Africans collaborate, tackle REDD
According to the participants, REDD+ is a carbon offset mechanism whereby industrialised Northern countries use forests, agriculture, soils and even water as sponges for their pollution instead of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at source.BRICS and sustainable development worries
When Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Vladmir Putin of Russia, Manmohan Singh of India, Xi Jinping of China and Jacob Zuma of South Africa met recently under the aegis of BRICS in the South African coastal city of Durban, the leaders explored the creation of a development bank, in follow up from the previous summit. The last summit was the fifth in the series.
Focused on establishing an infrastructure-focused bank, the heads of states fashioned out what it would do and how it would provide an equitable return on the initial investment of about $10 billion.
Host President Zuma said the summit addressed South Africa’s economic problems, such as high unemployment, adding: “BRICS provides an opportunity for South Africa to promote its competitiveness. It is an opportunity to move further in our drive to promote economic growth and confront the challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment that afflicts our country.”
Daniel Twining of the German Marshall Fund said: “Ironically it may be the cleavages within the BRICS grouping that more accurately hint at the future of the global order: tensions between China and Brazil on trade, India on security, and Russia on status highlight the difficulty Beijing will have in staking its claim to global leadership.”
The media suggested the bank was way to bypass the IMF and the World Bank. The criticisms did not end there. Environmental activists have also picked holes in the activities of the group in the area of climate change and sustainable development.
For instance, Nnimmo Bassey of Oilwatch International recalls that when BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) collectively gave $75 billion to the IMF in 2012, “it was not Europe or the US which lost voting power – but Africa.”
He went on: “When BRICS (minus Russia) signed the ‘Copenhagen Accord’ with Washington in 2009, this deal confirmed that the fossil-fuel addicted economies could continue polluting unabated while the rest of Africa is cooked by climate change. The governments of the BRICS pretend that they are standing up against neo-colonial and imperial forces. They also suggest that their countries’ corporations compare favourably to the global North’s. These claims have little foundation in reality. The BRICS’ infamous power, oil and other fossil-fuel companies (whether private or state-owned) engage with impunity in the same misbehaviour that foreign transnational companies in the same fields do. They aid repression, drive environmental destruction and harm local livelihoods.”
According to Bassey, Brazil’s Petrobras, Russia’s Gazprom and Lukoil, India’s CoalIndia Ltd., China’s CNPC and Sinopec, and South Africa’s Sasol, among others, are all extending their reach deep into their continents and beyond, taking advantage of each country’s role as regional hegemon.
Bassey wrote: “Given the definition of the BRICS as a grouping of ‘markets’ rather than societies, it is not surprising the way they are reduced to their products. As Russian analyst Anna Ochkina writes for the Durban ‘brics-from-below’ coalitions: ‘Brazil is essential for agricultural supplies, China provides cheap labour, India supplies cheap intellectual work force for high tech industries, South Africa provides minerals and Russia supplies minerals, oil and gas. The scale and conditions of provision of these resources for global capital makes BRICS countries essential for the current system’.
“While the BRICS present themselves as offering benevolence to the territories they plan to economically carve, their own peoples have to endure serious socio-economic, political and civil rights violations. They live with serious inequality, lack of adequate infrastructure, increased levels of violence and other symptoms of development oriented not toward people but rather toward government and corporate profit.
“Oilwatch views groupings of this ilk as attempting to partition the world into various markets and spheres of influence, and to support each other as they meddle in the affairs of nations they work to exploit and oppress. Blocs like the BRICS are wedges for breaking apart other, more democratic spaces, eroding solidarity and promoting narrow market interests.
“Africa’s minerals and other resources have been objects of desire for plunderers and adventurers of every ilk over the centuries. Of late, land grabs have supplemented the grabbing of other African resources. Through these grabs, BRICS and similar blocs seek to entrench failed neoliberal agendas as well as an already obsolete fossil fuel- and dirty energy-driven civilization. The BRICS do not seem to realise that the destination of their planned drive on wheels of markets driven by dirty investments and the grabbing of resources is a brick wall. Or dead troops in search of their leaders’ mineral interests (as in unfortunate South Africans in the Central African Republic just as BRICS begins its Durban summit).
