In recognition of the critical role of monitoring and reporting in evidence-based decision-making in the water and sanitation sector at national, basin and regional levels, the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) has called on African member-states to adopt and strengthen the web-based Pan-Africa water sector monitoring and reporting system recently launched in Stockholm, Sweden during the World Water Week.
Dr. Canisius Kanangire, AMCOW Executive Secretary
Dr. Canisius Kanangire, the AMCOW Executive Secretary, made the call on Monday at the African Union Commission headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, venue of the training workshop on water and sanitation sector monitoring for member-states and stakeholders.
According to Dr. Kanangire, the web-based Pan Africa Monitoring and Reporting System “represents AMCOW’s innovative response to addressing the data challenge in Africa where Member-states use different data management methodologies and standards which do not permit effective comparison of countries’ efforts in achieving regional commitments.”
The newly launched M&E framework aspires to assist Member-states, working in collaboration with the AMCOW Secretariat and the AUC, in adopting and perfecting a common reporting format that will facilitate annual reports to the AU on the basis of data and information collected at national and sub-regional levels.
“This will, in the long run, result in a continent-wide credible monitoring and reporting system that will regularly provide critical and strategic information on the status of water development and its use (usage) for various purposes to facilitate informed decision making by African Governments,” says the AMCOW Executive Secretary.
Commending the workshop initiative as being of timely essence, the African Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, in her welcome remarks, expressed optimism that the web-based monitoring and reporting system would “significantly reduce the reporting requirements on our already overburdened statistical departments across Africa.”
The AUC Commissioner restated the need for Africa to stay on course towards realising the target of the Africa Water Vision 2025 which envisages “an Africa where there is an equitable and sustainable use and management of water resources for poverty alleviation, socio-economic development, regional cooperation, and the environment.”
“Translating that vision of the Africa we want into reality makes it incumbent upon us to consolidate the gains of our achievements to-date by utilising the opportunity presented by this web-based Monitoring and Reporting System to revitalise our on-going efforts at developing, managing and utilising our water resources in a way that unleashes Africa’s development potential,” Tumusiime added.
An appreciable number of the workshop participants from South Sudan, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana described the training as very crucial and timely as it kick-starts the process of developing the 2016 Africa Water and Sanitation Report for submission to the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Governments in Africa.
Organised by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) in collaboration with the African Union Commission, the series of workshops which began on Monday comprises Monitoring and Evaluation Focal Persons from Water Resources Ministries in Anglophone countries in East, North and West Africa will end on Tuesday while that of English speaking countries in Southern Africa will follow immediately at the same venue.
Francophone countries from Central, East, North and West Africa will converge on Abidjan from the 26th to the 27th of September 2016 for the French version of the training.
A new batch of 60 children from the Niger Delta region in Nigeria has been awarded the special secondary school scholarship of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Joint Venture. Tagged “Cradle to Career”, the scholarships cover tuition and all other bills for six years in four of the topmost private secondary schools in Port Harcourt, River State.
L-R: General Manager, External Relations of SPDC, Mr. Igo Weli; Master Anioki Godfirst (Bayelsa State Beneficiary); Master Ibojoh Godwin (Delta state scholarships beneficiary); Miss Blessing Chioma Eric (Rivers State beneficiary); Mrs. Elizabeth E. Alagoa, Director for Secondary Education – Bayelsa State Ministry of Education; and Dr. Moses Bragiwa, Director for Basic and Secondary Education – Delta State Ministry of Education, in Port Harcourt.
Brookstone Secondary School, Jephthah Comprehensive College, Archdeacon Brown Educational Centre (ABEC) and Bloombreed High School in Port Harcourt receive 60 beneficiaries each year from difficult-to-reach parts of the Niger Delta on full scholarship for their secondary education, after a two-week orientation programme with introductory courses in academics, character and psychology.
The 60 students are the seventh set of beneficiaries and they bring the total number of beneficiaries since inception of the Cradle to Career programme to 410.
