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Planners devise modalities for realistic African Urban Agenda

Cover

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November 24, 2014

Planners devise modalities for realistic African Urban Agenda

Participants made up of representatives of academics from 25 universities and research institutions in eight countries, public and private sector built environment practitioners, independent researchers, civil society organisations, professional bodies, international development agencies including ICF International, UN-HABITAT and the media recently brainstormed for three days in Lagos.

The event was the International Conference of Urban and Regional Planning (ICURP) 2014, organised by the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Lagos, Nigeria. The conference rose, devising key recommendations whose implementation the promoters feel will contribute significantly to the development of an Urban Agenda for Africa.

The theme of the conference was: “Urban Agenda for Africa: Realities, Challenges, Potentials.”

While Prof Leke Oduwaye was Chairman, Technical and Scientific Committee, Dr Muyiwa Agunbiade performed the role of Rapporteur. Similarly, keynote addresses were delivered by: His Excellency Louis Lulu Mnguni, South African High Commissioner to Nigeria; Mr Ibrahim Dikko, Director Regulatory Affairs, ETISALAT Nigeria; Mr Nicola Rizk, Head West Africa, Dar al Handassah Group; Professor Tunde Agbola, Chair, Association of African Planning Schools, University of Ibadan, Nigeria; Prof Vanessa Watson, Co-Chair, AAPS/African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, South Africa; and, Mrs Mariam Yunusa, Manager, African Urban Agenda and Head of Inter-Agency Branch UN- Habitat, Nairobi, Kenya.

Dr. Taibat Lawanson, Conference Chair, listed the recommendations to include:

The major issues confronting African cities are poverty, inequality, and a lagging sustainable infrastructure deficit. Therefore, there should be practical concerns for addressing these issues.
The desire to focus on strategic improvement of African cities should be led by Africans. This requires customised approach in solving specific, rather than generic urban challenges. There must be appropriate commitment to good urban governance. This will encourage deliberate efforts to efficient management of Africa national resources.
Urban and Regional Planning should be vigorously promoted as a major tool through which economic development and the distribution of resources can be equitably distributed.
Conscious efforts should be directed at promotion of integrated national urban policies, partnerships, institutional and legal reforms.
Africa must continue to align with global trends in developing its communities into smart habitats with appropriate technology and digital infrastructure. The dynamics of technology should be well aligned with the dynamics of population and city growth through proper planning.
Developing spatial data infrastructure should be paramount if Africa is to evolve evidence informed policies.
Informality must be recognised as an African urban reality. There should be deliberate improvement in collaborations between the formal and informal sectors of the economy.
There is imperative for better quality and inclusive urban service delivery to the citizenry in order to generate business growth, taxable revenue and employment.
Considerable efforts should be directed at planning with the people rather than for the people through better engagement across the various stakeholders: government, planners and communities.
It is important that there is continued support and partnership between the public and private sectors for projects that are beneficial to all citizens.
To effectively deliver on the above will require: knowledge management, research funding, advocacy and political influence.
Research on African Urbanisation must centre on co-production of knowledge, inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary discourse geared towards providing solutions.
In order to produce world class researchers with the skills and competencies to provide workable solutions to peculiar African challenges, collaborative research and academic mentoring must be encouraged.
Pan-African research and development networks such as the Association of African Planning Schools, African Urban Research Initiative must be encouraged.

Peru activists murder in spotlight ahead COP 20

Conservation

Michael Simire

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November 23, 2014

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Peru activists murder in spotlight ahead COP 20

A new report by Global Witness sheds light on what’s driving the high number of killings of environmental defenders in Peru, less than a week before the country hosts the UN climate talks in Lima. Peru’s Deadly Environment calls into question the commitments of Peru to protect its carbon-rich forests and the people who live in them, in light of unfettered illegal logging, disregard for indigenous land claims, and new laws that favour industrial exploitation over environmental protection.

The report comes on the heels of the killings of four indigenous leaders in Ucayali in September, including prominent anti-logging activist Edwin Chota and three of his fellow Ashéninka leaders from the Peruvian Amazon.

“The murders of Edwin Chota and his colleagues are tragic reminders of a paradox at work in the climate negotiations,” said Patrick Alley, Co-Founder of Global Witness. “While Peru’s government chairs negotiations on how to solve our climate crisis, it is failing to protect the people on the frontline of environmental protection. Environmental defenders embody the resolve we need to halt global warming. The message is clear, if you want to save the environment, then stop people killing environmental defenders.”