“The grouping of nations into blocs by commodities and financial traders such as Goldman Sachs must rank as one of the most blatant subversions of the collective rights of peoples today. The situation will only be exacerbated by Goldman Sachs’ likely influence over the BRICS Bank proposed at a recent March meeting in South Africa. One leading Johannesburg official at Goldman Sachs is the former governor of the South African Reserve Bank, and Pretoria has requested that SA be the host for the new BRICS Bank – which Beijing reportedly supports.
“Such a BRICS Bank could only exacerbate the social, economic and environmental chaos already caused in part by multilateral financing. Existing development finance institutions in BRICS countries – like South Africa’s Development Bank of Southern Africa or BNDES, the Brazilian development bank – offer sobering lessons. The spectacular failures of Goldman Sachs, as well as those of other Wall Street companies holding huge stocks of physical commodities such as oil storage tanks, metal warehouses and power plants [3], should send strong signals that their dreams and desires must be repudiated and rejected.
“Oilwatch International denounces the contraption called BRICS and all other groupings set up to drive divisive and exploitative agendas around the world. We believe the time has come for the peoples of the countries in groups such as the BRICS, G8, and G20 to demand that their elected leaders shun those harmful blocs that destroy formal multilateral spaces and plunge the world into violence and deeper crises as evidenced by spiralling climate change, financial, economic and food crises.”
Cost of conserving the forest, curbing emission
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) implies a set of steps designed to use market and financial incentives in order to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from deforestation and forest degradation. Put simply, it entails compensating communities to conserve their forest resources. Its objective is to curb GHG emission, based on the notion that plants act as a carbon sink by absorbing carbon dioxide (a GHG) to prepare their food and emit oxygen as waste product.
While deforestation is the permanent removal of forests and withdrawal of land from forest use, forest degradation refers to negative changes in the forest area that limit its production capacity.
Development of a REDD mechanism has progressed significantly since 1995 with the set up of a United Nations (UN) programme and various capacity building and research activities. Projects are also being trialled through national government programmes and the private sector. REDD+ is playing a playing a major role in a post-2012 international climate agreement, even though many challenges are still to be addressed.
REDD is sometimes presented as an “offset” scheme of the carbon markets and, thus, would produce carbon credits. Carbon offsets are “emissions-saving projects or programmes” that in theory would “compensate” for the polluters’ emissions. The “carbon credits” generated by these projects could then be used by industrialised governments and corporations to meet their targets and/or to be traded within the carbon markets.
REDD activities are undertaken by national and international organisations support developing countries engaged in the process. The World Banks’ Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF), the UN-REDD Programme, and Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative are such examples.
Observers believe that the genuine actors of REDD are the populations whose livelihoods derive from forests. Indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities, they add, are the frontliners of REDD, and the success of REDD activities will largely depend on their engagement.
At the 7th UN-REDD Policy Board meeting held in October 2011 in Berlin, Germany, Nigeria’s National Programme Document (NPD) on REDD+ Readiness was approved with a funding allocation of $4 million. This was followed by a series of events – a capacity building and awareness programme (or REDD+ University) and a stakeholder-wide reassessment of the plan (Local Project Appraisal Committee (LPAC) as well as Technical Review meetings) – that set the stage for the execution process.
Nigeria REDD officials are likewise exploring other REDD+ financing windows, such as the FCPF, where the country intends to raise about $3.6 million.
The “+” in REDD implies that it is more than just avoiding deforestation. Indeed, it is tied to measurable and verifiable reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation as well as sustainable management of forests, conservation of forest carbon stocks and enhancement of carbon stocks.
This is because a REDD strategy need not refer solely to the establishment of national parks or protected areas; by the careful design of rules and guidelines, REDD could include land use practices such as shifting cultivation by indigenous communities and reduced-impact-logging, provided sustainable rotation and harvesting cycles can be demonstrated. Some argue that this is opening the door to logging operations in primary forests, displacement of local populations for “conservation” and increase of tree plantations.
According to some critics, REDD+ is another extension of green capitalism, subjecting the forests and its inhabitants to new ways of expropriation and enclosure at the hands of polluting companies and market speculators.
Nigerian environment activist, Nnimmo Bassey, insists that REDD+ is not designed to stop deforestation.
