The Lagos State Chapter of the Association of Town Planning Consultants of Nigeria (ATOPCON) has called on the state government to decentralise town planning by involving local governments.
Oba Akran Avenue, Ikeja, Lagos
ATOPCON President, Mr Olaide Afolabi, made the call in Lagos on Thursday, December 21, 2017 while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
Afolabi said that it had become necessary to have a more responsive planning system in the state.
He said that decentralisation was vital because of the increased rate of illegal erection of structures in the state.
Afolabi said that decentralisation of town planning process would discourage people from erecting such structures.
“We are working toward improved planning practice in Lagos State so that things will be done in an orderly manner, and there will be less illegal developments.
“We want the government to make planning easier and more transparent; a lot of people will benefit from this instead of having illegal developments and government chasing illegal developers with scarce resources.
“Let planning be decentralised and local governments be given power to be involved in issuing planning permits,’’ he told NAN.
Afolabi said that there were a number of challenges facing town planning in the state.
“There is always a gap between the regulator and the regulated.
“There is too much bureaucracy at the level of the government.
“ We want a more responsive physical planning system in the state,” he said.
Afolabi expressed the optimism that decentralisation of town planning process would erase the bottlenecks associated with issuing planning permits.
He said that it was improper to delay issuance of planning permits for months and sometimes years after submission of applications.
“If one wants a development permit, there is no reason he should not get it within few weeks, but a lot of people take months or years to get it done and they accumulate debt because they borrowed for the project,” he added.
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has predicted 60 per cent chances of wittiest season ever in history over Nigeria in 2018.
A flooded road in Abuja after a heavy downpour
NiMet disclosed this in its twitter handle @nimetnigeria in response to the heavy down pour that prevailed over Abuja in the early hours of Wednesday, December 20, 2017.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that some residents of the FCT have expressed concern over the rainfall when it had since ceased in late October.
They said the rain could have some resultant effects considering the current nature of the climate.
Mr Zechariah Shegaje, a farmer in Kuje Area Council of FCT, said early or abrupt cessation of rain had affected some crops like beans known as cowpea which could not yield optimally.
Shegaje said that some farmers planted as early as August, while the majority planted into late September and early October.
He acknowledged that NiMet had predicted early cessation to be in the first or second week of November but occurred earlier than expected.
According to him, they don’t know why rain had to fall in late December because it is unusual.
While reacting to enquiries by Nigerians, the agency said that it was nothing to worry about, adding that it is an isolated event.
According to NiMet, it is nothing to worry about if we think this isolated event has come to change the norm a great way.
“What we should consider is the direction this unusual weather event is pointing us when it comes to climatic variability.
“Considering some of the current indices we are monitoring, there is a 60 per cent chance year 2018 will be one of the wettest in history as we approach a La-NIna phase of the ENSO.
“Once in a while, the diurnal fluctuations of the ITD (Intertropical discontinuity zone) could create these isolated events.
“No doubt this year has recorded some unusual weather events. Recall also the rainfall this year ended abruptly like we forecast (SRP 2017),” it said.
The French lower house of parliament has approved a law that provides for the gradual abandonment of the exploration and production of oil, gas and coal by 2040, the Ecology Ministry of France said in a communique.
Emmanuel Macron, President of France
French Ecology Minister, Nicolas Hulot, was quoted in the communique as saying: “This law links the legislation with the obligations taken within the Paris climate accord.”
By 2040, French authorities are expected to not only refuse issuing new licenses for the exploration and production of hydrocarbon fields, but also to limit the extension of old licenses.
Therefore, France is going to gradually abandon the production of hydrocarbon fuels by 2040.
The Paris Agreement, signed by more than 190 parties and ratified by 171, was adopted within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in December 2015 and came into force in November 2016.
The main goal of the Paris accord is to tackle climate change by keeping the rise in a global temperature below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
At the One Planet Summit convened recently in Paris, the World Bank Group announced that it would no longer finance upstream oil and gas after 2019.
The Enugu State Executive Council has approved the installation of 24-hour solar technology to power the 45 Divisional Police Stations in the state.
