People in West Africa are confronting enormous environmental problems, and Canada isn’t part of the solution, writes David Israelson, a writer and consultant based in Toronto
Lots of people who fish complain about their catch, but Abdulahi Traore has good reason.
“We don’t catch what our families can consume for a day,” he says, pointing to a plastic box holding a few tilapia in his pencil-shaped dugout canoe. After fishing for nearly 10 years in the estuary, called the Ebrie Lagoon, offshore from Abidjan, Ivory Coast that is home to some 3.5 million people, it’s not only the catch that’s getting worse — the water is too.
It’s easy for Canadians to overlook environmental problems like this 100-km West African lagoon, a rich, soupy sea that contains some 150 species of shellfish, but also some of the world’s nastiest pollution. We’re not exactly setting a great example with our own water and coastlines.
I found out how little I knew about West Africa — and how much there is to learn — when I conducted a workshop for journalists on behalf of th United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) here.
I also tried to learn what Canada is doing to lend a hand — not much.
For years we have all been told to think globally, act locally when it comes to the environment, but focusing on either the big picture or our own backyards can draw our attention away from important regions that are under stress, like this coast.
The question is, when it comes to the environment, is Canada thinking at all?
UNEP administers an international agreement called the Abidjan Convention, drafted in 1984 and signed by 22 countries that have a collective population of some 400 million. The signatories, from Mauritania to South Africa, share some 14,000 km of coastline, agreeing to co-operate on research, marine protection and an action plan for keeping the coastline clean.
When we toured we learned how the water is contaminated with sediment, raw sewage, detritus from cargo ships and tankers, industrial waste and garbage. One section of the estuary is a ship graveyard, where stripped-down hulls of abandoned vessels were left to rust and rot.
The estuary’s natural cleaning agents, mangroves, are disappearing. Farther off the West African coast, many areas are overfished. Foreign factory trawlers drop explosives near the continental shelf, scoop up the fish and leave.
The local public is exposed to cholera, typhoid and other diseases in part from the marine pollution, says Ivorian environmental specialist Thierry Mangle, who accompanied us on the harbour tour. He fears “an ecological catastrophe” — it’s not that nothing is being done, it’s just that much more is needed.
Why should we care in Canada? It’s important because the world really is getting smaller.
What used to be local or regional environmental problems are now capable of reaching across continents; the 21st century is becoming the century of the environmental refugee.
What should we do? It doesn’t take much. The Swedish International Development Agency sponsored the journalists’ program I conducted, and another Swedish non-governmental group is working with local people on cleaning their part of the lagoon.
Where is Canada? I wish I knew. What I do know — and the Africans know too — is that our environmental reputation is being sullied, and we’re the culprits.
It has been degraded by a federal government that attacks environmental groups at home and which has weakened our own water pollution laws, shut down research, silenced government scientists and failed by most measures to address climate change.
No one expects Canada to be a leader in regional environmental issues such as West Africa’s marine pollution. But people here do notice who shows up, and it’s not us.
This is a time when we should be building bridges in emerging markets, and there’s a growing market for environmental cleanup technology. But it’s hard to be competitive when you have a bad reputation at home — it can reach around the world.
People here are trying to build a network of experts who can share information and work on solutions — journalists, environmental scientists, community workers and UN officials.
They face daunting challenges — they’re not always well paid and they meet political obstacles and in many cases, repression. They want to build a network of people to share their stories and their experiences with each other and with the world.
Which should leave Canadians asking — what kind of environmental story do we have to share?
Experts and development partners have called for prompt actions to end Obstetrics Fistula through provision of quality maternal health care and accountability mechanisms. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about two million young women live with untreated Obstetric Fistula in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Obstetric Fistula is a medical condition in which a fistula (hole) develops either between the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and vagina after severe or failed childbirth, when adequate medical care is not available. It is considered a disease of poverty because of its tendency to occur in women in poor countries who do not have health resources comparable to developed nations.
This condition harms women physically, socially and economically, and often leads to isolation from families and communities, thereby deepening their poverty and worsening their sufferings.
Predisposing Factors
Gynaecologist and Technical Adviser at Development Communications (DevComs) Network, Dr. Olalekan Olaniyan, says early marriage, illiteracy, ignorance and poverty predisposes women to obstetrics fistula. According to him, poor health-seeking behaviour, delays in using health facility, delays in reaching health facility, poor health infrastructure (for caesarean delivery when needed) make the risk of Obstetric Fistula even greater.
Executive Director, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Dr. Babatunde Oshotimehin, in a release on International Women’s Day marked recently, said that about 20,000 girls below age 18 give birth in developing countries daily and nine in 10 of these births occur within marriage or union.