Managing Director of SPDC and Chairman, Shell Companies in Nigeria, Osagie Okunbor, said, “This year, the first set of beneficiaries completed their secondary education and the report we have is that about all of them recorded excellent performance in the school certificate and unified tertiary matriculation examinations. It means the aims of the programme are being achieved.”
Represented by the General Manager External Relations at the award ceremony in Port Harcourt on Friday, the MD said SPDC and its joint venture partners have sustained the scholarship initiative despite the current economic challenges because they see education as a right for every child and not a privilege.
Dr Patricia Ogbonnaya, Mrs Elizabeth Alagoa and Dr Moses Onoriode Bragiwa, representatives of the Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta states Commissioners for Education respectively, extolled the Cradle to Career scholarship scheme for complementing their governments’ investments in education. They praised the transparent selection process and the human capital development benefits of the programme to the region.
“SPDC has a passion for investing in people and we are happy to report that students in the programme have over the years been on the top of their classes in their respective schools. We thank Shell and their joint venture partners for helping to ameliorate the problems of the Niger Delta,” said Dame Christie Toby, the proprietress of one of the implementing schools.
The SPDC JV launched the Cradle to Career initiative in 2010 to provide for bright indigent students and improve on the positive results of its other portfolio of scholarship schemes for local and international undergraduate and postgraduate studies.
Shell Companies in Nigeria have a history of supporting education through scholarships and other initiatives. In 2015, a total of $10.1 million was invested in scholarships by the SPDC Joint Venture and Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo.) Grants were awarded to 930 secondary school students and 638 university undergraduates in 2015, with a total of 10,401 (secondary) and 3,532 (university) grants given over the last five years.
“Environment is human’s first right. Without a safe environment, no one can exist to claim other rights be they social, economic and political.” – Ken Saro Wiwa, late Nigerian human rights activist and environmentalist.
Environmental sanitation in Ilorin, Kwara State
These words of Saro Wiwa point to the fact that the environment sustains humans; it is where we live and we must preserve it. Several studies have revealed that the way people treat their environment greatly influences the quality of their wellbeing. It is important they adopt practices and hygienic conditions that will promote good environmental sanitation and cleanliness which will eventually guarantee them good health.
It is in the light of the above that the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service (KWIRS), recently, as part of its community impact programmes, embarked on an environmental sanitation exercise to clear drainages and repair damaged portions of various roads within the Ilorin Metropolis.
The KWIRS team led by its Executive Chairman, Dr. Muritala Awodun, moved around the streets of Ilorin to sensitise residents on the need to keep their environment clean. Dr. Awodun explained that the sensitisation campaign was informed by the need to make Kwara tidy, adding that the clearing of drainages is to allow for free flow of water as they have been blocked by filths.
He stated that the fixing of potholes, which has begun on the Tanke-University of Ilorin Road, would be extended to other parts of the metropolis such as Asa Dam, Muritala Road, Adewole, Sango and many other areas.
The KWIRS boss advised people of the state to stop throwing refuse into drainages in order to prevent flooding during the rainy season, while noting that flooding causes damage to the roads. He noted that everybody has a role to play in ensuring a more sustainable environment.
In continuation of its efforts to encourage proper waste disposal in the community, KWIRS, in collaboration with the State Ministry of Environment, has acquired 40 tricycles which will be used to collect wastes on a daily basis. Big nylons where the wastes will be kept will also be distributed to households. This is to prevent indiscriminate dumping of refuse as several drainages have been turned to dump sites.
Dr. Awodun, who disclosed this to newsmen, noted that the provision of the tricycles, which will be branded as “environmental tricyles”, is to ensure adequate waste collection, recovery and disposal arrangements as the tricycles will be moving around to collect wastes. He assured that the tricycles would commence operations by September.
He said that KWIRS would not relent in carrying out its community impact programmes, just as he encouraged the people of the state to keep paying their taxes, adding that it is their civic responsibility.