Solar panels
Commissioner for Information, Mr Ogbuagu Anikwe, disclosed this on Wednesday, December 20, 2017 in Enugu while briefing newsmen on the outcome of the council’s meeting that held on Tuesday night.
Anikwe said that the gesture was meant to assist the police to overcome the perennial difficulties their officers faced especially at night when power supply from the public source was interrupted.
He said that government observed the difficulties being faced by those who reported cases at night, especially when there was power outage.
“The Special Adviser to the Governor on Inter-Ministerial Affairs, Mrs Mabel Agbo, reported the difficulties the police and citizens who come to report cases in the night were facing.
“They do not usually find it easy writing their statements in the dark with poor illumination. They usually resort to the use of telephone torches whenever there is power failure.
“Most police officers on night duty find it difficult to recharge their phones and other essential working gadgets due to poor supply of electricity,” he said.
Anikwe said that two types of power lighting systems were approved for each of the 45 police stations in the state.
He said that simple but steady solar power supply units would be installed in reception and charge rooms which would be used for illumination, charging of phones, and for powering other essential working tools.
He said that solar-powered street lamps would also be installed within the premises and precincts of each of the divisional offices to help to monitor movement into and out of such precincts.
The commissioner said that the installation of the internal lighting system in the offices would cost a little below N3.6 million, while the outside one was still being worked out.
He said that the project would start in the first quarter of 2018.
A waste management expert, Prof. Oladele Osibanjo, on Wednesday, December 20, 2017 said public toilets could be used as resource centres for production of biogas, if properly harnessed.
Prof. Oladele Osibanjo
Osibanjo, Managing Director of Jawura Environmental Services Ltd and also President, Waste Managers Society of Nigeria (WAMSON), made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
Biogas, according to Wikipedia, refers to a mixture of different gases produced by the breakdown of organic matter in the absence of oxygen.
“Biogas can be produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, manure, municipal waste, plant material, sewage, green waste or food waste.’’
Osibanjo, a Professor of Analytical and Environmental Chemistry, urged the federal and state governments to start looking at the public toilets in an innovative way and invest in building more.
“In some countries, public toilets have been turned to opportunities of using human waste to make biogas for cooking.
“Public toilets are no longer seen as a nuisance, but as agents to create green economy.
“Unfortunately in Nigeria, public toilets are inadequate, grossly inefficient and poorly maintained.
“Some public toilets are eyesores and so unhygienic with many people patronising them, even with scarcity of water,’’ the WAMSON president said.
Osibanjo said that many people residing in urban areas did not have access to good toilet systems.
He said that they resorted to throwing faeces and excrement in open places, drainage channels, rivers and dump sites.
The waste manager urged the federal and state governments to build more public toilets in strategic places and outsource to experts for conversion of human waste to biogas.
The WAMSON president said that when human waste was not properly managed, it always lead to outbreaks of diseases associated with poor sanitary conditions.
Nigerian National Parks Service on Wednesday, December 20, 2017 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Nature Investors West Africa Ltd. on technical and financial support for conservation activities at Gashaka Gumti National Park.
The Gashaka Gumti National Park
The Conservator-General of the Park Service, Ibrahim Goni, and the Director of Nature Investor West Africa Ltd., Olajide Layele, signed the agreement in Abuja.
Goni said that the agreement was a milestone for the Service in its efforts to boost wildlife protection and conservation activities in Gashaka Gumti National Park, located in Adamawa and Taraba states, in a professional manner to achieve maximum results.
“The support will be specifically in the areas of conservation, research and tourism activities of the park.
“The support is to fund and support surveillance training, anti-poaching patrols as well as patrol, research and tourism equipment supplies,’’ he said.
Goni said that the agreement would last for 30 years, from the date of its signing, adding that it could be renewed for another 30 years, subject to ratification of both parties.
The conservator-general thanked Nature Investors West Africa Ltd. for deciding to partner with the service.
“Nature Investors West Africa Ltd. had since proved to be a reliable partner by previously assisting the park in joint patrols and repairs of patrol vehicles, even before the idea of the partnership was conceived.
