The word “fossil” is derived from Latin and primarily means, “dug up”. However, it is important we know that the old forests, which had been pressed into coal and the ocean life that was pressed into oil over millions of years back, are what is known as “fossil fuels” today.
Fossil fuel pollution: Ghana may join the league of polluters, what with its proposal to establish a coal-fired plant in Ekumfi Aboano
Fossil fuel industry, on the other hand, specialises in the digging up of coal and oil deposits deep down the earth crust through developed refined methods. This activity is accountable for around 65 to 70 percent of present day global warming. The industry practitioners are thus major polluters.
Statistics has shown that climate change alone is responsible for the death of 300,000 people per year. Thus, it is now clear that the various impacts of climate change around the world ranging from sea level rise, flooding, drought, and desertification, amongst others, affirm that climate change is no longer a threat, but rather a reality.
Also, astounding billions of people will be kicked out of their homes if the world fails to agree on a global climate deal aimed at protecting the environment. Even if we find it difficult to kick fossil fuel industry out for the sake of the environment, we should consider doing so for the sake of the coming generations that will one day live to question our existence as to what we have done to them. There can’t be any better time the world bans fossil fuel industry from climate negotiations than now.
Countries of the world will be meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco between 7 and 18 of November, 2016, to deliberate on climate action, but our fear is that the negotiation should not be politicised like many others in the past. I continue to wonder why corporations like European Energy Giants Engie, Electricite de France (EDF), Shell and BNP Paribas that happens to be chief polluters will continue to sponsor climate talks.
Being the chief polluters, we should not expect them to agitate for a strong global climate deal, rather they would corner their ways to influence United Nations (UN) representatives and make them dance to their tune at a time we need to decide on the fate of humanity.
No wonder Hoda Baraka, Global Communications Manager for 350.org, stated, “The fossil fuel industry is actively lobbying climate action and standing in the way of progress. When you’re trying to burn the table down, you don’t deserve a seat at it. This process needs to hear the voices of the people not polluters”. It is crystal clear that if the fossil fuel industry continues to be part of climate talks, there will not be any significant change or progress in the outcomes of climate talks. For how long must we continue to make corporations set climate talks agenda and put profit making interests above humanity and planet earth?
We should not forget the fact that millions of people and countries will continue to suffer for the unrepentant act of these corporations. This is the time we need to be more active as world citizens to save the planet from collapsing. We must brace up to protect the environment, save the less privileged people from the vulnerabilities of climate change; safeguard animals from extinction, and lakes from drying up.
If we fail to meet the 1.5 0C global average temperatures, then some countries will be under water, more animals will be endangered and the unborn generations will live to curse us for not leaving a world worth living for them.
World leaders can only secure our future and protect the right of the least polluting countries and persons by banning the fossil fuel industry from caressing and cat walking the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) corridor. It is usually said that together we stand, divided we fall. Through our collective effort we can press the UNFCCC to kick fossil fuel industry out of climate negotiations.
We may think it will be hard to achieve, but it is possible through our collective will and determination. For a massive coalition of civil society groups from all works of life to come together and got the World Health Organisation (WHO) to kick the tobacco industry out of Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) because they know tobacco kills a million people yearly and the only way to make progress and preserve public health is by banning them, then we can also achieve it with the UN banning the fossil fuel industry from climate negotiations through one voice. Let’s stand to defend ourselves from the tyranny of big polluters. We should all be advocates of Climate Justice.
By Alabede Surajdeen (environmentalist and SDGs Advocate; alabedekayode@gmail.com, @BabsSuraj)
Prominent members of US national security community warn that higher temperatures and rising seas will inundate bases and fuel conflict
The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia. The Pentagon ordered its officials in January to start incorporating climate change into every major military consideration, from weapons testing to preparing troops for war. Photo credit: Charles Dharapak/AP
A coalition of 25 military and national security experts, including former advisers to Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, has warned that climate change poses a “significant risk to US national security and international security” that requires more attention from the US federal government.
The prominent members of the US national security community warned that warming temperatures and rising seas will increasingly inundate military bases and fuel international conflict and mass migration, leading to “significant and direct risks to US military readiness, operations and strategy”.
In a report outlining climate risks, the group states: “The military has long had a tradition of parsing threats through a ‘Survive to Operate’ lens, meaning we cannot assume the best case scenario, but must prepare to be able to effectively operate even under attack. Dealing with climate risks to operational effectiveness must therefore be a core priority.”
Organised by the non-partisan Centre for Climate and Security, the group includes Geoffrey Kemp, former national security adviser to Reagan; Dov Zakheim, former under secretary of defense under Bush; and retired general Gordon Sullivan, a former army chief of staff.
Recommendations to the federal government include the creation of a cabinet-level official dedicated to climate change and security issues and the prioritisation of climate change in intelligence assessments.
Last year, the Department of Defense called climate change a “threat multiplier” which could demand greater humanitarian or military intervention and lead to more severe storms that threaten cities and military bases and heightened sea levels that could imperil island and coastal infrastructure. In January, the Pentagon ordered its officials to start incorporating climate change into every major consideration, from weapons testing to preparing troops for war.