Nigeria is one of such countries where child marriage and harmful traditional practices are common, while percentage of birth delivered in a health facility is 35.8 percent, according to Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) preliminary report, 2013. Consequently, over 64 percent of births take place at home and other places, due to several factors such as inability to afford health services, distance to health facility, concern that there may not be a female provider, and attitude of health workers.
Prevention
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Obstetric Fistula is preventable and can be avoided by delaying the age of first pregnancy, ending harmful traditional practices and timely access to obstetric care.
Olaniyan calls on government to improve health systems and social infrastructure, in order to provide prompt caesarean session for women going through prolonged and obstructed labour. He also advocates for alleviation of poverty, illiteracy and end of harmful traditional practices.
Benefits
Preventing and managing Obstetric Fistula contribute to the Millennium Development Goal 5 of improving maternal health, says the WHO. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) recommends universal access to reproductive health services, including maternal health care and fistula treatment. It adds: “We must eliminate gender-based social and economic inequities, discourage early childbearing, promote education and human rights, and foster community participation.”
United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, in a statement to observe the International Day to End Obstetric Fistula, says it is important to raise awareness of the condition because it is not well-understood even in societies where it is prevalent. “The more understanding and action we generate today, the more we can look forward to a future where obstetric fistula is virtually unknown,” he said.
DevComs Network’s Media Officer, Ayodele Adesanmi, observers that the condition is synonymous to ending prolonged labours, which is the duty of all stakeholders, including government, health workers, community members and the media. “The role of the media in reducing stigmatisation and violation of the rights of women leaving with fistula cannot be over-emphasised,” he contends.
Call to Action
Ending Obstetric Fistula is the responsibility of all stakeholders, however, the government must play a leading role and show will and commitment to improve the quality of maternal health services rendered in the country through increased budgetary allocations and provision of infrastructures. “Obstetric Fistula still exists because health care systems fail to provide accessible, quality maternal health care, including family planning, skilled care at birth, basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care, and affordable treatment of fistula,” says the WHO.
Increased advocacy and social marketing are key components in increasing health insurance coverage among Nigerians. Similarly, dearth of credible information has created a wrong perception about health insurance because of the sharp practices experienced by health insurance users.
Chairman of the Lagos State Chapter of the Association of General and Private Medical Practitioners of Nigeria (AGPMPN) Dr. Jimmy Arigbabuwo, who expressed these sentiments, stated that, to achieve universal health coverage, the only global language is health insurance and Nigeria cannot be an exemption.
“Our poor health indices stand the potential of recording better scoring once we aspire to embrace health insurance. It is not fair that a user of healthcare facility moves from his/her place to another several kilometers of the nearest Primary Health Centre or General Hospital because of inability to afford cost of treatment in a private hospital. Health insurance will address this challenge and put a final stop as prepaid capitation and subscription makes every healthcare facility, public or private, available and accessible for use by all and sundry irrespective of your social status, creed, religious, political or economic standing,” Arigbabuwo submitted.
He added that all healthcare facilities, small and big, should get accredited through the various regulatory authorities and operators of health insurance, state and national, including community-based health insurance to pave way for universal health coverage.
An executive member of the Lagos AGPMPN, Dr. Austin Aipo, estimates health insurance coverage in the country at about six percent, but adds that 30 percent can be achieved if the state government pulls together resources meant for free healthcare into health insurance.
Dr. Aipo said if health insurance is well implemented, data generated would aid the government in planning health budgetary allocations.
This year’s World Family Doctor Day has “Universal Health Coverage” as its theme and the Nigeria AGPMPN is a member of the World Organisation of Family Doctors.
Following a review of current trends within the sector, experts have expressed concern over the prevailing situation and called for a thoughtful financial initiative that would aid the provision, management and maintenance of water. They likewise want the issue of infrastructures and sanitation addressed.
At a daylong Media Roundtable on “Resources Mobilisation for Improved Water Supply and Sanitation service delivery in Lagos State” held recently in Lagos, stakeholders gave prodigious revelation of shortage of water in the state. However, some state officials rose in defence of the government.
The event was organised by the Water and Sanitation (WASH) Media Network with the support of Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council and WaterAid in West Africa.
The meeting, which brought together journalists reporting water supply and sanitation issues for print, electronic and online media, sought to identify financial needs for accelerating and ensuring universal coverage of safe water supply and sanitation services to residents of Lagos State. It was also to meant determine how required financial resources could be mobilised from government agencies, private sector, donors, private sector, and consumers to meet investment needs.