Peru is the fourth most dangerous country to be an environmental defender, behind Brazil, Honduras and the Philippines. At least 57 environmental and land defenders were killed in Peru between 2002 and the present day, more than 60% of them in the last four years, according to new Global Witness data. Most of these deaths involved disputes over land rights, mining and logging. 72% of Peru’s indigenous communities still have no way of demonstrating their land tenure rights, and over 20 million hectares of land claims have not yet been processed.

Peru’s Deadly Environment is being launched at an award ceremony in which the Alexander Soros Foundation will honour Chota and his colleagues with its annual Award for Environmental Activism. Diana Rios Rengifo, daughter of one of the murdered men, will accept the award on behalf of her father and their Ashéninka community, which has been fighting for more than a decade for the right to gain titles to its land.

“They may have killed my father and his friends, but I am still here,” said Diana, daughter of Jorge Rios. “And I will continue to fight for the rights to our territories and for the rights of the other indigenous peoples of Peru.”

Peru presides over an area of rainforest roughly the size of the US state of Texas, and recently committed to reduce net deforestation to zero by 2021 as part of a $300 million deal with Norway. In 2012 deforestation rates in Peru doubled from the previous year and forest loss now accounts for nearly half the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Illegal logging is worth 1.5 times the value of legal timber exports in Peru, and allegations contained in Peru’s Deadly Environment hint at collusion between loggers and government officials. Edwin Chota had received numerous death threats for his resistance to the loggers who were gutting his community’s forests, but his appeals to the authorities were ignored. Before he died, Chota sent local police photographs of the illegal loggers who are now charged with his murder, and the locations of their logging sites.

Across Latin America, strengthening indigenous rights to their land has proven links to healthier forests and lower carbon emissions – evidence that will take centre stage at the upcoming Lima climate conference. Meanwhile hosts Peru invoked a new law in July 2014 that grants extended land use rights to investors for the expansion of large-scale agriculture, mining, logging and infrastructure projects.

“Peru’s credibility as a forest protector hinges upon providing land and resource rights to the country’s indigenous and rural populations,” said David Salisbury, a University of Richmond professor who has spent time with Edwin Chota’s community of Saweto, and who will speak at the award ceremony in New York. “If you want to keep forests standing, you have to invest in people who live in them, as they have the most at stake in the sustainable development of those areas. Saweto is a perfect example. The government should recognize there are people in the forests, and give them rights to them. How can you maintain standing forest, and mitigate climate change, if the defenders of the forest are being assassinated?”

Lima should deliver 2015 climate deal draft, CSOs insist

Climate Change

Michael Simire

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November 23, 2014

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Lima should deliver 2015 climate deal draft, CSOs insist

The meeting of nearly 200 governments in Lima, Peru in December for the 20^th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) must produce the first draft of a global deal to cut emissions, a coalition of Nigerian civil society organisations (CSOs) has said.

At the 2014 Global Week of Action for Climate Justice, Atayi Babs of the Climate and Sustainable Development Network of Nigeria (CSDevNet) decried the slow progress at the last round of talks in Warsaw in Poland, implying that significant progress is needed in key areas including climate financing and how to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

According to him, the meeting in Lima in December is a staging point towards a crunch summit in Paris in 2015 when it is hoped world leaders will agree, for the first time, a global deal on cutting emissions that includes both rich and poor countries.

“If what we want by Paris 2015 is a new binding global climate agreement, then Lima must produce a solid working draft,” said Babs.

The civil society network believes that “significant progress would also need to be made in Lima on the Green Climate Fund (a mechanism to transfer money from the developed to the developing world), the issue of “loss and damage” (whether rich countries should pay poor ones for damage caused by climate change) and a UN scheme to tackle emissions.”

The CSDevNet recently-held 2014 Global Week of Action for Climate Justice, according to Babs, are in line with the need for awareness campaigns and massive mobilisation of Nigerians on climate justice as well as the imperatives of Nigeria’s effective and gainful involvement in international climate negotiations, in the build-up to a new climate treaty in Paris 2015.

The events featured during the Week included: Pre-COP 20/Post-2015 National Consultative Workshop in Abuja; Post-2015 Agenda And Scaling Up Of Climate Justice Awareness in Akwa Esuk Eyamba community, Akpabuyo LGA, Cross River State ; Climate Justice & Post-2015 Mobilisation Meeting for Farmers in Firo Village, Gnajuwa LGA, Bauchi State; and a Climate Justice/Post-2015 Agenda Workshop for Selected Youth Organisations in South-West Nigeria, in Ibadan, Oyo State.