This new focus has not been warmly welcomed by Republicans, with Colorado congressman Ken Buck proposing an amendment that would bar the Pentagon from spending money on adapting to climate change.
“When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies like Isis,” Buck said in July. Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has labeled climate change a “hoax”.
But military figures are increasingly expressing concern over potential disruption to the 1,774 coastal military installations the US operates at home and abroad. A mass of military infrastructure in Virginia is at particular risk of being soaked, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warning that, by 2050, a majority of US coastal areas are likely to be threatened by 30 or more days of flooding each year due to “dramatically accelerating impacts from sea level rise”.
“The conclusions are clear: climate risks are accelerating in their likelihood and severity,” said retired rear admiral David Titley of the US navy. “The next administration, whomever is elected, has the duty and obligation as commander-in-chief to manage this risk in a comprehensive manner.”
Ronald Keys, former commander of Air Combat Command, told The Guardian of London that he was initially skeptical about climate change but was then convinced by the impacts he saw first hand when returning to Langley air force base in Virginia after an uneventful spell there in the 1980s.
“I came in as commander in 2005 and there were north-easters that came through and brought three or four feet of water outside where I was living,” he said. “You see that change and think ‘a ha.’ Before, a minor storm was a nuisance, now it is a danger to some of our operations.”
Keys said he hoped in a non-presidential election year that “cooler heads may prevail” over the rhetoric used by Trump and others.
“It’s hard to energise people now, but it’s too late when the water is around your ankles,” he said, “People can say the temperature hasn’t followed the models but I can read a thermometer and a flood gauge. We need to do this threat analysis now.”
As the UN General Assembly prepares to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics has released a new data tool showing the leaders and emerging players in research and development (R&D).
Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, says it is essential to track R&D investment in the knowledge, technology and thinking that drives innovation in countries
“Innovation is key to achieving each of the Sustainable Development Goals. So it is essential to track R&D investment in the knowledge, technology and thinking that drives innovation in countries,” said Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
SDG 9 calls on governments to promote sustainable industrialisation and innovation by ramping up spending on R&D and increasing the number of researchers. Both indicators are featured in the new data tool entitled: “How much does your country invest in R&D?”
The top five R&D performers in absolute terms (R&D expenditure) are all large economies: United States followed by China, Japan, Germany and Republic of Korea. But the ranking changes dramatically according to the data that will be used to monitor SDG 9 (R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP): Republic of Korea is the world leader followed by Israel, Japan, Finland and Sweden.
Regions have been setting their own spending targets for some time: the best-known being the European Union (EU) target to raise overall R&D investment to 3% of GDP by 2020.
According to UIS data, only six countries worldwide have managed to surpass the 3% target, and three are smaller EU economies: Denmark, Finland and Sweden. These, in turn, lag behind Japan with 3.6% and Israel with an impressive 4.1%. And all of them trail behind South Korea – the world leader – with 4.3%. Austria, Germany and Switzerland hover around 3% as does the biggest spender of all: the United States.
Few countries in other regions compete with these proportions. In Central and Eastern Europe, Slovenia leads with 2.4% compared to the Russian Federation at 1.2%. In Central Asia, the figure hovers around 0.2%, as in the case for Kazakhstan. Morocco tops the league in the Arab States with just 0.7%. Brazil is the leader in Latin America, with 1.2%, while India leads in South and West Asia with 0.8%. In Africa, the African Union is aiming for 1%, but only Kenya, Mali and South Africa approach the target.
China is achieving an astonishing average annual growth rate of 18.3% in R&D spending, compared to just 1.4% across the rest of the world’s upper-middle-income countries, according to UIS data. China’s R&D spending only amounts to 2% of its GDP, but this means that the country is pouring about PPP$369 billion into this sector each year. As the share of global R&D expenditure by high-income countries fell from 88% in 1996 to 69.3% by 2013, China alone filled that gap, increasing its share from 2.5% to 19.6%. This means that China is increasingly approaching the United States, which accounts for almost 30% of global R&D expenditure.
Globally, there were almost 1,083 researchers for every one million people in 2013. However, the share of researchers in middle-income countries, excluding China, fell from 17% to 15% between 1996 and 2013– a worrying downward trend with global implications for sustainable development.
Acting auditor-general for the federation, Florence Anyanwu, has said that environmental audit of the River Niger will begin soon to prevent it from drying up like the Lake Chad.
The River Niger
She said this on Tuesday in Abuja during the 6th Annual Meeting of African Organisation of Supreme Audit Institutions Working Group on Environmental Audit (AFROSAI WGEA). The theme of the meeting is “Working together for a healthy and sustainable environment in Africa.’’
Anyanwu said that the River Niger was drying up gradually on the Onitsha side and that it was also frying up some countries where it flowed from.
She said that Nigeria represented the largest coastal area of the river and that there were lots of economic activities that it represented.