In a presentation, National Chair, WASH Media Network, Babatope Babalobi, said with the estimated population of Lagos at 21 million, the state needed about 1.6BLD potable water to meet daily consumption by its residence, adding that only 7 million Lagosians out of the estimated population of between 17.5 million and 21.3 million currently have access to potable water supply.
He added that for the state to meet her Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015, over 10 to 14 million of her dwellers must have access to potable water supply and warned that if something drastic was not done to address the situation, sub-Sahara African countries would not meet the MDGs water target till 2046 and the sanitation target till 2076.
According to him, the demand projection implies significant capital requirements for infrastructure expansion, estimated to be in the range of $1.5 to 2.0 billion, averaging around $100 million per year over the next 25 years, saying these would be required in order to reach 80 percent coverage of its target in the state.
Babalobi, who submitted that the contribution of the state government to rural water supply and sanitation in the last six years was minimal, as only a donor agency contributed over 56 percent funds utilised on all activities related to rural water and sanitation, added that rural water supply and sanitation were poorly funded.
Though he gave kudos to the state for creating the Wastewater Management Office, he however said that the agencies were still in dire need of funds to meet the sanitation challenges of the mega city status of Lagos.
Chairman of the event, Prof. Lekan Oyebande, said in the area of innovative funding sources, cost recovery poses a great challenge, adding that Lagos has not done well in that regard, and urged for the launching of serious initiative towards ensuring that operation and maintenance cost was contributed in the mega urban region by water users.
According to him, “The high level of unaccounted for water should be seriously tackled. If such losses can be recovered, or reduced to an acceptable level, the savings will represent a significant source of innovative investment in the state.”
Officials of the Lagos State Water Corporation (LSWC) disclosed that the “Lagos Water Supply Master Plan” that spans 2010 to 2020 and within three terms would cost an estimated $2,485,950 (N402,723,900).
A major step was taken recently in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, where nature conservation practitioners gathered for two days to fashion out a way to save the threatened biological diversity of the Niger Delta region in Nigeria.
While it harbors a large reserve of untapped oil and gas, the sprawling region is characterised by high biodiversity, abundant natural resources and extreme poverty. Believed to be one of the largest wetlands in the world and Africa’s largest delta, the region produces an estimated 2.2 million barrels of oil per day.
Decades of oil exploration, characterised by persisting pollution of land and sea, has led to large scale degradation of the environment, putting the areas rich biodiversity at risk. While residents’ source of livelihood and lifestyle are on one hand dwindling, several species of flora and fauna are, on the other, facing extinction.
But succour may just be around the corner, thanks to an initiative aimed at contributing to the conservation and sustainable use of globally significant biological diversity in the Niger Delta, with the overall objective to mainstream biodiversity management priorities into the region’s oil and gas (O & G) sector development policies and operations.
Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the project is being implemented by the Federal Ministry of Environment and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The scheme aims to strengthen the governance framework of law, policy and institutional capacity for the mainstreaming process; adopt and pilot new biodiversity action planning tools for proactive mainstreaming; and support for long-term biodiversity management and the use of the new tools in the region by capitalising a Niger Delta Biodiversity Trust.
To attain these outcomes, several constituted expert working groups were inaugurated in Port Harcourt, where a representative of the Environment Minister (Laurentia Mallam), Halima Mohammed, lauded the initiative, saying that it calls for new ways of doing business in the delta.
“Government, being one of the major players in the industry, aligns itself with the stated goals and objectives. If government, the O & G industry and local communities adopt and pilot new biodiversity action planning tools for proactive biodiversity mainstreaming in the Niger Delta, a major shift would have been achieved for the benefit of biodiversity and its sustainable utilisation,” says Mohammed, who doubles as an Assistant Director in the Environment Ministry and a GEF Desk Officer.
She adds: “An engagement mechanism is very important to ensuring a platform for communication among all players for the benefit of the biodiversity of the region. The innovative funding mechanism which the project recommends is commendable. As a major stakeholder, we have already ensured our buy-in.
“However, it is recognised that the peculiar nature of the delta demands a regular review and update of strategies. We salute the UNDP for the catalytic role it is playing in the sustainable management of the situation.”
Director-General/Chief Executive Officer, National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA), Sir Peter Idabor, describes the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan (NOSCP) as a veritable tool in biodiversity management because the plan’s primary concern is to ensure that the region’s rich biodiversity resources are protected from the impact of oil spill by putting in place adequate preparedness, control and response measures for sustainability.