COP 20 Interministerial Committee Meeting in photos

Photo News

Michael Simire

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November 23, 2014

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COP 20 Interministerial Committee Meeting in photos

On Friday, 21 November 21 2014, the Climate Change Department (CCD) of the Federal Ministry of Environment in Abuja hosted an Interministerial Committee on Climate Change (ICCC) Meeting towards the 20th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 20) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC), scheduled to hold in December in Lima, Peru.

The Lima conference is expected to advance negotiations and produce a universal and concrete legally binding agreement that will elaborate a shared determination by all Parties to deliver significant national contributions to build a low carbon climate resilient future.

Besides updating core negotiators and ICCC members on the current negotiation status, the daylong meeting was likewise utilised to update the gathering on national preparation towards Nigeria’s effective participation at the conference, as well as provide information on logistics and coordination.

Incidentally, Dr Samuel Jare Adejuwon, Nigeria’s climate chief and Director at the CCD, was a year older that on the day. The gathering celebrated with him, praying and joining in the cutting of his birthday cakes.

A cross-section of participants at the ICCC meeting

From left: Peter Ekweozoh of the Federal Ministry of Environment, Prince Lekan Fadina of the Centre for Investment, Sustainable Development, Management & Environment (CISME) and Prof. Daniel Gwary of the University of Maiduguri — From left: Peter Ekweozoh of the Federal Ministry of Science & Technology; Prince Lekan Fadina of the Centre for Investment, Sustainable Development, Management & Environment (CISME); and Prof. Daniel Gwary of the University of Maiduguri

ICCC members and CCD staffers with Dr. Adejuwon

Dr. Adejuwon with members of staff at the CCD

Dr. Adejuwon's birthday cakes — Dr. Adejuwon’s birthday cakes

Bread of Life clamours end to open defecation

Water & Sanitation

Michael Simire

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November 21, 2014

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Bread of Life clamours end to open defecation

As Nigeria joined the world to mark the World Toilet Day during the week, the Bread of Life Development Foundation (BLDF), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has called on the citizenry to collectively work to make open urination and open defecation history. It also called on government bodies at federal, state, and local council levels to declare safe sanitation a human right as part of an overall strategy to achieve universal access to safe sanitation in the country.

Babatope Babalobi, Executive Director of the BLDF, disclosed: “It is a big shame that, in the 21^st century, up to 105 million Nigerians still don’t have access to safe toilets; and, out of this figure, 34million Nigerians practice open defecation. And what is even more deplorable and unacceptable is the fact that at the existing rate of progress, as reported by a recent UNDP Human Development Index Report, Nigeria may not meet the sanitation MDG target until 2076.

“Nigeria cannot continue to lament this national challenge, but we need to take action to turn out lamentations to success stories. The 2014 World Toilet Day offers an opportunity for individuals, institutions, and government duty bearers to urgently implement measures and practices that ensure every home has a safe toilet, every public place has an accessible safe toilet within 500 meters, and every institution, school, company, and office has a safe toilet that is accessible to all categories of users including the physically-challenged.

“Now is the time to ensure the sight of people squatting along road paths to defecate, men and women pulling down their clothes to urinate along the streets, citizens squatting on waste dumps to defecate, and students entering bust paths to defecate, becomes history. With individual and collective action, open urination and defecation can become history in Nigeria, just as the Ebola virus has gone into the history books of our public health.”

Proposing measures to end open defecation and improve personal and public health, BLDF says it starts by prioritising sanitation issues, putting it in the front burner of national discourse, away from the back burner it is presently relegated by political and security issues.

“Unless we openly discuss open defecation, we may not be able to put an end to open defecation. Until we stop pretending our personal ‘shit’ is not a problem, and admit there is a challenge in safely managing and disposing of our personal and collective ‘shits’, we may not make an headway in accelerating access to safe sanitation for 105 million Nigerians who don’t have access to safe toilets, and 35 million Nigerians who presently defecate in the open..”