Her words: “There is also a whole lot of prospective power and navigation activity, so it is very relevant and important even in terms of agriculture. We do not want to sit back and watch what happened to Lake Chad to happen to River Niger.
“So the earlier we can address it as Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs), the earlier we can come up with recommendations to assist our member countries to be able to address them in policy formation and implementation.’’
Anyanwu said that, at the end of the meeting, the commencement of the auditing would begin, adding that “although the policy itself and the agreement to start that audit have already been adopted by the AFROSAI WGEA”.
She also said that Nigeria would particularly like to see that the Niger Basin Authority comprising Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’ Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger agree to commence the cooperative environmental audit project.
In her speech, Chairperson of AFROSAI WGEA, Mrs Mbah Fomundam, said that the meeting would address issues of wild legal poaching and illegal trade, bio-diversity and plastic pollution.
She said that for some years now environmental sustainability had become a global challenge that was synonymous to responsibility towards future generations.
“It therefore behoves on the SAIs to make sure that the governments are implementing the policies, because the environment is not only for us but for posterity, for the future, our children and our grandchildren.
“In this regard, good governance is important in ensuring that commitments taken in the area of environmental protection and sustainable development produce credible results,” she stated.
Fomundam said that the results of the audit of the Lake Chad had been submitted to the different governments, and that these governments would meet to know the next step to take.
“The audit report was to look at the laws of each country, the international laws adopted as far as the Lake Chad is concerned or the environment concerning water and forestry. “What laws have been adopted, what has the countries done to implement these laws, are they respecting these laws?’’
Declaring the meeting open, the Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, said that environmental auditing was an essential component of sustainable environmental management. Represented by the Director of Forestry, Philip Bankole, she said that such audit provided the mechanism to know what had gone wrong over time while highlighting the need for urgent policy action.
She, however, said that the protection of the environment was the responsibility of all and that government would continue to provide the enabling atmosphere for sustainable environmental management.
Tassilo Droste, Technical adviser to AFROSAI, in his remarks, said that the report on the drying-up of Lake Chad was so important and that it was time for the recommendations to be implemented.
According to him, Lake Chad has become smaller than it was 40 years ago and as a shallow lake without sufficient rain, if it does not replenish fully will not serve its purpose. “So the lake is smaller than it used to be and that happens in a context where there is more population; so you can imagine less water and increasing population at the same time.
“That means that there is more pressure on the environment, so more people have to share less water and that is obviously problematic.” Droste said that there was a multiplier effect to the drying of the river because people lived on fish and agriculture which needed water.
“If people do not have them, people would be forced to move into the big cities and there may be conflicts because of migration and so these are linked to how we manage the water in the Lake Chad area.’’
The meeting which began on Monday ends on Thursday.
German drugs and crop chemicals company Bayer has won over U.S. seeds firm Monsanto with an improved takeover offer of around $66 billion, ending months of wrangling after increasing its bid for a third time.
The logo of Bayer AG is pictured at the Bayer Healthcare subgroup production plant in Wuppertal. Photo credit: REUTERS/Ina Fassbender/File
The $128 a share deal, up from Bayer’s previous offer of $127.50 a share, is the biggest of the year so far and the largest cash bid on record.
The deal will create a company commanding more than a quarter of the combined world market for seeds and pesticides in the fast-consolidating farm supplies industry.
However, competition authorities are likely to scrutinise the tie-up closely, and some of Bayer’s own shareholders have been highly critical of a takeover plan which they say risks overpaying and neglecting the company’s pharmaceutical business.
The transaction includes a break-fee of $2 billion that Bayer will pay to Monsanto should it fail to get regulatory clearance. Bayer expects the deal to close by the end of 2017.
The details confirm what a source close to the matter told Reuters earlier.
Bernstein Research analysts said on Tuesday they saw only a 50 percent chance of the deal winning regulatory clearance, although they cited a survey among investors that put the likelihood at 70 percent on average
“We believe political pushback to this deal, ranging from farmer dissatisfaction with all their suppliers consolidating in the face of low farm net incomes to dissatisfaction with Monsanto leaving the United States, could provide significant delays and complications,” they wrote in a research note.
Bayer said it was offering a 44 percent premium to Monsanto’s share price on May 9, the day before it made its first written proposal.
It plans to raise $19 billion to help fund the deal by issuing convertible bonds and new shares to its existing shareholders, and said banks had also committed to providing $57 billion of bridge financing.
At 1140 GMT, Bayer shares were up 2.2 percent at 95.32 euros. Monsanto’s were up 0.2 percent at $106.3 in premarket trade.
Bayer’s move to combine its crop chemicals business, the world’s second largest after Syngenta AG, with Monsanto’s industry leading seeds business, is the latest in a series of major tie-ups in the agrochemicals sector.
The German company is aiming to create a one-stop shop for seeds, crop chemicals and computer-aided services to farmers.
That was also the idea behind Monsanto’s swoop on Syngenta last year, which the Swiss company fended off, only to agree later to a takeover by China’s state-owned ChemChina.