According to him the NOSCP – a blueprint for the management of all oil spills in the Nigerian environment, especially three-tier-level incidents – has mainstreamed the sensitivities of the biological diversity of the Niger Delta to oil spill incidents for the purpose of identifying high risks for effective protection.
National Coordinator of the Niger Delta Biodiversity Project, Matthew Dore, discloses that the geographic focus of the project is on the four core states within the Niger Delta (Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers) which. Combined, encompass an area of 46,420 km2 (the ‘indirect landscape mainstreaming target’).
“The physical footprint of the O&G company assets within this area is admitted by the industry to be 600 km2, which is considered the project’s initial ‘direct landscape mainstreaming target’,” he as, stressing that the project would bring improved biodiversity management to these areas indirectly and directly.
A total of eight groups were incorporated at the forum. One of such groups (Group 6) is seeking to devise a Niger Delta Community Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP). Chaired by environmental activist, Nnimmo Bassey, the group of 12 members notes that community engagement should focus on local communities’ dependence on ecological resources for food, water, livelihood and aesthetic wellbeing.
Bassey, who is a member of the Environment Committee at the ongoing National Conference, listed criteria for selecting sites for the project to include: accessibility; possession of reasonable and recognised biodiversity at the global, national and local levels; freedom from disputes; and demonstration of a high sense of leadership.
“Consider the cattle, grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today, they leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morning till night and from day to day, fettered to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy nor bored. (…) Ever trusting in the divine provisions of nature and the reliability of human wisdom to sustain them…”
Nowhere in Nigeria does the above quotation from Untimely Meditations, by Friedrich Nietzsche, finds its truest expression than Mutum Biu Village, where local knowledge-driven technology meets with scientific adaptation measures, enveloping into an environmental splendour of sustainability and climate resilience.
Faced with adverse climate effects on rangelands, growing degradation of grazing lands with attendant soil erosion, loss of vegetation, changes in hydrology, and disrupted plant and animal communities, livestock grazers in Mutum Biu, a sleepy community on the Benue plains near Mambilla Plateau, in Taraba State, North-East Nigeria, decided to look within by tapping into native wisdom to create a local rotational grazing formula which significantly improved their sub-Saharan grassland production for grazing.
Speaking recently during a visit to the area by scientists from the Federal University, Kashere Nigeria and Lincoln University, New Zealand, the Head of Cattle Grazers Association who doubles as the Traditional Ruler of Mutum Biu, Ardo Guruza, gleefully revealed that they had to create the rotational grazing formula when “it dawned on us that grazing land on the Mambilla Plateau was fast depleting and desertification was setting in, necessitating the usual mobility southwards but with increasing agro-pastoralist crisis all over Nigeria, we had to look within ourselves to come up with this difficult but successful formula which demanded discipline and strict adherence from us.”
According to Chief Guruza, about three seasons ago, certain sections of the grazing land on the Mambilla Plateau were demarcated with local wires and all livestock grazers in Mutum Biu were sensitised on the need to graze their cattle in the non-demarcated areas. After a period of time, the locations were interchanged and the results were astonishing as their livestock grew in strength and number, eradicating decades of agro-pastoralist conflict as movement down southern Nigeria became unnecessary for Mutum Biu livestock farmers.
Adamu Fugo, a farmer in the community, corroborated the success story of the Mutum Biu rotational grazing formula. He said: “I am a farmer, and I have been doing rotational grazing for almost years years now. Rotational grazing did not only boost productivity of our land, but took the land to a whole new level of holistically managed and planned grazing. We are able to graze more livestock on the same land, we did not suffer drought even during dry season.”
Prof Bruce McKenzie, the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Lincoln University, and Prof Stephen Goldson, a research Theme Leader for the Bio-Protection Research Centre at the same university, who were part of the team that came to the Mambilla Plateau to provide expert advice on ways to further improve sub-Saharan grassland production for grazing through technology-driven methods, commended the community’s ingenious effort at adapting to climate change.
Prof McKenzie affirmed: “We did find some legumes growing throughout the Mambilla Plateau. This is encouraging in that it indicates that soil pH may be suitable for sowing other high value varieties. However, improving the plant species needs to be coupled with the reinforcement of the subsisting rotational grazing system.” “Going back to the era where cattle were left to indiscriminately graze, will undermine the grassland irrespective of plant types,” says Professor McKenzie. One cost-effective way of achieving this could be via the New Zealand-developed solar-powered electric fence technology; a suggestion that was met favourably by the local cattle grazers spoken with.
