The World Environment Day comes up in Barbados on June 5. In Nigeria, there are concerns over the safety of the environment because the government seems to have ignored experts’advice on how to make the environment safe for all. MUYIWA LUCAS reports.
It has become a yearly ritual since 1973, when the first edition was celebrated. It was established by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly at Stockholm on June 5 to 16, 1972, during the UN Conference on the Human Environment.
Today, the World Environment Day (WED) celebration has become one of the vehicles through which the UN stimulates awareness on the environment and encourages political attention and action. The UN aims to deepen public awareness of the need to preserve and enhance the environment on that day.
Through WED, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) personalises issues and enables countries and individuals to realise not only their responsibility, but also their power to become agents of change in support of sustainable and equitable development.
This year’s WED, holding in Barbados, has as theme: Raise your voice, not the sea level, in furtherance of UN declaration of the year as the International Year of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). The goal is to raise awareness on their unique development challenges and successes on a range of environmental problems, including climate change, waste management, unsustainable consumption, degradation of natural resources, and extreme natural disasters.
While Nigeria may not be a small island state, the country is not immuned from the environmental challenges being faced by the SIDS. From the coastal states, to the northern and oil producing regions of the country, environmental challenges stare the country in the face. For instance, soil degradation, rapid deforestation, urban air and water pollution, desertification, oil pollution affecting water, air, and soil, have continued to be a source of concern to the people and the environment, which has suffered serious damage.
Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey, at a paper presentation last year, noted that resolving or at least tackling the endemic environmental problems of the world required a critical review of the root causes of some of the problems as well as the political filters through which they are viewed.
According to him, the environ-mental crisis in the world is so deep that it can be said that the world is facing a real possibility of massive ecological collapse. This is not far-fetched, he argued, because it is already known that available planetary resources cannot sustain the rate of consumption. He is worried that humanity is working to show that resources and lifestyles can be sustained or stretched no matter the cost – even if it means scraping the bottom of the planet, which he said has given rise to “reprehensible extreme extraction” such as fracking or hydraulic fracturing.
Also, international bodies, such as the World Bank and the International Energy Agency, in March 2012, warned that at least 80 per cent of known reserves of fossil fuels must be left untapped if the world is to avoid a catastrophic temperature rise.
Climate justice activists had said that if the world wants a 50-50 chance of staying below two degrees, then two-thirds of the known reserves of coal, oil and gas must be left untouched. However, if 80 per cent chance is needed, then 80 per cent of the reserves must be untouched, they said at forum in Akure, Ondo State, last year.
Environmentalists have insisted that the challenges facing the Nigerian environment are enormous and multifaceted. The environment, they said, has suffered “special injury” because the implications of certain aspects of the neglect are not immediately visible, as the decay of infrastructure, such as road, buildings, water supply and telecommunications.
“Demands for environmental protection may even at times be viewed as anti-progress or development. Sometimes, policy makers simply act as though they expect that the problems would disappear on their own. That has never happened to mountains of refuse. They don’t happen with polluted streams. They don’t happen with oil spills in waterways and farmlands. They don’t happen at the local or global levels,” Nnimmo said. He blamed the trend in the environmental expression on the commodification of nature.
He said the “Green Economy” idea was premised on the suggestion that nature is best protected when it is assigned a monetary value. This means people would not protect or defend their environment except a price tag is placed on it.
“The sort of questions that are raised before nature is protected would be “what is the Ikogosi Warm Spring (Ekiti State) worth in Naira terms”? If it has a low value it could be neglected, auctioned or even destroyed,” he regrets.
Project Coordinator, Action for Sustainable Development, Tunde Odusoga, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), contended that, in the past, the government and some environmentalists tried to save the environment from degradation. He listed the tree planting initiatives of the Lagos State government and that of his organisation. These, he reckons, have not only beautified the environment, but also aided in ensuruiing a cleaner air.
Odusoga said special policies and deliberate efforts should be put in place by the government for the human race to enjoy the environment for a much longer time. For instance, he said a stop should have been put to gas flaring, just as heavy penalties should be slammed on violators of the environment.
“If the government cannot clamp down on vehicles emitting smoke into the air, then how will bigger violators of the environment be dealt with ?” he asked.
For two weeks, efforts to speak with the Lagos State ministry of environment and the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (LASEPA) did not yield any fruit as calls and text messages to the ministry and agency were not responded to.
Nnimmo, however, admitted that some measures were being taken by the government to tackle some of the prevailing environmental challenges, but there is little effect to show for these efforts. This is because the problems cannot be resolved with cosmetic solutions, but rather a system change.
“The current system is inherently anti-people and anti-environment. The system is one that sees the environment as something to be exploited, used and discarded rather than as something to be cared for and respected.The system is driven by the market logic that has been raised by the apostles of neo-liberalism to the status of religion. In this system the gods of the market cannot do any wrong. It is a system that thrives on competition, fights rough and respects only power. The system believes that whatever is needed can be created and whatever is broken can be technologically fixed. It also believes that whatever can be extracted must be extracted and whoever resists must be crushed,” he added.
Nigeria is signatory to many international agreements on the environment. These are related to Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands. Therefore, for a safer environment, experts and stakeholders, such as Nnimmo and Odusoga, want the government to, as a matter of urgency, declare a National Environmental Emergency; put in place a national environmental audit and management plan; conduct a detoxification of the environment; ensure that ecological funds are strictly monitored and used to remediate or restore damaged environment, through strict sanitation and waste management, including the revisiting and clean up of over 4000 oil spills sites; embark on a massive reforestation programme across the nation; stoppage of gas flares, and usher in a real energy evolution of clean and renewable energy, among others.