Elsewhere in the industry, U.S. chemicals giants Dow Chemical and DuPont plan to merge and later spin off their respective seeds and crop chemicals operations into a major agribusiness.
The Bayer-Monsanto deal will be the largest ever involving a German buyer, beating Daimler’s tie-up with Chrysler in 1998, which valued the U.S. carmaker at more than $40 billion. It will also be the largest all-cash transaction on record, ahead of brewer InBev’s $60.4 billion offer for Anheuser-Busch in 2008.
Bayer said it expected the deal to boost its core earnings per share in the first full year following completion, and by a double-digit percentage in the third year.
Bayer and Monsanto were in talks to sound out ways to combine their businesses as early as March, which culminated in Bayer coming out with an initial $122 per-share takeover proposal in May.
Antitrust experts have said regulators will likely demand the sale of some soybeans, cotton and canola seed assets as a condition for approving the deal.
Bayer said BofA Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and JP Morgan had committed to providing the bridge financing.
BofA Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse are acting as lead financial advisers to Bayer, with Rothschild as an additional adviser. Bayer’s legal advisers are Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Allen & Overy LLP.
Morgan Stanley and Ducera Partners are acting as financial advisers to Monsanto, with Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz its legal adviser.
Last week, the print and electronic media in Nigeria were awash again with a major propaganda news item on Genetically Modified Foods. This time, what looks like a false alarm was raised by unidentified sources that Dangote Plc and the Nigerian government have flooded Nigerian market with GMO rice. The news item was followed with a warning that “eating GMO rice is as bad as eating rice laced with rat poison popularly known as sniper in Nigeria”.
Golden rice and white rice
The news item was clearly the handiwork of uninformed groups and persons who have consistently been waging war against the policy of the Federal Government of Nigeria in joining many forward-looking countries of the world to fight poverty and hunger through modern Biotechnology. The propaganda is bound to fail because it is a product of falsehood and the National Biosafety Management Agency in Nigeria has reacted by unequivocally debunking the fake news.
This article is meant to lead readers to have a deeper insight on the issues at stake and the inherent falsehood in the raging propaganda. The controversial commodity is called Golden Rice (GR).
The idea behind Golden Rice is to improve the food that people have access to or can grow themselves. The intention of using rice as a vehicle to address micronutrient deficiencies dates at least to the early 1980s. The idea emerged within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system and led to the conventional breeding efforts to increase iron and zinc in rice in the 1990s.
In 1982, from David Dawe of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) case study, researchers in Indonesia found that child mortality is reduced by 30% by distributing vitamin A supplement in poor villages. With support from the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) in the 1990s, Professor Ingo Potrykus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer at the University of Freiburg, Germany collaborated to the creation of vitamin A fortified rice. In 2000, after years of research, these scientists successfully produced the first strain of golden rice, using daffodils genes and bacteria. This genetically modified rice that contains beta-carotene is widely referred to as Golden Rice (GR).
Subsequent research by Syngentia has utilised cereal genes rather than daffodil genes to generate much higher levels of beta-carotene in so-called GR2 Lines (Paine et al., 2005). In these lines, the enzymatic activities in the genes found within maize or rice is utilized to produce much higher levels of beta-carotene in the rice grain which are 20 times higher than the original line.
In September, 2004, the first GR field trial in the world was harvested in Crowley Louisiana, USA. It took several years before GR could be planted in an open field. This delay was because the target countries, with high rice consumption and high vitamin A deficit did not have biosafety regulations in place. This is a necessary condition attached to the agreement with GR licensees that no field releases may take place in the absence of a national regulatory framework.
As at 2013, Philippines has completed its multi-location field trials and is in the process of feed testing. The International Rice Research Institute and the Philippines Rice Research Institute are working to commercialise this GR this 2016.
Golden Rice is genetically modified to provide beta-carotene in the rice grain and it could potentially address widespread vitamin A deficiency in poor countries were rice is a staple. Very significantly, GR improves vitamin A status so that it could become a solution to address vitamin A supplementation, the promotion of breastfeeding, nutrition education, homestead food production and food fortification. In 2012, a study by Tang et al, found that 100-150g of cooked GR provides 60% of the Chinese recommended intake of vitamin A.
Creating rice with beta-carotene content was not possible until the advent of biotechnology. Much of the current funding for development comes from various foundations and institutions including United State Agency for International Development (USAID) and Monsanto.
The polished rice grain does not contain beta-carotene, a vitamin A precursor, which the body converts into vitamin A. In low-Income populations were rice is the primary staple, several micronutrient deficiencies are chronic problems including Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) which is often a problem where rice gruel is used as a weaning food. Such deficiencies are particularly pronounced in children who need greater nutrient density in food to meet their high nutrient needs. VAD is responsible for 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and up to 2 million deaths each year and this was referred to as “Nutritional Holocaust”. Particularly susceptible are pregnant women and children. Across the globe, estimated 19 million pregnant women and 190 million children suffer from the condition. The good news however is that dietary supplementation of vitamin A can eliminate VAD.