As climate change continues to cause additional stress to many West African rangelands including Nigeria, it therefore becomes necessary to promote and implement rotational grazing as the only viable grazing strategy with the capacity to arrest the decline and speed up the recovery of affected ecosystems while ensuring that the direct economic and social impacts are offset by a higher return on other ecosystem services and land uses.
According to a new report by eight researchers featured in Environmental Management, a professional journal published by Springer, “Climate impacts are compounded from heavy use by livestock and other grazing ungulates, which cause soil erosion, compaction, and dust generation; stream degradation; higher water temperatures and pollution; loss of habitat for fish, birds and amphibians; and desertification. Encroachment of woody shrubs at the expense of native grasses and other plants can occur in grazed areas, affecting pollinators, birds, small mammals and other native wildlife. Livestock grazing and trampling degrades soil fertility, stability and hydrology, and makes it vulnerable to wind erosion. This in turn adds sediments, nutrients and pathogens to western streams.”
The report further affirmed that grazing and trampling reduces the capacity of soils to sequester carbon, and through various processes contributes to greenhouse warming. Rotating or significantly reducing grazing is likely to be far more effective, in cost and success, than piecemeal approaches to address some of these concerns in isolation.
As desertification increasingly becomes a fancy word for land that is turning to desert, fanning the embers of agro-pastoralist conflicts across Nigeria, and climate change continues to affect public land ecosystems and services throughout Africa with these effects projected to intensify even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, adaptation strategies such as the homegrown, local but nonetheless effective rotational grazing system in Mutum Biu and the New Zealand-developed solar-powered electric fence rotational technology are needed to ensure that the fruitful, green fields of Africa are trod by both man and animal in a manner that secures a sustainable future for all!
About this time last year this writer had the tough job of settling a dispute between two friends. One is a Nigerian from the Niger Delta and the other a South Africa from the Witbank area. Their argument was over which was the most polluted place in Africa. Was it the oil fields of the Niger Delta or the coalmine fields of Witbank, South Africa? Pollution should not be a badge of honour for any people.
Bassey
Without debate, these two locations are among the places worst afflicted by hydrocarbon extractive activities. The abandoned coalmines of Witbank are infernal places, littered with sinkholes and abandoned mines that are literally in fire. You are hit by the smell of sulphur as you approach some of the fields, and you simply must walk gingerly behind your guide or risk being swallowed by the waiting pits.
Sinkholes or just that: sinkholes. You could be walking, and suddenly the earth caves in and you are sunk into old coalmines. There are reports of schools and homes getting swallowed up by the hungry disembowelled earth.
South Africa does not hold a patent to sinkholes. There are at least one thousand, one hundred sinkholes in the tin mine fields of Jos. These sinkholes are testimonials of rapacious exploitation of nature where the exploiters care nothing about the environment as long as they have grabbed the money-spinner from the bowels of the earth. So it was that once crude oil became the major income earner for Nigeria other productive activities were relegated to the background. We appear to be experts at stepping into fresh water streams, drawing some water and muddying the rest.
Muddying the water is an apt metaphor for the situation in the oil field communities in Nigeria.
Over the 56 years that oil has been exploited commercially in Nigeria, the Niger Delta has been savagely abused. An environment that was once noted for its beauty and rich biodiversity is now an environment barely surviving on life support. Gas flares blaze from over 200 furnaces tormenting, terrorising and polluting communities 24 hours daily non-stop for decades. Oil spills are a regular occurrence and each time they happen the oil companies attempt to wiggle off liability by claiming that their spills are caused by third party interferences. They have so made ‘sabotage’ a song that even the most discerning can be drawn into believing their stock characterisation of even spills caused by the bursting of their aged pipelines that ought to have been put out of commission.
Toxic drilling muds and produced water are dumped daily into the lands and the creeks of the oil fields. Rather than stop these atrocious acts, heal the land, water and air, we ignore the realities on the ground and play politics with our very lives.
Since 13 per cent of oil rents began to be paid to states where oil/gas is extracted, there has been a tendency by some analysts to suggest that the revenue sharing formula unfairly favours those states. The contrary is the truth.
There are murmurs against the continued existence of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC) and even the recently created Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs (MNDA). We agree that an entity such as the Ministry of Niger Delta Affairs does not address the real challenges of the oil field communities. Indeed this ministry may simply multiply bureaucracy while holding down the overall budget.
As is characteristic of Nigeria’s penchant for infrastructure politics, the NNDC and the MNDA focus a whole lot on provision of infrastructures. They operate almost as ‘government social responsibility’ outfits mimicking the so-called ‘corporate social responsibility’ efforts of the polluting oil companies. Due to years of utter neglect and human rights abuse these paltry gestures receive applause at times. Imagine an oil company displaying a supposed sense of responsibility by building clinics next to a site where they constantly dump toxic pollutants.
