The Central and West Africa Programme of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN-PACO) workshop for media and communication experts on Sustainable Land and Water Management (SLWM) practices kicked-off on Monday in Lome, Togo with participants from 12 countries of the of the Building Resilience through Innovation, Communication and Knowledge Services (BRICKS) Sahel and West Africa Programme advocating for a more robust collaboration.

The participants also called for support and a network to enable progress through knowledge management on best practices in communication and its tools across the West Africa and the Sahel region.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Ms. Bora Masumbimko of the IUCN described the regional capacity building workshop of media men and women, and notably the new generation of professionals, on the theme of land and water management, as being “in line with the implementation of the BRICKS project.” The workshop, she adds, will allow the involvement of media men and women in the efforts towards fighting against land and water degradation and more specifically promoting successful conservation approaches through their wider dissemination.

The Togolese Minister of Environment and Forest Resources, represented by Mr. Djutonou Folly, the Forestry Director in the Ministry, welcomed the participants and acknowledged that media men and women, who constitute major relays in communication mechanisms, are sometimes the only source of not only information, but also education for many people.

“It is therefore crucial to make sure that they are trained, informed and sensitised on natural resource conservation in general and SLWM in particular, so that they can fully play their role,” he states.

Organised in collaboration with the Permanent Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), the Sahel Observatory (OSS) and the World Bank, the workshop is part of the implementation the BRICKS project to support the Great Green Wall Initiative for the Sahara and Sahel (GGWISS), a project aimed at planting a wall of trees across Africa at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert as a means to prevent desertification.

The five-day workshop, which has “Sustainable land and water management in SAWAP countries: Issues, challenges and local strategies” as its theme will, according to the organisers, allow the involvement of the media practitioners in the efforts towards fighting land and water degradation and more specifically promoting successful conservation approaches through their wider dissemination.

The workshop is also expected to outline IEC tools that will function well at the grassroots level (local level), while also providing correct and documented information on the causes, consequences, eco-citizen behaviors to be adopted in order to prevent land and water degradation and specifically promote existing conservation approaches.

The Lome forum will likewise provide an opportunity for producing a video on the “Ambassadors” of the Integrated Disaster and Land Management Project (IDLMP) for the Frogleaps site.

The BRICKS project is a six-year regional knowledge and monitoring hub for a $1.1 billion regional programme of 12 World Bank financed country operations plus related partner-supported activities that together contribute to the region’s and clients’ GGWISS priorities. BRICKS is implemented by three regional organisations recognised as centres of excellence: the CILSS, OSS and IUCN-PACO.

These organisations facilitate technical knowledge exchanges and monitoring services among the 12-country investment operations in the broader World Bank/GEF Sahel and West Africa Programme (SAWAP). Each organisation is responsible for implementing discrete activities related to resilient and carbon-smart natural resources management in the Sahel and West Africa region, focusing on biodiversity, crop, range, forest, water resources, and disaster risk management in arid, sub-humid and humid landscapes.

BRICKS was approved by the World Bank Board on September 4, 2013 and the Grant Agreements were signed at a ceremony with the leadership of the respective three Implementing Agencies (CILSS, OSS, and IUCN) on October 15, 2013 in Washington DC. The Project was declared effective on November 26, 2013.

The 12 countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan and Togo.

Ahead of the full implementation of the Ogoni clean-up, the apex mass-based organisation of the Ogoni people, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), has commenced the process of generating a comprehensive database of graduates, contractors and artisans in Ogoniland.

President of MOSOP, Comrade Legborsi Saro Pyagbara, made this known on Monday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, the end of an engagement with representatives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

The MOSOP President noted that the process of compiling a database of Ogoni professionals, graduates, skilled and unskilled personnel was necessary to assess Ogoni’s human capacity and the level of training required for the engagement of the Ogoni people for the clean-up exercise.

“As part of our preparations, we will launch a database of Ogoni graduates and contractors so we can have a good understanding of our capacity as a people ahead of the full implementation of the clean-up exercise,” he said. “We also need data on artisans, all skilled and unskilled personnel so that we can competently determine our training requirements.”