While the link between VAD and blindness captures public attention, VAD is widely recognized as a globally significant problem. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (2004, p.4) estimates that “Vitamin A Deficiency is compromising the immune systems of approximately 40% of the developing world’s under-fives and leading to the deaths of an estimated one million young children each year”. This situation unfortunately has not changed over the past decades.
Although scientists, multi-nationals, seed companies and the CGIAR genuinely believed in the positive humanitarian potential of this technology, negative reactions to GR were immediate and in many cases quite emotional. All the opposing groups agree that VAD is an important problem but objected to GR either as an inappropriate or ineffective solution based essentially on the three points listed as follows:
i). That GM foods are inherently unsafe to human health and the environment. GR poses risks of these kinds and thus will not achieve its humanitarian goals.
ii). That rice is directly consumed by the poor, and thus the poor would be “guinea pigs” for any human health impacts. Either GR will not provide enough vitamin A to do any good or will provide too much, resulting in vitamin A toxicity.
iii). That GR is part of the continued use of “Green Revolution” technologies that are unsustainable and harmful to the poor.
In furtherance of their argument, they raised alarm in Nigeria last week through online sources. They posted thus: “Alarm… Dangote and Nigerian government have flooded Nigerian market with GMO rice, pls note: eating GMO rice is as bad as eating rice laced with rat poison popularly known as sniper in Nigeria, GMO products are banned all over Europe due to its deadly effects, pls share this info to create awareness and save lives… Sent as received. Thanks”
Those opposed to GM technology allegedly for ethical, environmental or health concerns seem to have felt that this represented a commercial conspiracy to win over the public. They wanted to debunk this technology because of perceived diversion of attention from potential negative impacts to positive impacts. It is unfortunate that this scientific breakthrough generated so much attention when it remained fairly far from implementation.
The suspicion often caused by the anti-globalisation activists against GMO crops (but not GMO processed foods like cheese and beer or medical applications like insulin and many new drugs) paradoxically reinforced an “environmentally justified” set of regulatory hurdles which only large companies can afford. As such, they end up shooting themselves at the foot while the farmers and consumers who would benefit from those crops are collateral victims as there seems to be no scientific justifications for these high regulatory costs.
In a press briefing on September 7, 2016, by Dr. Rufus Ebegba, Director General/CEO, National Biosafety Management Agency, unequivocally stated that there is no iota of truth in the issues raised in the alarm against alleged imported GM rice.
“As a Regulatory Body established by the government to regulate the activities of modern biotechnology and the release and use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in the country to ensure safety to the environment and human health, the NBMA wishes to unequivocally state that, there is no iota of truth in the said post and reinstates that no GM Rice has either been imported or released officially into the country,” he stated.
He further stated that “It will suffice you to know that there is no GM rice that has been commercially released anywhere in the world. It should also be recalled that government has banned the importation of rice in Nigeria. This ban was widely publicised in the media and there are no indications that the ban has been lifted.”
The DG therefore enjoined Nigerians to disregard the post and join hands with the agency in its quest to ensure safety in the practice of modern biotechnology in Nigeria in line with global best practices.
Golden Rice has the potential to reach the important sub-populations that have not been targeted by current interventions in parts where rice is the predominant staple and weaning food. Several studies are currently trying to assess the potential benefit of GR using different economic methods and building their analysis on some strong assumptions about nutritional benefits. Because GR is still so far from actual production and consumption, little is known about bioavailability, losses in storage or cooking or many other factors that would influence the actual delivery of vitamin A. These studies are beginning and will help define the deployment options of the product.
It is instructive to note also that the pro GMO advocacy has been growing from strength to strength globally. This summer, 110 Nobel Laureates signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its efforts to stop GR from coming into the market. Earlier, on November 7, 2013, Pope Francis also gave his personal blessing to GR.
By Edel-Quinn Agbaegbu (Executive Director of Every Woman Hope Centre (EWHC ), publishers of Lifecare magazine in Nigeria)
After months of negotiations, consensus was finally reached over the weekend on the Habitat III outcome document.
Joan Clos, Executive Director, UN-Habitat and Secretary-General of the Habitat III Conference. The New Urban Agenda will be adopted at the summit in October in Quito, Ecuador
Indeed, the New Urban Agenda was agreed on at the Habitat III Informal Intergovernmental Meetings which took place at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York from 7 to 10 September. It will be adopted in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016.
The New Urban Agenda is coming on the heels of the Surabaya Draft of the New Urban Agenda that was released at the third session of the Preparatory Committee for the Habitat III Conference in Surabaya, Indonesia in July 2016.
“Reaching an agreement on the New Urban Agenda is a huge first step towards a shared vision on sustainable cities and a historic opportunity to work together on improving the way we plan and manage our cities. Member states and stakeholders have committed to this collective vision, and it is something truly worth celebrating,” says Dr Joan Clos, Secretary-General of the Habitat III Conference.