“I also ask that it should extend its support to other parks across the country so as to strengthen their capacity in conservation, research and tourism activities,’’ he said.
In his response, Olajide thanked the conservator-general for the understanding and assured him of the maximum support of his company.
He also said that his company was in the process of floating a non-governmental organisation, which would eventually be the counterparty in the agreement.
He said that the two parties would thereafter set up a Local Organising Committee to oversee the implementation of the partnership agreement.
Ethiopia has signed an agreement to build two geothermal power plants at a combined cost of $4 billion to be run by the country’s first privately-owned utility.
A geothermal power plant
The Corbetti and Tulu Moye plants will produce a combined 1,000 mega watts power upon completion in eight years time in the volcanically-active Rift Valley south of the capital Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia is eager to meet rising energy demand from its industries as well as becoming the continent’s biggest exporter of energy.
“No doubt the success of this effort will have a significant impact in the country’s future economic well-being,” said Azeb Asnake, the Chief Executive of state-run Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP).
The project’s equity investors include the Paris-based asset manager, Meridiam, as well as the Africa Renewable Energy Fund and InfraCo Africa – funds that focus on infrastructure.
As Ethiopia’s first privately-owned utility, the project will be operated by the developers for a period of 25 years.
In an economy traditionally dominated by state spending, the government has suggested that the nascent sector could be a model for increased private investment.
“Going forward, the government recognises the added value to be gained by working in partnership with the private sector, specifically in sharing with it the burden of investment for large-scale power generation,” said Seleshi Bekele, the Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity.
Under a new 2015-2020 development plan, Addis Ababa wants to raise power generation to 17,346 mw from a current capacity of just over 4,300 mw from hydropower, wind and geothermal sources.
It has an array of projects under construction, including the $4.1 billion Grand Renaissance Dam along its share of the Nile River that will churn out 6,000 mw at full capacity upon completion within the next 10 years.
But the country’s power ambitions have also caused disputes.
Egypt – solely dependent on the Nile – is concerned that the Renaissance Dam will reduce the river’s flow.
Both countries are currently at odds over the project’s technical details.
Managing Director of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo), Bayo Ojulari, and three other senior engineers with Shell companies in Nigeria have been conferred with the fellowship of The Nigerian Society of Engineers, the highest professional recognition in engineering practice in Nigeria.
L-R: President, The Nigerian Society of Engineers, Otis Oliver Anyaeji; Engineering Manager, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo), Debo Oladunjoye; and Managing Director of SNEPCo, Bayo Ojulari at the investiture of Oladunjoye and Ojulari as Fellows of the Nigeria Society of Engineers in Abuja
The three others are SNEPCo’s Engineering Manager, Debo Oladunjoye; Projects Delivery and Assurance Manager of Shell Petroleum Development Company, Walter Egemba; and Project Manager, Bonga South West Project, Woji Weli, who bagged the NSE fellowship early in the year.
Each of the four conferees has nearly three decades of engineering practice in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria and overseas.
“We found them worthy not only in knowledge and character, but also in practice, experience and professionalism to deserve their admission into the board of fellows of the distinguished society of engineers,” said NSE President, Oliver Anyaeji, at the conferment ceremony in Abuja on Friday, December, 15, 2017.
Ojulari’s honour came barely a year after he received the prestigious PSRG-Richardson Special Achievement Award in Health, Security, Safety and Environment (HSSE), and also the 2016 Professional Award by the Petroleum Technology Association of Nigeria (PETAN), an association of indigenous technical oilfield service companies.
Speaking shortly after his induction as an NSE fellow, Ojulari described the recognition by the engineering body as a further challenge to do more for the profession through selfless service to the oil and gas industry for the development of Nigeria.
L-R: Projects Delivery and Assurance Manager of Shell Petroleum Development Company, Walter Egemba; Project Manager Bonga South West of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company, Woji Weli; Vice President, Shell Nigeria and Gabon, Peter Costello; Managing Director of SNEPCo, Bayo Ojulari; and SNEPCo Engineering Manager, Debo Oladunjoye; at a reception by Costello for them as Fellows of the Nigeria Society of Engineers in Lagos
“I thank Shell for giving me the opportunity to attain this level of professionalism but the best gratitude is to rededicate myself to further development of local capacity in the Nigerian oil and gas industry in a manner that demonstrates exemplary leadership and professional discipline,” he said.