Pyagbara hinted that the full implementation of the clean-up exercise is expected to be accompanied with sustainable livelihood programmes like job creation, entrepreneurship development, training and massive infrastructural development.

In June 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari launched the process to clean-up Ogoniland. This was followed by the inauguration of the Governing Council and Board of Trustees of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) – the implementation framework set up by the Federal Government for the clean-up of Ogoniland and other impacted communities in the Niger Delta region.

The Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India, has become the first carbon neutral airport in Asia-Pacific. Similarly, the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, USA, has been named North America’s first carbon neutral airport.

The two airports were recently named along with France’s Nice Cote d’Azur Airport, located southwest of Nice, as being carbon neutral, bringing the total number of airports in that category to 170.

While the Indira Gandhi International Airport serves as the primary civilian aviation hub for the National Capital Region of Delhi, the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport is the primary international airport serving the Dallas–Fort Worth area in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the largest hub for American Airlines, which is headquartered near the airport.

The disclosure was made at the 39th International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Assembly that held last week in Montreal, Canada, where stakeholders agreed on a Global Market Based Measure to address international airline emissions. As is customary, Airports Council International released the annual results for the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme covering the period June 2015 to June 2016, to report on how the global airport industry is delivering on its commitment to lower its own CO2 emissions, made in 2007.

Now in its seventh year, the global programme certifies airports at four different levels of accreditation covering all stages of carbon management (Mapping, Reduction, Optimisation and Neutrality). It is independently administered, institutionally-endorsed and has already won praise from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), ICAO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Commission (EC).

Announcing the annual results, Angela Gittens, Director General, ACI World, commented: “It’s been an incredible year for Airport Carbon Accreditation, with applications to the programme still increasing and new developments such as the important partnership with the UNFCCC and its Climate Neutral Now initiative signed at the COP21 climate negotiations. In terms of results, in the past year, accredited airports succeeded in collectively reducing the CO2 emissions under their direct control by 206,090 tonnes of CO2 – enough energy to power over 86,000 households for a year.”

She added: “The momentum keeps building. As of this week, we now have 170 airports in the programme and over 36% of global air passenger traffic – well over two billion passengers – now travel through airports certified at one of the four levels of the programme. I also particularly want to congratulate the latest airports to become carbon neutral – Nice Cote d’Azur Airport, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport – North America’s first carbon neutral airport – and Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport – the first carbon neutral airport in Asia-Pacific.

“These recent accreditations highlight that carbon neutrality is no longer just a goal shared by airports worldwide – with 26 such airports now in the programme, it is becoming a tangible reality. The constant efforts of airports to move up the levels in the programme is one of the reasons for the success of Airport Carbon Accreditation.”

Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, commented: ‘’COP21 was about engaging governments at the highest level, but effective climate action must also be significantly supported by a progressive private sector – sustainability is everyone’s responsibility. What Airport Carbon Accreditation has achieved over the past seven years is both surprising and inspiring. By charting a clear path airport operators are acting across a range of measures, from mapping their CO2 emissions, reducing them and engaging others, up to becoming carbon neutral too – there is much that other industries can learn from this and even emulate.”

The annual results of Year 7 (2015-2016) of Airport Carbon Accreditation are available here.

Nigeria may have taken yet another vital step towards rounding up its REDD+ Readiness Plan (and graduating to the Implementation Phase) as stakeholders reviewed – in the bid to validate – two separate documents related to forest monitoring and emissions referencing.

Similarly, Cross River State, which is hosting the site of the nation’s flagship UN-REDD Programme project site, announced that Governor Ben Ayade has signed the Carbon Emissions Bill into law.

On Thursday and Friday (September 29-30) last week in Abuja, the federal capital city, stakeholders and technical experts embarked on the final review of draft documents of both the National Forest Monitoring System Action Plan (NFMS AP) and the National Forest Reference Emission Level/Forest Emission Levels (FRELs/FRLs) put together after harmonisation of comments by participants at the NFMS AP and FREL/FRL workshops held in April and May 2016 respectively.