According to him, the Quito forum will be a global arena for active discussions, the creation of new pathways in response to the challenges of urbanisation and opportunities, and sharing integrated urban solutions and forging new partnerships towards the New Urban Agenda.
As the century is projected to see a substantial majority of the world’s population living in urban centres, the Habitat III Conference has, as its mission, the adoption of a New Urban Agenda, which promoters of the event describe as “an action-oriented document which will set global standards of achievement in sustainable urban development, rethinking the way we build, manage, and live in cities through drawing together cooperation with committed partners, relevant stakeholders, and urban actors at all levels of government as well as the private sector.”
August 2016 was the warmest August in 136 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
August 2016 emerges a record month. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies
NASA is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space programme as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.
Although the seasonal temperature cycle typically peaks in July, August 2016 wound up tied with July 2016 for the warmest month ever recorded. August 2016’s temperature was 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest August in 2014. Last month also was 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the mean August temperature from 1951-1980.
“Monthly rankings, which vary by only a few hundredths of a degree, are inherently fragile,” according to GISS Director, Gavin Schmidt. “We stress that the long-term trends are the most important for understanding the ongoing changes that are affecting our planet.”
The record warm August continued a streak of 11 consecutive months dating back to October 2015 that have set new monthly high-temperature records. The monthly analysis by the GISS team is assembled from publicly available data acquired by about 6,300 meteorological stations around the world, ship- and buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperature, and Antarctic research stations. The modern global temperature record begins around 1880 because previous observations didn’t cover enough of the planet.
Across the globe, nations have kick-started a new and exciting development agenda aimed at ending poverty and reducing risks linked with climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of the natural environment. This journey to a brighter, more prosperous and resilient future has been forged through two powerful and mutually re-enforcing pathways – the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals of 2015.
Patricia Espinosa, United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary General and the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and Salaheddine Mezouar, President of the upcoming 22nd Conference of Parties (COP22) and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Kingdom of Morocco, in this jointly-written article published in the Green Africa Directory, explore the prospects of green growth on the continent in the light of the upcoming global summit
Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, and Salaheddine Mezouar, President of COP22, insist that Africa is at the dawn of an unprecedented evolution and that a green growth model will give it an advantage on global markets
The prospects for success are high, since the involvement of all stakeholders is strong: All countries large and small, East and West, North and South are on board and fully committed in global negotiations, with the historical adoption of the Paris Agreement by 195 countries and the submission of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).
Many non-state actors – cities, regions and provinces, businesses and investors – have joined the journey via individual commitments or cooperative initiatives many of which are referenced on the NAZCA platform (~12,000 commitments and 77 collaborative initiatives).
France and Morocco’s global climate champions have set out the Global Climate Action Agenda to boost cooperative action between governments and non-state actors in order to support and catalyse early and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement.
However, the work is just starting and many challenges lie ahead.
The pledges made will not limit global warming to 2°C. The consequences of global warming will be dire for agriculture and water supplies and threaten the most vulnerable regions and their populations. Governments need to raise their INDCs and make concrete, realistic plans to back up their national pledges.
Countries need to translate their INDCs into investible programmes through greater access to finance, adaptation of policy frameworks and better project planning. The involvement of non-state actors could be further strengthened, especially on investments, capability building and technology transfer.
Africa is at the dawn of an unprecedented growth. As outlined by the Africa Progress Panel, the continent has the opportunity to choose a model for its industrialisation. A “green growth” model that would draw on its vast renewable resource potential to build its economic growth would certainly give it an advantage on global markets. Similarly, the African Development Bank’s report on green growth highlights that this transition contributes to creating a “higher quality” of growth: more resilient and more inclusive. Africa’s biggest opportunities lie in energy, city planning and urban mobility, as well as agriculture and land use, all sectors facing major choices for their development. “Green growth” for Africa will materialise through:
Increasing access to clean, modern sources of energy. Over 620 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone lack access to electricity. They are forced to rely on charcoal, kerosene, candles and torches that harm both their health and the environment and are unaffordable for the most vulenrable (most vulnerable households spend 20 times more than rich urban citizens for the same amount of energy, as they rely on biomass or costly oil-based generators). Development increasingly based on renewable energies in Africa (from 26% à 32% of energy production) is becoming increasingly competitive. Moreover, regional integration would allow to reduce costs even more through scale effect and better optimisation.
Develop resilient and inclusive cities. Because Africa is the fastest-urbanising continent in the world, the consequences of climate change on cities will be enormous, especially for their poorest inhabitants. The urban population of Africa is estimated to rise from its current level of 472 million to 659 million by 2025, and 1 billion by 2040, driving most of the economic growth on the continent. Yet, African cities cannot absorb the growth of their population because of the lack of urban planning, mass transportation systems, affordable housing and waste management systems. Weak institutions and widespread insolvency of African cities are adding additional constraints to the development of cleaner and more resilient cities. The urban poor are particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, as they often live in highly exposed or at-risk areas (wetlands, floodplains, landfills, garbage dumps, rocky areas).