The KWIRS commitment to ensure a clean ‘Kwara environment’ through its community environmental sanitation exercise would be rendered useless if we the people continue to treat the environment with impunity. We must begin to treat issues of environmental sanitation with all the seriousness it deserves by ensuring proper disposal of waste and adopting other hygienic environmental practices.
Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
There is only one possible future for humanity and that is a sustainable one. In 2015, the global community converged on this integrated vision for the future and set in motion the pathways to an economic and social transformation to achieve it.
The unity of purpose reflected in these momentous agreements will now need to leverage unprecedented scale and depth of universal action involving all actors at all levels in all regions of the world. The challenges will be enormous but the rewards of success will be even greater.
The plan requires a profound structural transformation that places at its very heart low-carbon economies and societies which are resilient to climate change.
Over the next 15 years, the objectives of these agreements – linking climate, sustainability and resilience – must see unprecedented reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions and unequalled efforts to build societies that can resist rising climate impacts.
The current rate of progress will not deliver success.
A priority requirement is a much more rapid and fundamental shift in the global patterns and incentives of investment away from unsustainable power generation, infrastructure, pollution and waste.
All action to address climate change is an inseparable and integrated part of the whole plan and the leadership and commitment of all governments remains central to success.
Climate action contributes directly to the greater human well-being that is captured in the seventeen sustainable development goals. It protects lives and livelihoods, improves public health, creates new industries and sustainable farming, cuts costs for governments, business and citizens and opens up new avenues of profitable investing.
Climate action is also absolutely necessary to avoid the existential crises that unchecked climate change would present to humanity.
Greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise in the atmosphere and global temperatures break record highs by the month.
To limit global warming to well below 2°C and as close to 1.5°C as possible to prevent dangerous tipping points in the climate system, global emissions must peak soon and be driven down drastically thereafter. A balance must be achieved in the second half of this century between global emissions and removals through sequestration into ecosystems or through other means.
The generations alive right now are at a unique crossroads. We are the first who can end poverty but the last who can act to avoid the dangerous climate change that could undermine the universal well-being that lies within our grasp.
Government Leadership a Foundation of Future Success
Success will undoubtedly require political leadership and momentum from the highest levels, but supported by a clearly presented and growing public understanding of the enormous social, health and economic benefits that will accrue to citizens everywhere.
Technology developments and smart finance are moving ever more rapidly towards theses transformational goals, but nowhere near fast enough.
The power to shift all this into higher gear still rests firmly with governments, both individually and collectively. Key to the transformation will be the way national governments integrate climate action and implementation of the sustainable development and risk management goals across sectors and ministries.
More climate-friendly, coordinated laws, policies and incentives are needed. All forms of unequal treatment favoring old growth and development models based on fossil fuels and high-carbon lifestyles and aspirations must be removed soon.
But while the transformation demands new technologies and redirected investment, it does not require an entirely new way of human inter-action only closer and deeper cooperation between the levers of change – namely governments working hand in glove with cities, regions, business and investors.
Meanwhile, the well understood economic incentives of risk and return and social goals of equity and justice remain completely relevant and deployable in the race to a low-carbon, resilient future.
Opening up the private sector appetite to fund the transformation directly is essential. Tens of trillions of dollars sit in banks and on corporate balance sheets at low, zero, even negative interest rates looking for bankable projects with real returns if the right incentives, sureties and certainties are provided by national governments, supported by the international community and its multilateral lenders.
Paris Climate Plans and Support Structures Offer Platform to Faster Progress
One of the most significant outcomes of Paris was that governments publicly accepted responsibility to lead climate action.
They presented a global set of national plans to take immediate action, pledging never to lower efforts over time and, whenever possible, to raise ambition.
They agreed to complete in good time the details of a transparent global regime which will account for, review and underpin greater action by all sides.
And they agreed to complete but also to strengthen adequate technology and financial support to nations, including the poorest and most vulnerable, so all countries can build their own clean energy, sustainable futures.
Because well-planned and supported climate action in its many forms almost always speeds up advances in sustainability and resilience, these plans have a multiplier effect for faster progress across the board.