Organised by the Nigeria REDD+ Programme, UN-REDD Programme, Cross River State Government and Federal Ministry of Environment, the forum not only set out to validate and adopt the draft NFMS AP as the operational document for the implementation of NFMS in the country, but also validate and adopt the draft sub-national FREL as the roadmap to benchmark and assess REDD+ implementation in Cross River State.

Essentially, the NFMS AP provides the standard activities that should be carried out to ensure the establishment and implementation of a robust and transparent NFMS, according to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) Decision 4/15 on “Methodological guidance to REDD+ Strategy.

The FRELs/FRLs, on the other hand, are important tools for judging the effectiveness or the impact of REDD+ activities and policies on forest carbon emissions in line with the Decision 12/COP.17 of the UNFCCC. It aims to establish a reference point from which actual emissions are compared without which country emissions reductions cannot be demonstrated or proven.

The Cross River State Commissioner for Climate Change & Forestry, Dr Alice Olok Ekwu, disclosed during the forum that the new Carbon Emissions Law empowers the Ministry of Climate Change & Forestry to come up with carbon tax. She added that, when the law becomes fully operational, the ministry would impose taxes on companies, vehicles, and indeed everyone engaged in generating emissions.

She said: “We have a monitoring lab in the ministry that we will use to assess emission levels and determine the level of taxation. Any person or organisation that wants to be assessed must come to us. We are in the best position to carry out this assessment. We will not be able to impose taxes until we are able to determine how to do the assessment. The first thing was to get a law in place, which has been done.”

Recently, two separate validation workshops held in Abuja, and Calabar, the capital city of Cross River State. While the Abuja forum entailed a national authentication of the draft REDD+ document, the Calabar workshop focused essentially on state-related issues, endorsing the Integrated Analyses for the pilot REDD+ programme for Cross River.

Following the corroboration of the study analyses (national framework as well as state), Cross River State will embark on the development of a REDD+ strategy that will both inform the national strategy and serve as model for other states, particularly Ondo and Nassarawa states, which have been named as new programme sites.

The strategy comprises policy reforms, investment priorities, and a related REDD+ implementation framework, with due monitoring and safeguard systems, as called for under the UNFCCC. The strategy also intends to enhance the value of standing forests and to incentivise sustainable forest management through a multi-stakeholder approach and a green development perspective.

REDD+, which stands for Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, is a global initiative designed to pay groups or countries for protecting their forests and reducing emissions of greenhouse gas pollutants, especially carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Created in 2008, the UN-REDD Programme (United Nations Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is a collaborative programme of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

India on Sunday, 2 October 2016 deposited its instrument of ratification of the Paris Agreement with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

This is coming as Mali, Ukraine and the Federated States of Micronesia all recently deposited their instruments of ratification of the global pact with the UN body.

It brings the number of Parties that have ratified the Paris Agreement at 62 States, accounting in total for 51.89% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions, as calculated under the official list that Parties provided under the Paris Agreement.

There are presently 191 signatories to the Paris Agreement, with Nigeria endorsing the climate pact recently in New York.

At the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21), held last December in Paris, France, the Parties adopted the Paris Climate Change Agreement under the UNFCCC.

The Agreement was opened for signature on 22 April 2016 at a high-level signature ceremony convened by the Secretary General in New York. At that ceremony, 174 States and the European Union signed the agreement and 15 States also deposited their instruments of ratification.

The Agreement shall enter into force on the thirtieth day after the date on which at least 55 Parties to the Convention accounting in total for at least an estimated 55% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession with the Depositary.

President Muhammadu Buhari promised in New York that Nigeria would deposited its instruments of ratification with the UN before the 22nd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) to the UNFCCC scheduled to hold in Marrakech, Morocco in November.

It has been a tale of woes as floods takeover Egbema communities in River State, even as community leaders blame Nigerian Agip Oil Company for being responsible for the catastrophe.

The flood has so far displaced more than 1,000 persons and properties worth millions of Naira destroyed.