Boosting the resilience and productivity of agriculture. Warming of 3°C-4°C above pre-industrial temperatures will heighten the risk of extreme drought (particularly in southern Africa), decrease the yields of major staple crops by 20% and threaten water availability. Agricultural techniques, e.g., water storage, drought-resistant crops, crop rotation and flood protection, must be improved to make agriculture more resilient to climate change and reduce food loss and waste. Increasing the productivity of agriculture will also reduce deforestation, 70% of which is caused by agriculture.
Multiple global and regional initiatives are underway to tackle Africa’s big challenges:
Energy. The African Development Bank’s New Deal on Energy for Africa is a major initiative to coordinate efforts of all stakeholders on energy in Africa. Other initiatives aim to achieve universal energy access and scale up the use of clean energies include the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) and the Africa Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI), launched at the Paris conference. Governments can attract private investors by helping national players to develop bankable, scalable projects and introducing favourable regulation frameworks.
Cities and urban mobility. International initiatives such as the C40 Climate Leadership Group and the Compact of Mayors focus on helping African cities to develop urban planning and mass transit systems. The main challenge is to integrate Africa better into these initiatives as activities become more scalable.
Agriculture. Initiatives such as the Global Alliance for Climate Smart agriculture aim at sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes, adapting and building resilience to climate change, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Providing a forum to mature, scale up and fast track existing projects and establish new ones to realise the Paris Agreement and the SDGs, especially in those sectors that are crucial to African development in particular.
Linking projects with support on enablers specified in the Paris Agreement, particularly access to finance (to bridge the $55 billion yearly financing gap for Africa by 2030) capability building and technology transfer.
Marking the beginning of a new generation of COP focused on actions to implement the Paris Agreement.
The COP22 is important for Africa’s city and regional leaders, CEOs and investors. They will witness first-hand the risks and opportunities of taking action nationally and internationally and be able to signal their solidarity with the continent’s governments and citizens.
We look forward to exchanging ideas and working together for a better future. This is an imperative for the World’s seven billion strong population and for future generations.
Following recent earth tremors in some parts of the country, some scientists have warned that earthquakes can be triggered by oil and gas exploration, especially in the Niger Delta region.
Oil exploration
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) spoke with some scientists and stakeholders across the country recently against the backdrop of earth tremors in some states which has caused widespread panic and a cause for concern.
Most of the respondents warned that the country could be vulnerable to earthquakes and other seismological activities, said could be triggered by the oil and gas exploration, among other human activities.
NAN recalls that earth tremors caused a wide spread panic among residents of the affected communities of Akenfa and Igbogene in Bayelsa State, and Akinima, Akieoniso (Oruama) and One Man Country and Mbiama in Rivers State.
Tremors also happened many times in Saki, located in the northern part of Oyo State – a hilly town that lies near the source of Ofun River, which is about 60km to the Republic of Benin border.
The National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) said that oil and gas exploration as well as human activities among others were the likely causes of tremor in the South South.
According to the Deputy Director, Media and Corporate Communications, of NASRDA, Mr Felix Ale, the organisation had done a preliminary report on the suspected earth tremors that occurred in July 15 and July 24 in Bayelsa and Rivers states respectively.
“The report shows that oil and gas exploration, suspected suture zones, and man-made activities are among likely causes of the incidents.
“At this stage, it cannot be concluded that the tremors occurred as a result of manmade activities in the region or from tectonic activities from natural sources until a detailed investigation in the entire South-South region is carried out by NASRDA’s research team.
“The detailed analyses by the team will help the agency to adopt requisite mitigating measures to avert loss of lives and property in case of future occurrences.
“In view of the nature of earth tremors or earthquakes, especially natural tremors, the Space Agency is making plans to deploy monitoring seismic equipment to the affected region for continuous micro seismic and macro seismic activities.
“This is imperative because tremors will continue to occur in the future, depending on either natural or artificial causative agents.
“Scientists from the Centre for Geodesy and Geodynamics, Toro (Bauchi State), under NASRDA, are currently working on relevant seismic data to extract more information from seismic station located in Toro,” he said.
Ale said that the scientists would also embark on a field trip to Kaduna, Ife and Abakiliki stations to acquire more data from the stations, saying comprehensive results from the detailed analysis would be made available in due course.
The agency said that similar tremor was observed at Saki, Oyo State, in May, which also sent residents of the area scampering for safety.
The agency said a team of researchers were immediately deployed to the affected areas and intensity was estimated as MM III-IV and local magnitudes as 2.5 to 3.0.
“Report on Saki incident has been submitted to the Space Agency for further studies,’’ Ale said.
NASRDA enjoined citizens of affected areas and indeed the general public to remain calm as all scientific measures were currently being deployed to ascertain the causes of the earth tremors for possible mitigating measures.
“This is to avert loss of lives and property in case of future occurrences,” Ale said.
A scientist and Director, Technology Acquisition and Adaption Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, Dr Adeneye Talabi, also attributed the incident of earth tremors to exploration of oil and gas.
