really an anguish that seems to have no solution in sight. It is evident that very important aspects of disaster management effort in the country including risk assessment and crowd control have been ignored in ensuring sustainable regional development.

In disaster prevention and management, attention ought to be paid to calamities by using geo-spatial technology and remote sensing mechanisms. These can centralise and visually display critical information during an emergency; they can be versatile tools in building capacity for disaster reduction and preparedness. Geo-spatial information can help in taking evidence-based decisions.

There is a feeling in certain quarters that the UN has instructed that every activity in the 17 agenda of the SDGs has to be integrated with surveying and mapping if the 2030 objective will be realised. The onus now lies on the relevant authorities to be up to the task in the attainment of such goal.