Reacting to the conferment of NSE fellowship on four engineers of Shell companies in Nigeria within a year, Shell’s Vice President, Nigeria and Gabon, Peter Costello, commended the NSE for seeing the value that Shell companies and their crop of professional engineers bring not only to the profession but also to Nigeria. “This goes a long way to validate Shell’s commitment to indigenous manpower development and its encouragement and support to staff to attain the peak in their professional careers,” said Costello who is also an engineer with decades of experience.
Current and future suitability maps for 54 species that are commonly used as shade in agroforestry systems in Central America are the main feature of a new Atlas by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in collaboration with Bioversity International and The Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Centre (CATIE).
Kauê de Sousa of Bioversity International
The Atlas is titled “‘Suitability of key Central American agroforestry species under future climates”.
The 54 species that were selected include 24 species of fruit trees, 24 timber trees and six species used to improve soil conditions.
“The main objective of the Atlas is to address a current knowledge gap in detailed information about suitable areas for key agroforestry species in Central America,” said Kauê de Sousa of Bioversity International who is the main author of the study. “The agroforestry practice of integrating trees within cocoa or coffee, silvopastoral or smallholder timber systems is key to the development of strategies for climate-smart agriculture in the region. It is important to know where a species remains suitable under future climatic conditions to be able to give practical advice to farmers and tree growers.”
The Atlas is said to address the knowledge gap by providing detailed suitability maps for each species. Detailed mapping was possible by substantially expanding previously available data sets of known presence locations (locations where a species was documented to be suitable in Latin America and the Caribbean) and by applying powerful species distribution modelling methods. The future climates correspond to Representative Concentration Pathways RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 for the 2050s. Four RCPs (RCP 2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5) were introduced in the latest assessment report of the IPCC. These scenarios describe possible future climates that depend on potential changes in greenhouse gas emissions. RCP4.5 represents an intermediate emissions scenario, whereas RCP8.5 is a high emissions scenario.
Ensemble suitability methods were applied using the BiodiversityR package, an open-source software package developed by Roeland Kindt, a senior ecologist at the World Agroforestry Centre and one of the co-authors of the Atlas. The software modelled species distributions with bioclimatic variables obtained from WorldClim for the baseline climate (1960–1990).
Distribution maps for the middle of the 21st century were obtained via future climate data generated by 17 global climate change models. Ensemble future distribution maps for each RCP are based on consensus among 17 future distribution maps generated for each species. Maps projecting future distribution were compared with the current distribution maps to evaluate the potential changes in the distribution of each species.
Reflecting on the results, Maarten van Zonneveld of Bioversity International and scientist in diversity analysis for conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources, mentioned that the results indicated that the modelled distribution for 30 species reduces under both climate change scenarios. The most threatened species include N-fixing ice-cream bean trees (Inga spp.), the delicious cherimoya (Annona cherimola), the economically important avocado (Persea americana), and the solid timber species Handroanthus ochraceus. Ten species are expected to increase their distribution under both climate change scenarios including the underutilised fruit species Averrhoa bilimbi, coconut (Cocos nucifera), cocoplum (Chrysobalanus icaco), Spanish lime (Melicoccus bijugatus) and the majestic rain-tree (Albizia saman).
Jenny Ordonez of the World Agroforestry Centre and a specialist in agroforestry systems and functional ecology emphasises that “the atlas provides a first approximation of this kind in the region, to assess which species might be vulnerable or tolerant to expected climate change. Agroforestry practices are one of the main strategies for developing climate smart agriculture and as such are widely advocated by research and development organisations alike in this region. The results of the Atlas are therefore an important tool to support the design of agroforestry practices taking into account potential impacts of climate change. The maps provided should be used in combination with other information sources from technicians and farmers to fine-tune the selection of species for designing climate proof agroforestry systems.”