If we pay attention to the amount of damage that has been inflicted on the oil field communities we cannot escape the urgent need to invest in a massive clean-up of the entire region, covering all the Niger Delta states and other states like Ondo and Abia states where oil is extracted. We believe that if Nigeria were to embark on a thorough clean up and remediation of the environment of these states it would quickly be clear that a 13 per cent slice of the revenue would be a drop in the bucket.
Why do we say this?
First of all, hydrocarbon pollutions do not simply vanish without human efforts. They are toxic pollutants and must be handled technically and scientifically. Sadly, the best efforts cost a lot of money, but never really eliminate the problem. We do not have a record of really cleaning up spills and other harmful pollutions. Of course the gas flares roar on despite being outlawed since 1984. Even the proposed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is a toothless dog as far as stopping gas flaring is concerned. The crime will continue at the pleasure of whoever is the minister in charge of petroleum resources.
Secondly, we look at two examples of clean-up efforts in the USA, assuming that the best efforts were brought to bear there. The Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 was cleaned up soon after it occurred. Twenty-five years after, evidence of the spill still remains. Four years ago the world was shocked by BP’s monster Gulf of Mexico spill. After billions of US dollars in fines and desperate clean-up efforts, the surface of the Gulf appears normal, but the impact on the aquatic life and on the coastlines remains. Both the crude oil and the chemicals used to fight the spills have indelible impacts on the environment. Even a casual visit to our communities show that our land is groaning under the weight of pollution. The story is the same whether you go to Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom State, Goi, Bodo City and Erema in Rivers State; Ikarama and Kalaba in Bayelsa State; Ubeji and Iwerekhan in Delta State; Oben in Edo State and Ago Iwoye in Ondo State.
The case of the 1970 oil spill at Ebubu Ejama in Rivers State is mindboggling and illustrates the fact that hydrocarbon pollution cannot be wished away but must be dealt with. That spill has remained fresh despite the efforts by the offending oil company to cover it with soil and to fence off the crime scene. Some of the crude oil has caked into coal like rocks. They just will not disappear. And we cannot ignore them. Neither can the community people pretend there is no open sore in their backyard, poisoning their farmlands and waters.
Another case to consider is the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) assessment of Ogoni environment. The report is almost three years old and is still begging for action beyond signposts confirming that Ogoniland is polluted. The UNEP report confirmed that all waters in Ogoniland are polluted with hydrocarbons and at places the water has benzene, a known carcinogen, at levels 900 times above WHO standards. The land itself is polluted at several places to a mind-boggling depth of five metres.
It is sad that not a pinch of the 13 per cent goes to environmental remediation. It is even sadder that ecological funds that ought to be dedicated to environmental restoration has become nothing more than just another political fund, another additional cash to be squashed.
UNEP said $1 billion would be needed to set up the framework for the clean-up of Ogoniland to begin. It is estimated that the waters will require 25 years to clean up while the land could be restored in five years. Experts estimate that it would require at least $100 billion to clean up Ogoniland. Almost three years after the UNEP report, we are still dithering, doing nothing about what has been clearly shown is killing our peoples.
We must not forget that oil extracted was halted in Ogoniland in 1993 although aged and problematic pipelines still cross through the area. Oil extraction and accompanying deadly pollutions continue unabated in the oil fields elsewhere.
Our conclusion is that oil money should be used to clean up oil pollution. And this is the time to do this. Oil is fast becoming an old energy form as the world comes to terms with the fact that the burning of fossil fuels for energy and for transportation is a critical contributor to global warming. Coupled with the fact that crude oil and gas are not renewable resources we do not need to argue that, one day, they will either get exhausted or become useless commodities in a world that would eventually see sense in fighting for the survival of the planet. Crude oil will slide into history, like it or not.
The implication is that we are running a deficit account with our petroleum resources. Oil pollution has reduced life expectancy in the communities to barely 41 years. The lands are polluted, the rivers and creeks are dead and the air has been stuffed with diseases. When we join Nigerian politicians to merely fight over the sharing of oil wealth we are fighting the wrong fight.
Our collective fight must be to restore our lands. Our collective fight must be to reclaim our lands. We should fight gas flares with the knowledge that they contribute to global warming and are a factor to desertification in 11 frontline states in the North. It is time to unite and put the money where the problem is.