“They at best defer deforestation. Even if the carbon stocks in the trees are adequately computed and credits are issued for them, the trees do not live forever, and so the carbon would be released one day. The false base of market solutions, including cap and trade measures…and now REDD were laid in Kyoto and continue to drag the world in the wrong trajectory. We do not need to keep on that track. Nigeria and other nations with forests ought to be ready to allocate funds for adequate management/protection of our forests instead of depending on schemes that simply allow polluters to keep polluting while ‘paying’ for their sins in forests in ‘poor’ countries,” says Bassey, who headed the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (FoEN) for 20 years.
He adds: “We should not forget that REDD, as generally is the unfortunate case with the FAO and the UN system, accepts plantations as forests. Clever scientists may keep devising more false solutions to climate change, the fundamental cause that needs to be tackled remains mankind’s dependence on fossil fuels coupled with the notion of unending growth.”
IIED: How climate change threatens food security of urban poor
Policies to increase food security in the global South focus too much on rural food production and not enough on ensuring poor people can access and afford food, especially in urban areas, says a report published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
It warns that climate change will only make this policy gap worse, because climate change impacts will affect not only harvests but also the systems that people use to transport, store and buy and sell food.
“Food security is back on the agenda thanks to rising prices and the threat that climate change poses to agricultural production,” says the report’s author Dr Cecilia Tacoli. “But policies that focus on rural food production alone will not tackle the rising food insecurity in urban areas. We also need policies that improve poor people’s ability to access and afford food, especially in urban areas.”
Most people in urban areas must buy their food and this makes the urban poor particularly at risk. Any climate-induced disruption to food production, transport and storage – either in the urban area itself or in distant farmland – can affect food supplies and prices in urban areas.
Yet most policies that aim to increase food security focus solely on boosting production from farms and fisheries in rural areas.
“The journey that food takes from a rural producer to an urban consumer involves many steps,” says Dr Tacoli. “It must travel through formal and informal systems as it is stored, distributed and sold. Each one of these steps is a point of potential vulnerability to climate change. For consumers, this will mean sharp and sudden increases in food prices.”
The report highlights the link between income poverty and food insecurity in urban areas. For most low-income urban citizens food represents a sizeable portion of the money they spend. Even small increases in price would therefore have big impacts of food security, with citizens reducing the amount and quality of the food they buy.
For the residents of informal urban settlements, food insecurity is also the consequence of lack of space to store and cook food, lack of time to shop and prepare meals, inadequate access to clean water and often non-existing sewage systems. These settlements are disproportionately affected by floods, typhoons, heat waves and other impacts of climate change because they tend to be located in areas more exposed to these events, and because they lack the most basic infrastructure.
Tacoli says that governments must rise to these challenges by ensuring that policies can protect the urban poor from food insecurity linked to rising prices, inadequate living conditions and the effects of climate change in both rural and urban areas. Decent and stable employment is essential but not sufficient: adequate infrastructure and housing and access to formal and informal markets are just as important.
“Climate change threatens to multiply many of the big challenges that face the world’s urban poor,” says Tacoli. “Policymakers need a far better understanding of what it means to be poor in an urban centre.”
Climate change: Lagos may upgrade urban plans
The Lagos State Government has been called upon to review and upgrade its urban development master plan to include climate change and adaptation considerations.
Similarly, participants at the recently-held 5th Lagos State Climate Change Summit agreed in a communique released at the end of the event that a well-articulated state-level housing and urban policy that mainstreams climate change mitigation and adaptation into the house building sector should be developed and implemented for more environmentally-friendly and climate-resilient homes that will meet the requirements of the rapidly expanding population in the state.
Besides ensuring a multi-disciplinary approach to the planning, design, construction and management of urban infrastructure, the state government was urged to continue to pursue the development and implementation of a long-term strategic and inclusive vision that is embedded into the current planning, especially land use allocations, while promoting infrastructure with integrated design solutions.
Indeed, government was likewise told to continue its efforts to utilise multi-modal mass transport system, such as the BRT and water transport, in promoting climate-resilient transportation; even as sustainability in transportation system should be improved by integrating telecommunication access to reduce demand for mobility or transportation.