Alexander Uba, a community leader and a former Youth President, remarks: “This disaster is man made.” Uba leads this reporter to a small road leading to one of the many oil wells operated by Nigerian Agip oil Company Limited, stops abruptly and says: “This place I am standing is the access road to Location 19; this is the place causing the whole problem of Aggah flooding; lift the blockage and I tell you the truth that as soon as this blockage is lifted the flooding problem would be solved.”

Another victim, Mrs Celine Assuah, who is a middle-aged woman, fears that this will not “turn into another nightmare as the case of 2012 during the Great Flood.” Some of her cooking utensils can be seen floating in her flooded kitchen, while she is busy arranging some other properties she intends to take to a dry house, somewhere in the community. “Why can’t government do something about this flood?” she demands.

“This flood has swept away our livelihood,” cries Ike Albert, a farmer. The flood has swept away hundreds of thousands of hectares of cassava farms, yams, cocoyam and vegetables, he tells EnviroNews. For now, people may not feel the impact of the flood so much because they are yet harvesting the food meant for next year, he explains. “But there will be hunger in this land next year because we are now eating our tomorrow today,” he warns. From one home to another, this reporter sees heaps of cassava, most of them premature, but which the owner has apparently been forced to harvest because of the flood, thus confirming the predictions of Mr. Albert.

Like a wild bull let loose in the market place, this flood has destroyed everything in its part, not spearing places of worship. At the Christian Pentecostal Mission in Aggah along New Idea Road, the Shepherd, Pastor Michael Daniel, is seen in a pensive mood as he recalls the events of the past weeks.

He tells EnviroNews that, at a point, the church had to beg people to give them their private house as an alternative place of worship. “But now it is not possible because the owner of that premises has rented out the place,” he says sadly. Most painful to him, he adds, was “a particular day my Church Sunday service was stopped midway because of flood water”.

When this reporter asked him what his church has done to solve this problem, he replies: “The church has done a lot of sand filling here, but that could not solve the problem.” Daniel therefore calls on government to do everything possible to stop the flooding and to send relief materials to help displaced persons.

At the Deeper Life Bible Church, the story remains the same, though the church was locked but the water outside was above the knee level. The Pastor could not be reached for his comment but one of the church members, Mrs. Victoria Elechi, was on hand to respond to our questions. Mrs.  Elechi fears that the church may have to relocate. They actually did, “joining” a sister church at a safer part of the town. She says: “Agip should remove the blockage at Ode ogwgwu to save us from this suffering.”

When EnviroNews visited the Cherubim and Seraphim Church located along Mgbede road in Okwuzi in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni LGA of Rivers State, the church was deserted as the whole premises was a sea of water. The hitherto ever-busy church with over 150 members, which also houses some members who come for spiritual healing, is now like a ghost town. The silence is deafening. The same fate has befallen numerous churches in Mgbede and other neighbouring communities.

While speaking to EnviroNews, a community leader from Mgbede, Comrade Chris Edeh, wondered why such a massive flood has not attracted any attention from the media. “Why is this massive flooding not in the news?” he asks. “If this kind of flooding is happening in big cities such as Port Harcourt or Abuja it would make headline news every day.”

Another community leader, Ethelbert Ihedike, who is the Community Development Committee (CDC) chairman of Aggah who spoke to our reporter, says, “This flooding has always been a problem to Aggah as long as I can remember. Every year, we call on Agip to come and do something about it. We have sent delegations to the company; we have also made our problems known to relevant government agencies in Rivers State all to no avail.”

In neighbouring Okwuzi community, the New Life Jesus Ministry has been sacked from its site. In fact, the church has been forced to relocate to a smaller building which it vacated some years ago. So far some members have resorted to prayers for God’s intervention, according to one Sister Grace Ibe.

Flood has also taken over the Odili Estate in Okwuzi, which houses some mobile and regular Policemen.

Officials at the Public Affairs Department of Nigerian Agip at OB/OB Gas Plant, Omoku declined to respond to enquiries by EnviroNews over allegations of the firm’s alleged culpability regarding the flooding.

By Dandy Mgbenwa