To reach its full potential, governments will now engineer the ambitious design of the Paris Agreement into a well-oiled machine of these fully functioning working parts capable of accelerating climate action to meet the agreement’s stated aims and goals.
Essential for International Institutions to Focus and Prioritise
Meanwhile, continued success under the UN climate regime will both strengthen and be strengthened by the other country-level initiatives across the global development, environmental, disaster risk, human rights and peace agendas.
Without decisive climate action all these other goals will be difficult if not impossible to achieve, but without serious and significant progress on development, environment disaster management, human rights and peace, combating climate change and building resilience will become harder and less certain.
This unified development agenda is therefore the core agenda for governments under the United Nations and the prime focus for UN agencies and other multilateral institutions which assist. No single process or agency can possibly adopt, or try to adopt, all aspects of the solution under its wing.
Leadership responsibility for different aspects of progress will be coordinated by those organisations best placed in resources and skills to effect change. Credit for progress will flow to the entire organisation rather than to its individual parts.
The Will and Knowledge to Succeed
Achieving the aims and ambitions of the Paris Agreement are not a given. The world needs to understand the urgency and complexity of what the international community has embarked upon.
This is a multi-decadal effort to turn around two centuries of development based on fossil fuels and the mining of nature-based resources into an all-embracing sustainable path for every nation, man, woman and child.
But I am confident that world leaders and the enormous groundswell of support from cities, companies, investors and citizens can propel ambition further and faster in support of our shared vision of a climate-secure and sustainable future.
The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has predicted cloudy weather conditions over the central states with slim chances of isolated thunderstorms over Jalingo, Mambilla, Markurdi and environs on Monday morning.
Stormy weather.
The predictions are contained in the Weather Outlook issued by NiMet’s Central Forecast Office on Sunday in Abuja.
It stated that localised thunderstorms were expected over the high grounds of Abuja, Lokoja, Kaduna, Jos and Nasarawa in the afternoon and evening, with maximum temperatures of 25 to 31 degrees Celsius.
The agency predicted that some states would experience cloudy situation in the morning, with probability of localised rains over Calabar axis.
It also predicted that localised rains/showers were expected over the inland and coastal cities in the afternoon and evening hours with maximum temperatures of 29 to 30 degree Celsius.
NiMet predicted partly cloudy morning over the northern states, with prospects of isolated thunderstorms over Sokoto, Katsina, Gusau, Kano and Yelwa later in the day and maximum temperatures of 30 to 35 degrees Celsius.
According to the prediction, relatively stable weather condition is anticipated in the morning over the country with chances of localised thunderstorms and rains later in the day.
Environmentalists have urged governments attending a global wildlife conference in South Africa this month to impose maximum restrictions on the trade of endangered pangolins, a scaly mammal that is the inspiration for two Pokemon characters.
Governments have been told to impose maximum restrictions on the trade of pangolins
The long-snouted, nocturnal pangolin, the size of a small dog and found in Africa and Southeast Asia, is the world’s most illegally trafficked mammal, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Vietnam is at the center of the trade, said Bui Thi Ha, the deputy director of Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV), an organisation that works to reduce consumer demand for wildlife products.
She said more than 2,600 pangolins had been seized in Vietnam over the last three years, along with more than 30 tonnes of frozen meat and scales.
“Vietnam is both a transit point for pangolin trafficking, as well as a large consumer market. The destination for most of the pangolins is China, but the demand for them is on the rise, especially in the big cities,” she told Reuters.
It is unclear how many pangolins are left in the wild.
ENV said pangolins are shipped from Africa to meet demand in Asia, where products made from pangolins are prized for their supposed medicinal value and have led to local numbers falling.
The pangolin trade is already limited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Environmentalists are pressing CITES to increase the trade restrictions to “only in exceptional circumstances” – the highest level of protection.
CITES, an agreement among 183 governments to ensure trade in wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival, will consider the request at the Sept. 24-Oct. 5 meeting in South Africa.