“Governments at all levels should promote climate-smart agriculture and strengthen capacity of small-holder farmers to mainstream climate change impacts into their activities for the attainment of national food security,” declared the communiqué, calling on the authorities to integrate food security and sustainable agriculture into their policies to promote sustainable rural livelihoods in the face of climate change.
A word of advice went to the Federal Government, which was tasked to provide for the private sector an enabling environment to aggressively pursue climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives in the interest of green development. The FG, along with state and local government, were urged to properly mainstream climate change into their infrastructural development for resilience and sustainability.
Lagos Environment Commissioner, Tunji Bello, on his part, charged the Federal Government to live up to its responsibility by collaborating with the state on how best to reduce the effect of climate change in the bid to develop a sustainable policy framework on the topic.
He expressed dissatisfaction on the manner the Federal Government is handling the climate change issue, stressing that the effects are transboundary, and hence the need for more awareness on global warming.
He said, “Nigeria is vulnerable to climate change and the impacts are already manifesting in the country. We find must find a solution to it now because of the future generations of our country.”
Bello hinted that the primary aim of the annual summit is to create more awareness and change the perception of the populace so as to finding workable solutions to climate change.
He disclosed that the Lagos State Government would develop a work plan on solutions proffered at the summit in order to achieve set goals and objectives.
Bassey: 20 years of ERA’s struggle
Erstwhile Executive Director of the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), Nnimmo Bassey, has said that the secret of the organisation’s success over the past two decades of its existence lies in the fact that it viewed every scene of environmental harm as a crime scene.
He noted on Tuesday in Abuja in a presentation to commemorate 20 years of the civil society organisation that, even though ERA sometimes resorted to civil actions as a measure of resistance, it was obvious that these were not sufficient to stem environmental crimes.
Bassey, an architect and head of ERA/FoEN since 1993, wants environmental laws to be fine-tuned to make it possible for criminal charges with long jail terms to be pressed against individuals and corporate bodies who reap profits from environmental damage.
“Ecocide would be an appropriate umbrella law to confront the massive lawlessness that run rampant across Nigeria and many nations of the world today,” he submitted.
The activist revealed that he and his colleagues remained focused over the years and especially during the difficult days when Nigeria was under military dictatorship “because we had dedicated ERA people and because we had an unambiguous philosophical compass that ensured we did not drift. Today I look back with satisfaction that ERA people, whether in or outside ERA, have stayed the course.”
He added: “Over these years, we have suffered persecution, faced afflictions and enjoyed triumphs. Our triumph has been that our work with communities impacted by deforestation, land grabs, oil spills, gas flares and pollutions of all types has succeeded because the people have resolutely stood against the pushers of these harmful practices.
“Today I look back across 20 short years of momentous changes. I am happy that the four persons (Oronto Douglas, Nick Ashton Jones, Godwin Ojo and I) who brought this group to be are still engaged in the defence of Mother Earth in one way or the way. I remember our days of challenging harmful big dams in Northern Nigeria, massive logging in forests in many of our southern states. I remember our struggles against oil spills and gas flares. I remember our battles against wholesale destruction of communities by government to pave the way for corporate claws to sink deeper into our lands.
“We have fought steadily against the wasting of our environment and livelihoods by the petroleum sector. The world’s addiction to carbon-high life has elevated dirty oil companies to the level of the gods. Easy oil has now given way to tough oil. The scraping of the bottom of the barrel has thrown up dangerous extractive methods and spewing ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and sentencing the world to climate catastrophe. And while global leaders would not commit to provide funds for adaptation and resilience building, multiples of what is needed is being expended on wars fought for profit at the expense disposable lives – sometimes in the name of exporting democracy. In the era of peak oil it appears we have passed over peak democracy without attaining democracy in the first place.
“Today I call upon all of us to tell the emperor that he is naked, to tell the promoters of neoliberalism that they are running (at one spot) on empty tanks! Let us shout it out loud: it is time to leave the oil in the soil; from Yasuni to Ogoni, to Kaiso in the Rift Valley to Lofoten in Norway. And if Nigeria is serious about fighting global warming, gas flaring must be stopped immediately. Shutting down oil production in order to tackle the gas flaring problem makes economic sense if we consider the implications of catastrophic global warming. And of course the government must halt oil theft, halt the regime of unaccounted for oil through lack of metering. Do I need to add that delays in cleaning up Ogoni land and other polluted parts of Nigeria are an unacceptable disregard for the right to life and to a safe environment of the people.