Jonathan Cornelius, regional coordinator from ICRAF, concludes that “many of the trees that farmers are planting and managing now will need to remain productive up to and beyond 2050. This important publication provides a firm foundation for building the climate-smart agroforestry that farmers need, based on the best currently available information about future climates and species’ requirements.”
This work was made possible through the financial support of the CGIAR research program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (FTA; supported by the CGIAR Fund Donors); the CGIAR research program on Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS; supported by the CGIAR Fund Donors) and HIVOS.
The 2017 global land and ocean temperature will likely end among the three warmest years on record, and is expected to be the warmest year without a warming El Niño.
WMO Secretary-General, Petteri Taalas
The first 11 months of the year were the third warmest on record, behind 2016 and 2015, with much-warmer-than-average conditions engulfing much of the world’s land and ocean surfaces, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Arctic and Antarctic sea ice coverage remain at near record lows.
“What is more important than the ranking of an individual year is the overall, long-term trend of warming since the late 1970s, and especially this century,” said World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) senior scientist, Omar Baddour. “Along with rising temperatures, we are seeing more extreme weather with huge socio-economic impacts,” he said.
The WMO will combine datasets from NOAA, NASA GISS, and the Met Office Hadley Centre and Climatic Research Unit (UK) for a consolidated temperature ranking for 2017. WMO uses data from ECMWF and Japan Meteorological Agency, and reanalyses with a much wider range of input data, including measurements from satellites. They provide better coverage of regions, such as polar regions, where observations are historically sparse.
The consolidated global figure harmonises the datasets, which show different results because of the way they represent the relatively warm conditions that have predominated over both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Differences in estimates of sea-surface temperature are a further factor.
NOAA said the month of November was the fifth warmest on record, whilst NASA and ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service both said it was the third warmest.
La Niña conditions prevailed across the tropical Pacific Ocean during November 2017. According to WMO’s latest Update, weak La Niña conditions are expected to persist through the Northern Hemisphere winter.
During November 2017, warmer-than-average temperatures dominated across much of the world’s land and ocean surfaces, with the most notable temperature departures from average across the Northern Hemisphere. Parts of the western contiguous U.S., northern Canada, northern and western Alaska, western Asia and Far Eastern Russia had temperature departures from average that were +2.0°C (+3.6°F) or greater, according to NOAA.
Arctic warming
As an indication of swift regional climate change in and near the Arctic, the average temperature observed at the weather station at Utqiaġvik has now changed so rapidly that it triggered an algorithm designed to detect artificial changes in a station’s instrumentation or environment and disqualified itself from the NCEI Alaskan temperature analysis.
Utqiaġvik (pronounced OOT-ki-aag’-vik) sits near Point Barrow, the northernmost point in America, on the Arctic Coast of northern Alaska. Now recognised by its Iñupiat place name, it is still commonly known as “Barrow”.
Elsewhere in the Arctic, a separate analysis from the ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change service said that November’s temperature was more than 6°C above average in parts of Svalbard, as it was in October.
Arctic temperatures continue to increase at double the rate of the global temperature increase.
A NOAA-sponsored report shows that the warming trend transforming the Arctic persisted in 2017, resulting in the second warmest air temperatures, above average ocean temperatures, loss of sea ice, and a range of human, ocean and ecosystem effects.
Now in its 12th year, the Arctic Report Card, is a peer-reviewed report that brings together the work of 85 scientists from 12 nations.
“While 2017 saw fewer records shattered than in 2016, the Arctic shows no sign of returning to the reliably frozen region it was decades ago,” said the Arctic report card.
A separate report, published in the “Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society” (BAMS), said that last year’s record global average temperatures, extreme heat over Asia, and unusually warm waters in the Bering Sea would not have been possible without human-caused climate change.
“This report marks a fundamental change,” says Jeff Rosenfeld, editor-in-chief of BAMS. “For years scientists have known humans are changing the risk of some extremes. But finding multiple extreme events that weren’t even possible without human influence makes clear that we’re experiencing new weather, because we’ve made a new climate.”
