Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 - 7 comments

Let’s prevent Nigeria from sinking to the sea

Women and young people have the skills to adapt to climate change and can be powerful actors.

There is no doubt that the consequences of climate change could be devastating. Climate change and global poverty have attracted a lot of attention in recent years as a key global justice challenge of our times. They must be combated simultaneously; we cannot take care of one without addressing the other.

Women and young people play a crucial role. They have the skills to adapt to climate change, and can be powerful actors e.g. by planting trees, maintaining forests and developing ecological food production and sustainable household energy which are also creating new sustainable jobs.

Let me explain why the The Government of Nigeria should develop a plan that addresses an enabling environment for participation of women and young people in decision making on climate change.

Climate change and poverty

Climate change refers to a change in climate that is attributable directly or indirectly to human activities, that affects the atmospheric conditions of the earth leading to global warming.

And it gets worse: Climate change has the potential to affect all natural systems thereby becoming a threat to human development and survival socially, politically and economically. Climate change will have a negative impact on poor countries who, ironically, have contributed least to the problem.

We cannot fight climate change without considering the rising energy needs of poor people and countries, nor can we effectively address global poverty without accounting for the impacts of climate change on agriculture, disease patterns, and violent weather events, all of which particularly impact the poorest countries.

Climate change presents significant threats to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals especially those related to eliminating poverty and hunger and promoting environmental sustainability.

Worrisome facts

According to a report published by the Federal Ministry of Environment, in the last 15 years the population of Nigeria grew from 89 Million to 140 million people, with an area of 923.000 square kilometers. 33.6% of the total population of Nigeria are young people between the ages of 10-24 years. Estimates show that by 2025, the number of Nigerian young people would have exceeded 57 million.

This strongly growing population in combination with the increasing desertification and sahelization threatens the feeding of the people. Natural resources decrease in the north of Nigeria. Meanwhile the sea level at her tropical coast in the south is rising. In the long run this may lead to internal migration and conflicts over the shrinking resources (fertile soil, water).

The negative impact of climate change such as temperature rise, erratic rainfall, sand storms, desertification, low agricultural yield; drying up of water bodies and flooding, are real in the desert prone eleven front line states of Nigeria. The rise of sea level of only 20cm would imply a displacement of 740,000 people in Nigeria a rise of 1m, would lead to 3.7 million and 2m to 10 million homeless people in the country.

The missing link in Nigeria’s development plan

Nigeria’s development plan does not recognize the economical threat caused by climate change nor the menace of declining oil prices which could result from a reduced consumption of fossil fuels. Concepts to deal with these issues have not been submitted so far. However, the responsible body, the National Planning Commission, announced to pay more attention to them in the future.

The newly elected president has a number of important tasks to fulfill: The diversification of the economy, the independence of fossil fuels (in this case independence of selling fuels), revitalization of the stagnant agriculture, industrialization (the share of the industrial product of the GNP has reduced about 6% in the last years) and the development of the hardly existing service sector are some keywords.

One day, Lagos might sink to the sea

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Nairobi reported about the menace that one day the city of Lagos (about 7-14 Million inhabitants) might sink completely in the sea. Against this background the efforts or rather non–efforts of Nigeria to deal with these problems have to be examined.

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of severe weather events. Poor countries lack the infrastructure necessary (e.g. storm walls, water storage) to respond adequately to such events. Diseases such as malaria are likely to have wider ranges, impacting more people in the poorest regions of Nigeria that are already most affected by such diseases.

Changing rainfall patterns could devastate rain-fed agriculture on which so much of the population in developing countries depends to survive.  The fight against poverty and the fight against the effects of climate change must be seen as interrelated efforts. They must reinforce each other and success must be achieved on both fronts jointly.

Climate change and a food crisis

Climate change can also lead to a food crisis in Nigeria.

40% of the African Gross National Product is obtained in agriculture and 70% of all African labour is employed in this sector. The dominant role of agriculture makes it obvious that even minor climate deteriorations can cause devastating socioeconomic consequences.

Over 80% of Nigeria’s population cites agriculture and fishing as their primary occupation. Our food production system will be adversely affected by variability in timing and amount of rainfalls, frequent outbreaks of crops pest and diseases, food shortage will increases and many farmers could lose their sources of livelihood due to climate change. The ultimate result at the end would be a deepening food crisis, as well as worsening weather, energy decrease and general environmental breakdown.

People will now go to any uninformed extent to get water. Climate change has lead to indiscriminate sinking of bore hole in different communities, this has quantifiable lead to a disastrous threat to AQUIFER status of different part of Nigeria, It has been observed that you now need to dig deeper to get to water in the arid and semi- arid area of Nigeria, place like Bauchi, Maiduguri,Gombe to mention few.

A youth and gender perspective

We must recognize that climate change will undermine efforts to poverty eradication and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, so that it raises serious questions of climate justice and equity. We must recognize that a gender sensitive strategy is a precondition to the rising challenges of sustainable development.

We must note with concern the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change presented in its 4th Assessment Report, that climate change may affect most strongly the poorest regions and people, especially women, young people and children through impacts on agriculture, food security and availability of water, which are traditionally women’s tasks in many developing countries.

Today’s youth and future generations will inherit the climate system in whichever way governments decide to leave it.

Engaging young people in actions to address climate change is a critical element to any nation’s strategy. Young people are also a key point of influence for other segments of society (e.g., families and communities). If citizens come to understand what the risks of climate change are and how they can play a role in reducing the impact of climate change, they can become an integral part of the solution. Youth are an important source of creativity, enthusiasm and drive for any actions to address climate change.

The importance of engaging the next generation of decision makers those who will feel the brunt of the negative impacts of climate change has been widely agreed upon, yet youth participation within the process has been insubstantial and has not received continued support.

Women and young people can play central role in changing the consumption and production patterns to sustainable ones. Women’s local knowledge and experience of the environment should be tapped in designing climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Before this doom befall us in 2050

Recent IPPC findings show that by  the year 2050, developing countries will face a threat of  250, 000 million be without waters, 20 million people  will be displaced( homeless) due to water upraising from the seas, 20 – 30% of the world animal species will go into extinction due population explosion and desert encroachment of the forest. The global temperature will increase by 4.5% by the year 2050 (IPPC).

Nigeria has no better time than now to begin to plan adaptation and mitigation to climate change before this doom befall us in 2050.

The views expressed in this blog-post are solely those of the author.