Our fight should not be about sharing rents, but owning the resources in our lands as well as the means of production by which the materials in our domains are transformed. Fortunately, Nigeria is richly endowed. We have abundant natural resources everywhere we turn to. We have resourceful people. We need to take ownership of our resources, know that they are ours, work them and preserve our environment and stop the attitude of taking what we can grab and then damaging the rest.
Resource ownership is a win-win situation. It means we can exploit our resources or permit others to do so, but have a joint agreement about the financial architecture and arrangements that would engender the common good in a true federation. This is the concept of resource democracy that we must interrogate and pay close attention to, no matter how jolting it may initially seem to be. Placing the pot at the centre may be a romantic notion but, truth be told, it makes beggars of us all.
Resource ownership will put Nigeria back to work, allow us to reclaim the damaged environments of the tin mines of Jos, the coal mines of Enugu and Kogi, the gold mines of Zamfara and the cruelly wreaked environments where crude oil and gas are exploited.
Old and fossilised ways of thinking will not resolve current problems. The concept of predatory exploitation of disaster is worse than primitive capitalism. We have to wake up to the reality that, to escape poverty as a people, we must see beyond accumulating money but rather ensure that we invest all that is needed to restore our bastardised environment and thus secure a future for our children and the planet.
We have a choice to make. One option is to agree that no part of this Nigeria should be despoiled and abandoned simply because all we want is the revenue that comes from that territory. That option suggests that we would do all necessary to bring health to our challenged environments. The other option is to carry on with business as usual: extract, exploit, destroy, terrorise, oppress and move on with loaded purses not caring how irredeemably damaged the environment is. We shudder to think about what will happen when opencast mining of bitumen begins in Ondo and other states. That will be worse than the deadly crude oil fields.
This is the time to think beyond today and think about the future. At our stage of history we have to stop being appendages to paralysing financial and political constructs. A massive investment clean-up activities to rescue the Nigerian environment will create jobs and revive livelihoods, rebuild cultures and restore fading memories of what biodiversity we once had, what its fresh air smells like and how refreshing it is to drink from the creeks without dashing to the bare hospitals. It is time to turn to the productive, contributory path rather feasting on each other’s harm.
By Nnimmo Bassey (Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation)
Minister of Environment, Laurentia Mallam, as the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Political Focal Point for Nigeria, will lead the country’s delegation to the Moon Palace Hotel on Mexico’s Mayan Riviera from 25th-30th May, 2014 for the 5th GEF Assembly.
Mallam
The GEF Assembly is an international conference organised by the GEF every four years and plays the role of a Global Environmental Summit. The Assembly is the main governing body of the GEF with about 80 ministers and 1,500 delegates from 183 countries, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the Private Sector participating in a series of events that span over a week.
Key activities of the session will include High-level Roundtables and Panels, a CSO Forum, Side Events and the opportunity to visit GEF projects across the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The 4th GEF Assembly was held in Punta Deleste, Uruguay from 24th-28th May, 2010.
The GEF Assembly is one of the governing bodies of the GEF in which representatives of the 183-member countries participate. It meets once every four years to review and evaluate GEF policies, operations, as well as membership. The Assembly considers and approves proposed amendments to the GEF Instrument.
Nigeria is the most populous country in the West African sub-region and is among the countries in the region that is being supported by the GEF Trust Fund to address a myriad of environmental challenges.
GEF supports projects in the following focal areas: climate change, biodiversity conservation, sustainable forest management, land degradation International Waters, Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and ozone depleting substances. These projects are implemented as full and medium size projects, enabling activities to the Conventions as well at the community level under the GEF Small Grant Programme (SGP) which has resulted in successes some of which have been globally acclaimed and won awards such as the Equator Prize.
To date, Nigeria has implemented a total of 39 full size, middle and enabling projects while the GEF Small Grants has supported 113 projects through NGOs and CBOs. The implementation of GEF projects has benefitted Nigeria immensely from the various strategic relationships that have been developed and maintained over the years between the government and our development partners. The country’s partnerships with the body has contributed to the steady and growing increase in the GEF portfolio and profile, lending credence to the role of international partnership for development.
Therefore, as part of the preparation for Nigeria’s participation in the upcoming Fifth GEF Assembly, the GEF Office in Nigeria in collaboration with the GEF Implementing Agencies and GEF Project offices is planning to organise an exhibition of its experiences with GEF projects in the country.
Nigeria GEF officials hope the exhibition will further showcase the good works of GEF globally and in Nigeria in particular, enhance better understanding of the results of the projects and encourage further discussions and possible replication thereby contributing to GEF’s global transformational goals of addressing environmental issues.