Other measures recommended by the BLDF are listed to include the following:

The Federal Government should send a positive signal of its commitment to universal access to safe sanitation in Nigeria, by seizing the opportunity of this year’s World Toilet Day celebration to declare the right to safe sanitation for all Nigerians, and work with other arms of government and stakeholders towards progressive realisation of this right at households, community and institutional levels.
The Federal Government should honourably fulfil financial commitments for the sanitation sector made at various high-level meetings including the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 2000, United Nations Assembly, New York in 2010, African Sanitation and Hygiene conference, eThekwini in 2011, and the Sanitation and Water for All meeting in Washington, in 2012. Specifically, the Federal Ministry of Finance should ensure progressive annual increases in budget allocation and ensures that at the minimum up to 0.5% of Nigeria’s national budget is allocated to sanitation.
State and local governments should as a matter of emergency and necessity also create budget lines for water-related sanitation, particularly hygiene promotion, and safe disposal of human faeces.
Several states are yet to adopt the implementation of Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach for scaling up rural sanitation; as such the National Task Group on Sanitation should catalyst efforts in this regard, working with various state and local governments, as well as rural communities to ensure every Nigerian village is declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) within the next five years.
Institutionally, urban sanitation is presently an ‘orphan’ particularly at the state level, as many states do not have any agency charged with urban sanitation policy formulation, coordination, and service provision. To address this gap, every state should set up a State Task Group on Sanitation for state level policy coordination; and go a step further by saddling the task of provision of sanitation facilities in urban public places in an appropriate agency. In the same vein, state governments should empower their Rural Water and Sanitation Agencies to develop sanitation service in rural levels, where the body should be created in states where it does not presently exist.
Government and NGOs should consciously mainstream equity and inclusion issues in all sanitations projects to ensure sanitation facilities are accessible and usage by the 20 million Nigerians who are physically challenged, and not able to access conventional sanitation facilities.

Biodiversity convention launches compendium on Protected Area Governance

Conservation

Michael Simire

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November 21, 2014

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Biodiversity convention launches compendium on Protected Area Governance

A new compendium providing the latest and best professional information needed for protected area practitioner capacity development was released this week in the margins of the 6th IUCN World Parks Congress.

Titled “Protected Area Governance and Management,” the compendium provides information to support capacity development training of protected area field officers, field managers and executive-level managers for improving governance and management of protected areas effectively.

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity

“This compendium will significantly contribute to developing the capacity of managers of protected areas, at all levels, to deliver effective governance and management of protected areas,” said Braulio Dias, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). “Such capacity development is absolutely necessary for effective implementation of the Programme of Work for Protected Areas of the CBD, which will facilitate achievement not only of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets but also of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals and the post-2015 development agenda.”

The compendium, launched by Dias and Jane Smart, Global Director, Biodiversity Conservation Group of IUCN, was compiled by 169 authors and edited by Graeme Worboys, Michael Lockwood, Ashish Kothari, Sue Feary and Ian Pulsford.

“This compendium needs to be read by all those involved in the management of protected areas – from the heads of protected area authorities to the field managers and field officers on the ground,” said Ms. Smart. “Acting on the rich compendium of information provided in this book will help ensure that the world moves towards achieving Aichi Target 11: protected areas which are conserving the most important places for biodiversity, and which are connected, well managed and governed.”

Graeme Worboys, chief architect and driving force behind the book, said, “This information-rich compendium text book on protected area governance and management is an investment in today’s protected area managers and the next generation of park practitioners. Through their improved knowledge and competent management, it is also an investment in better biodiversity conservation and a healthier planet.”

The CBD is an international treaty for the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of the components of biodiversity and the equitable sharing of the benefits derived from the use of genetic resources. It opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and entered into force in December 1993.

With 194 Parties up to now, the Convention has near universal participation among countries. The Convention seeks to address all threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services, including threats from climate change, through scientific assessments, the development of tools, incentives and processes, the transfer of technologies and good practices and the full and active involvement of relevant stakeholders including indigenous peoples and local communities, youth, NGOs, women and the business community.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing are supplementary agreements to the Convention. The Cartagena Protocol seeks to protect biological diversity from the potential risks posed by living modified organisms resulting from modern biotechnology. To date, 168 Parties have ratified the Cartagena Protocol. The Nagoya Protocol aims at sharing the benefits arising from the utilisation of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way, including by appropriate access to genetic resources and by appropriate transfer of relevant technologies. It entered into force on 12 October 2014 and to date has been ratified by 57 Parties.

Lack of toilets traced to high child mortality rate

Water & Sanitation

Michael Simire

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November 21, 2014

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Lack of toilets traced to high child mortality rate

Thirty-six prominent international health and development experts including representatives from WaterAid, AMREF Health Africa, the World Medical Association, Commonwealth Medical Association, Global Health Council, International Confederation of Midwifes, the Nigerian Medical Association, Nigeria’s National Primary Health Care Development Agency, the Health Reform Foundation of Nigeria, the Nigerian Red Cross Society and the Nigerian Medical Students Association have called for an end to the sanitation predicament.