“Today, while celebrating our 20 years of marching on for environmental rights, I remember individuals and communities who have greatly inspired me as a person: Ken Saro-Wiwa, executed by the state on false charges on 10 November 1995. I remember the peoples of Umeuchem, Bakalori, Odi, Odioma, Ilaje, Gbaramatu and others. I salute the mentoring I continue to receive from our foremost community activist, Comrade Che Ibegwura who, at over 80 years, keeps trudging on the path of environmental justice. I salute Sister Majella Macarron, a Catholic nun from Ireland whose gift of books in those early days helped to frame our work. I salute my colleagues in ERA. I salute my wife and family for unstinting support over the years. I salute all our comrades across Africa and across the continents of the world. Your presence here today is of great significance to me and to us.
“As we look back, we also look forward. Twenty years have passed. Twenty more will come; and much more still. The road is long and the runners will be many. The baton must be passed on. And so, while remaining in the trench with the foot soldiers, it gives me great pleasure to hand that baton to my brother and comrade, Godwin Ojo. And I thank you for marking this day with us.”
Megachurches and environmental concerns
A nationwide economic downturn that emerged over a decade ago – and appears to persist even as we speak – spelt a depression in the manufacturing sector, and forcing a considerable number of industrialists out of business. Some relocated to neighbouring West African countries.
Worsened by the trademark erratic power supply, more industrial spaces became vacant, leading to a glut and depression in the real estate market. Empty warehouses as well as dormant and decaying factories littered everywhere.
Incidentally, a new spiritual consciousness was sweeping across the land. The upsurge in Christian religious activities meant bigger and more financially-capable churches, as cash-strapped manufacturers surrendered their properties to a more formidable religious sector.
With cash in the bank to back the desire for a more spacious place of worship to accommodate their continuously expanding congregation, churches soon began buying up the industrial properties.
Instead of goods, the warehouses began stocking salvaged souls for the Lord.
Churches also put into new use institutional and commercial buildings like town halls, night clubs, events centres and hotels.
The churches did not stop there. More daring and ambitious ones left the built-up cities and headed to outskirt locations where land is cheap and abundant. They acquired acres upon acres of virgin land, cleared it and built from the scratch.
While the Living Faith World Outreach Centre (or Winners Chapel) built “Canaan Land” in Ota, Ogun State, the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) came up with “Redemption Camp”, even as the Mountain of Fire & Miracles Ministry (MFMM) designed “Prayer City”, both within the Ibafo-Mowe axis in Ogun State by the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. These mixed-use centres occupy camp grounds, worship centres, residential and commercial complexes as well as educational facilities.
The churches are also redefining the tertiary education sector with the establishment of universities, which have given the real estate sector and the general economy a boost. RCCG (Redeemer’s University), Winners Chapel (Covenant University), Foursquare Gospel Church (McPherson University), Baptist Church (Bowen University) and the Seventh Day Adventist Church (Babcock University) have all established tertiary institutions.
Perhaps in the bid to provide shelter for needy faithful, some churches have ventured into direct real estate development as well as the establishment of Primary Mortgage Institutions (PMIs). The RCCG, for example, has been linked with the Lagos-based Jubilee-Life Savings & Loans Limited, which built the “Jubilee Golden Estate” that houses the church’s pastors and worshippers.
Observers have listed the RCCG among the world’s top cadre of mega churches. It has thousands of parishes nationwide and is present in over 70 countries. The RCCG operates over 40 primary schools all over Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone, as well as some secondary schools and maternity centres in Lagos, Oyo, Ondo and Kano states.
The church has over 150 parishes in North America, but its Dallas (Texas, United States of America) version of the Redemption Camp on 250 acres of land may have set the tone for the church’s inclusion in the “exclusive club” of big-time religious bodies. Texas is ranked the second US state with most mega church members, behind California and ahead of Georgia.
On the global stage, RCCG, Winners Chapel, Christ Embassy and Celestial Church of Christ are some notable mega churches of Nigerian origin.