Objectives of the exhibition are:
Showcase GEF funded success stories and achievements in Nigeria over the past years;
Share knowledge on the peculiarity of Nigeria and how GEF support has made a difference at all levels;
Demonstrate the linkages between the reinforcing linkages between the different ranges of project sizes; and,
Celebrate the existing strong partnerships with our partners that have contributed to the successes experienced.
Activities of smugglers who bring in staple foods into the country have continued to hampers government’s effort at reducing malnutrition among Nigerians.
Head of Nutrition, Federal Ministries of Health, Dr Chris Isokponwu, stated this recently during a media workshop organised by Nestlé on Creating Shared Value held in Lagos.
Dr Isokponwu submitted that, among efforts towards ensuring basic food produced in the country contain the right nutrients, smugglers activities continue to pose a challenge to eradicating malnutrition in the country.
“When basic foods such as salt, vegetable oil and sugar are smuggled through our borders, we can’t vouch that such goods contain the needed nutrients like iodine and Vitamin A required for body growth and development. There has been increasing awareness among food producing companies to introduce iodine and Vitamin A as supplement nutrients in their production. That is why when you look at the packaging materials of products in the markets, you see inscriptions and logos such as vitamin A or iodine fortified. These nutrients are important in the body and especially for children.”
He said that Nigeria is the first country in Africa to obtain the universal salt iodization certification in 2005 but there has however been a decline to 53 per cent presently.
He pointed out that efforts made by the government to reduce under-nutrition include mandatory fortification of staples with vitamin A, Bio-fortification of cassava and maize with vitamin A.
President of the Nutrition Society of Nigeria, Professor Ngozi Nnam, while speaking on the role of nutrition and right feeding in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, noted that the nutritional composition of a child in this critical period of formation determines her/her health status in the long run.
“Stunting, underweight, kwashiorkor are all signals of acute malnutrition. In Nigeria, malnutrition is an underlying cause of more than 54 per cent of child deaths. When a child is not properly fed with the right nutrients in the first 1,000 days, it affects the body and brain development of that child. From research, poor nutrition of a child affects the nation’s development because when the brain of a child is not properly developed the child ends up with a low I.Q. In the future, the child won’t be able to contribute mentally to the development of the country,” she concluded.
Reports have it that the North Eastern and Western parts of the country have the highest number of malnourished children with 42 per cent and 54.8 per cent respectively.
Seasoned science journalist, Diran Onifade, in a lecture titled “Effective approach to reporting water issues”, urged journalists to report water issues with the focus of the people in mind.
“Water is a key necessity of life and many Nigerians can barely access clean water for household use. When people lack water, it has a ripple effect as their health is affected, and sickness and diseases are imminent. Let your stories portray the challenges and plight of how an ordinary Nigerian struggles to get water. Government has always committed to provide water for the people but do people actually have access to water?” he demanded.
The average Nigerian worker spends about seven to eight hours at his or her workplace every work day.
One question safety experts have always asked is: How safe is the Nigerian worker and his environment?
In celebration of the International Workers’ Day marked on May 1st, the Safety Advocacy and Empowerment Foundation (SAEF), a non-governmental organisation, in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation (ILO), organised a roundtable on the challenges facing the Nigerian worker and work place safety.
The event also observed the International Day of Safety and Health at work with the theme “Safety and health in the use of chemicals at work.”
A report by the ILO stresses that while chemicals can be useful, necessary steps should be taken to prevent and control potential risks for workers, workplaces, communities and the environment.
Executive Director of SAEF, Jamiu Badmos, explained that safety within and around the work place environment is a key factor to the productivity level of the worker.
He added that, due to the importance of safety, the Lagos created the Lagos State Safety Commission headed by Dominga Odebunmi.
Akintayo Blessing, a health/safety practitioner, pointed out that the immediate environment of the health worker such as hospitals and laboratories posed a great safety risk to him/her. She stated that a lot of the epidemics experienced in some African countries were as a result of negligence on the part of these countries’ governments.
Health/safety expert, Wole Akinseloyin, said, “Consequences of safety negligence is what differentiates the Western world from the African counterparts in terms of work safety ethics. Whereas safety offenders are severely punished or heavily fined in the West, offenders here are hardly caught and those reported are rarely brought to book.”
Chairman, Institute of Safety Professionals of Nigeria (ISPON) Lagos chapter, Mr. Nwagu, called on the National Assembly to ensure the speedy passage of the Safety Bill.
He said, “The bill, which has passed the Third Reading at the Senate chambers, if signed into law, would go a long way in empowering safety professionals in the discharge of their duties.”
The event had in attendance notable health and safety experts and occupational safety professionals from different parts of the country.