On the occasion of the World Toilet Day 2014, it is estimated that the sanitation situation has claimed the lives of over 10 million children under the age of five since the year 2000, with 1.1 million having died over this period in Nigeria also contributing to this figure.

In an open letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, the signatories who represent over 620,000 health professionals globally highlight the desperate waste of life caused by people not having access to a basic toilet. Without basic sanitation, children have no choice but to live and play in areas contaminated by human waste.

Seven in 10 children in Nigeria do not have access to a basic toilet, which alongside unsafe drinking water and a lack of hygiene services, contributes to three of the main killers of children: under nutrition, pneumonia and diarrhoea, the letter states.

The letter, coordinated by the international development organisation WaterAid, has been published to coincide with World Toilet Day. It also highlights that the sanitation ‘crisis touches every moment of every child’s life, from birth to adulthood, if they are lucky enough to make it that far‘.

“The WTD also sadly reminds us of the current crisis we are facing in West Africa where Ebola has taken the lives of so many. This is further exacerbated by the cholera outbreak that has continued to plague neighbouring countries like Niger, Ghana and Sierra Leone as well as pocket outbreaks of the disease in Nigeria – resulting in many sick children in our part of the world. A lack of safe toilets and clean water is a major factor contributing to this,” disclosed WaterAid.

WaterAid Nigeria’s Country Representative, Michael Ojo

WaterAid Nigeria Country Representative, Dr. Michael Ojo, said: “The dangers of poor sanitation and dirty water have been known for around 150 years, yet 121 million people (about 72% of the population) do not have a basic toilet to use in Nigeria and nearly 40 million still defecate in the open. This lack of access to basic sanitation harms the health of children and often leaves a lifetime legacy of disease and poverty. Those children need our government to collectively step up and commit that by 2030 no home, hospital or school will be without a toilet and clean water.”

The open letter to the UN Secretary-General coincides with a new briefing released by WaterAid: ‘Child of Mine’ which states that sanitation ‘remains one of the most neglected issues in developing countries and international development aid’. As the briefing highlights, this is despite a quarter of the 162 million children globally who have had their growth stunted and their physical and cognitive development impaired, because they suffered repeated bouts of diarrhoea when very young.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 88% of cases of diarrhoea are caused by a lack of access to basic sanitation, unsafe drinking water and poor hygiene provision. Globally, over 12 million children are estimated to have died from 2000 to 2013 because of diarrhoeal diseases. Of these deaths, 10.6 million have been as a result of a lack of these services.

The release of the letter to the UN Secretary-General and the publication of the ‘Child of Mine’ briefing come as governments work to complete the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that run from 2000 to 2015, and negotiate the new Sustainable Development Goals, which will replace them. WaterAid Nigeria called on government to commit to backing a new goal for everyone everywhere to have access to clean water and basic sanitation by 2030.

Executive Director of Nigeria’s National Primary Health Development Agency, Dr. Ado Mohammed, in his correspondence to WaterAid, said: “Poor sanitation, hygiene and lack of clean water contribute to the deplorable health conditions especially among children and women in Nigeria. In view of this and of our goal to eradicate transmission of the Wild Poliovirus in Nigeria at the end of the year – polio being an oral faecal disease thriving under poor hygiene and sanitation conditions as well as an unavailability of clean water sources – we lend our voice to the call for universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene.”

Amref Health Africa, which works in nine African countries to improve health through community work and strengthening health systems, is also a signatory to the letter. Amref Health Africa’s Director General, Dr Teguest Guerma, said: “Safe sanitation, good hygiene practice and clean water are fundamental to improving health and well-being. But the shocking reality is that far too many people lack even these basic services. As a result, millions of people die every year from diseases that could have been prevented.

“Progress in tackling this crisis has been far too slow but governments can take the first crucial step by strongly and publicly backing calls for universal access to these services during negotiations around the Sustainable Development Goals. As experts in health, we know that this is the necessary prescription.”

The open letter includes the call for the UN Chief, Ban-Ki Moon, ‘to lead the world to a future of better health, dignity and prosperity for all by championing a dedicated goal to deliver water and sanitation to everyone, everywhere by 2030.’