Talabi said that the Federal Government needed to save more lives by enforcing all existing rules on exploiting natural resources.
Talabi said that the government should ensure due processes were followed to address tremors that occurred recently in the South-South region.
He said that the balance of the ecosystem had been distorted by the fact that oil had been extracted, adding that the vacuum created by extracting gas and crude oil ought to be replaced with close density commodity to avoid any future disaster.
“There is need for the Federal Government and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, in particular, to enforce all the existing and rules guiding exploitation of natural resources like crude oil.
“Regarding the tremor at Bayelsa and Rivers, the fact that they have been extracting through the exploitation processes and methods, vacuum has been created, “ he said.
He explained that Nigeria was not immune naturally against such occurrence, adding that every appropriate measures ought to be put in place to avert them in future.
He said that the country needed to carry out world best practices in the processes of extracting natural resources such as petroleum and natural gas.
“As a reasonable people, we should not allow the level of calamity that the Indonesia experienced which led to their tsunami.
“If there is a tremor, it is giving us sign indication, or symptom that the eventual higher degree of it which will translate into earthquake can occur.
“Earth tremor is more closely associated to earthquake. The earth tremor is just the shaking of the ground earth thrust while earthquake is a total collapse or opening up of the ground,” he said.
A geologist, Dr Emmanuel Adanu, the Executive Director, National Water Resources Institute, Kaduna, said Nigeria needed to be keeping records of the various earth tremors in the country to prepare ahead of future tremors in the country.
Adanu said that the country used to have some equipment that could help in that direction but some of them were no more functioning.
“We have some of them in Zaria but are no more functioning,” he stated.
According to him, tremors are products of certain natural actions like earthquake and volcano.
Adanu said: “Nigeria is not actually a tremor-prone nation but due to earthquake in the mid-Atlantic Ocean and volcano in some mountains around the country, some parts of the country may experience tremors occasionally.’’
He said that some parts of South-West like Ibadan and Abeokuta might experience tremor due to volcano in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
“If there is severe volcano in the middle of the Atlantics, the tremor will converge through those perpendicular lines and you can have tremor in Abeokuta, Ibadan or the South West Nigeria.
“In the Jos Plateau, if the volcano becomes active, you can have tremor, in Bauchi, and Biu. So in Nigeria, we need to have proper record of them.
“If there are volcanic activities in Cameroonian mountain, it can lead to tremor in some parts of Taraba State,” he said.
Adanu said that his organisation was doing some investigations to actually find the likely cause of tremor in Rivers and Bayelsa states, adding that volcanic activities around Benue trough could cause volcano in South-South region.
An environmentalist, Mrs Grace Martin, urged the country to mainly focus on agriculture by totally shifting attention from oil exploration.
Martin said that shifting attention from crude oil was necessary to avert likely major earthquake that could follow earth tremors being experienced in some places in the country.
“The tremor is created by us. It is an artificial tremor because anywhere you keep on drilling constantly looking for oil; you damage the base of the land itself.
“You have to crack the soil before you can be able to extract the crude oil.
“We did not have tremor before because there was not so much exploration of crude oil, ‘’ she said.
She appealed to the Federal Government to discourage other states from trying to search for crude oil to deviate from such.
According to her, the reason China that has plenty oil does not explore it to make money is just to avoid problems of tremor and earthquake.
She said that the international communities were refraining from buying crude oil but now focusing on biogas, solar energy and wind energy.
“I will advise Federal Government to be honest and look inward to fully embark on agricultural projects on ground so that we will not be where we don’t to be.
“Look at what happened in Thailand, Japan and Indonesian recently. In the next 15 years, if care is not taken, we may have a major earthquake in Nigeria.
“Talking about the ecosystem, we don’t need that now, we cannot avoid the repercussion and the level of disasters that can happen to our people,’ ’she said.
However, an architect, Mr Samuel Martins, said that exploration, drilling of boreholes and other mining activities could not cause earth tremor as was being alleged in some quarters.
Martins, who works with Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CADD) told NAN that although such human activities would not cause earth tremor, it was necessary to have in place a technology to determine when to continue or stop such activities.
He said that the earth tremor is not a sudden development but a situation that gradually moves to its climax.
Martins, however, said that there was need to deploy modern technology to assess geographical locations and measure their safety to human existence.
He identified the lack of such technology as a challenge in most developing countries; a situation he said would further compound such issues.
“In this side of the world, one of the problems we have is that we don’t have machines and computers in place that can measure this type of tremor before they happen.
“The one that happened in Asia recently, that was a 7.0 earthquake, they knew to an extent before it happened.
“There are machines in place that can measure the size of tremor or earthquake, but we don’t have that,” he said.
He said that it was regrettable that most times actions were taken after disaster would have occurred.
He therefore called on the Ministry of Environment to acquire technologies that would identify and prepare people that could be exposed to such disasters.
Martins maintained that there was need to know the size of such tremor in order to identify its type.