Nnimmo Bassey emerges Fellow of Nigerian Institute of Architects

Real Estate

Michael Simire

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November 21, 2014

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Nnimmo Bassey emerges Fellow of Nigerian Institute of Architects

Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey, has bagged the Fellowship of the Nigerian Institute of Architects (NIA). The renowned environmental activist, who is a trained and practicing architect, will be decorated today, Friday November 21 2014, at an investiture ceremony at the institute’s Biennial General Meeting at Ilorin, Kwara State.

Born on 11 June 1958 in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, Bassey studied architecture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he obtained a Bachelor of Architecture (B. Arch.) degree. He also holds a Diploma in Christian Theology from the GLIM Bible College (1999) and a Diploma in Biosafety (Gene Ecology) from the University of Tromso, Norway (2005).

In a statement, officials of his firm disclosed: “Bassey delivers architectural designs that respect contextual integrity, climatic conditions and the living patterns of end users. He interprets architecture as an intersection of social engineering and spatial arts. At the beginning of his architectural practice, Arc Bassey worked at the Physical Planning Division of the Vice Chancellor’s office, University of Benin, Benin City.

“In 1991, he entered into private architectural practice as the Principal Partner of Base Consult (AFR 108) and currently practices in this capacity. His portfolio is vast and diverse. Some of his projects include the Vice Chancellor’s lodges at the University of Benin and the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akumgba; Faculty of Education, University of Benin; Faith Liberation Church, Asaba; Modern Motor Parks at Uyo for Akwa Ibom State; buildings at Loyola Jesuit College, Abuja (along with Fariog Consult) and Maisonette for Alvaro De Soussa, Angola. His recent architectural work includes the on-going Festus Iyayi ASUU Secretariat at the University of Benin.”

Bassey is a man of many parts. Beyond his architectural portfolio, he is a published writer and poet. Some of his notable works are The Management of Construction; Living Houses (2005); I will not Dance to Your Beat (Poems, 2011) and To Cook A Continent – Destructive Extraction and Climate Crisis in Africa (2012), which has so far been translated in Portuguese and Finnish. He also holds several awards for his active involvement in the struggle for environmental justice around the world, especially in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

He co-founded Environment Rights Action (ERA) and is the director of HOMEF, which he founded recently. Some of his prestigious awards are theTime Magazine Hero of the Environment (2009), Right Livelihood Award (2010), Rafto Human Rights Award (2012), He was giving the Nigerian National Honour of Member of the Federal Republic (MFR) in September, 2014. Bassey serves in leadership positions in architectural, philanthropic and environmental organizations. He is widely travelled globally.

Nnimmo Bassey is an ordained minister and serves with the Gospel Light International Ministries – New Covenant Gospel Church. He is married to Evelyn Bassey and they have three sons, Otoabasi (26), Daramfon (23) and Ukpono (17).

Will new climate treaty be a thriller, or Shaggy dog story?

Climate Change

Michael Simire

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November 21, 2014

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Will new climate treaty be a thriller, or Shaggy dog story?

This December, 195 nations plus the European Union will meet in Lima for two weeks for the crucial U.N. Conference of the Parties on Climate Change, known as COP 20. The hope in Lima is to produce the first complete draft of a new global climate agreement.
However, this is like writing a book with 195 authors. After five years of negotiations, there is only an outline of the agreement and a couple of ‘chapters’ in rough draft.

The deadline is looming: the new climate agreement to keep climate change to less than two degrees C is to be signed in Paris in December 2015.

“A tremendous amount of work has to be done in Lima,” said Erika Rosenthal, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law organisation and advisor to the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

Climate science is clear that global CO2 emissions must begin to decline before 2020 – otherwise, preventing a 2C temperature rise will be extremely costly and challenging.

“Time is short after Lima and Paris cannot fail,” said Rosenthal. “Paris is the key political moment when the world can decisively move to reap all the benefits of a clean, carbon-free economy.”

Success in Lima will depend in part on Peru’s Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal. As official president of COP 20, Pulgar-Vidal’s determination and energy will be crucial, most observers believe.

Climate change is a major issue in Peru, since Lima and many other parts of the country are dependent on freshwater from the Andes glaciers. Studies show they have lost 30 to 50 percent of their ice in 30 years and many will soon be gone.

Pulgar-Vidal has said he expects Lima to deliver a draft agreement, although it may not include all the chapters. The full draft with all the chapters needs to be completed by May 2015 to have time for final negotiations.

The future climate agreement, which could easily be book-length, will have three main sections or pillars: mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage. The mitigation or emissions reduction pillar is divided into pre-2020 emission reductions and post-2020 sections.