But grumblings by neighbours and local officials who claim that the “giant houses of worship” cause noise, traffic jams and environmental damage seem to be getting louder.
Residents in and around the Lagos-Sango Ota highway complain of traffic bottlenecks as a result of the activities of Winners Chapel, not only on Sundays, as the exodus to Canaan Land compounds the already-chaotic traffic situation. The Sagamu-Ibafo stretch of the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, which has become a haven for religious bodies’ camps and prayer grounds, is a traffic dark spot.
Besides concerns related to noise pollution, on-street parking during church services reduces the right-of-way and narrows down the rate of vehicular movement. Ninety percent of the existing places of worship are said to be operating without a planning permit.
A worried clergyman insists that the church, supposedly a divine instrument of order and excellence, has not risen up to the occasion to address what could be corrected in the Nigerian environment.
He says: “Nigerian churches are full of people on Sundays but the influence on the society between Monday and Saturday is another story – it is almost zero. Otherwise, how could one explain the pile of trash that’s been sitting next to a church building (name withheld) for so long and church members come and go but never feel it is their responsibility to the community to do anything about it?
“But the Jesus saves! And he does. But he won’t clear the trash, repair the streets, clean the street gutters and get rid of unwanted structures.
“If Pastor Enoch Adeboye of the RCCG mobilises members of that powerful and influential organisation to come together for a day of trash-clearing in Lagos, they will respond.
“Bishop David Oyedepo of Winners Chapel can mobilise the 50,000-plus church attendees to collect their offerings in church on a particular Sunday in a month and dedicate it to repairing one road at a time. Before you know it, knowing the competitive juice in the blood of our people, other churches would follow the leadership of Winners Chapel.”
By Michael Simire
World Water Day 2013: WASH journalists urge govt to fulfill commitments
The Water and Sanitation Media Network, a coalition of journalists reporting water and sanitation issues in Nigeria, has called on the Federal Government to accelerate access to safe drinking water and sanitation services by fulfilling the commitments it made at high level meetings to leverage additional financing to develop the nation’s water and sanitation sector.
In a statement released to mark the World Water Day, March 22, the Water and Sanitation Media Network notes with regret that the Federal Government has failed to fulfill none of the 26 commitments it made at the high level meetings.
“Nigeria has not fully achieved any of the 26 WASH commitments it voluntarily made in several high level meetings between 2000 and 2012. These commitments made at four high level meetings between 2000 and 2012: the World Summit in Johannesburg in 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. But none of them have been fulfilled so far by the Nigerian Government,” said the Network.
The body says ‘this explains why 35 million Nigerians still defecate in the open, about 90 million are without access to safe drinking water, and 130,000 under-five Nigerian children die annually from preventable water borne disease.
Some of the unfulfilled commitments are listed to include:
1. Harmonisaiton of water and sanitation policies;
2. Promoting WASH in schools;
3. Intensify increasing water and sanitation budgets by 15%;
4. Ensuring at least 0.5% of the Gross Domestic Product to promoting sanitation and hygiene;
5. Declaring access to water and sanitation a human right;
6. Encouraging state and local governments to create budget lines for sanitation;
7. Scaling up community-led total sanitation in the 36 states;
8. Increasing national access to improved sanitation to 65% by 2015; and
9. Increasing national access to improved water by at least 5% by 2014.
The body therefore called on the Federal Government in Nigeria to keep its promises and initiate practical policies, programmes and projects to develop the country’s WASH sector, and improve access to WASH services.
As the World marks the 2013 World Water Day, the Water and Sanitation Media Network notes: “Access to improved water and sanitation still remains a major challenge in Nigeria. Water and sanitation coverage in Nigeria are among the lowest in the world. According to the 2008 report of the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP), Nigeria is in the bottom 25 countries worldwide in terms of water and sanitation coverage. At the current rate of progress, Nigeria is predicted to meet the water MDG target in 27 years but may not meet the sanitation MDG target for 124 years.
“The Nigerian MDG national targets are 82% for water and 65% for sanitation. Estimates of the investment in water supply and sanitation required to meet these MDG based targets range from $2.5 billion (MDG Office) to $4 billion annually ($1.7 billion for water supply and $2.3 billion for sanitation—CSO2 costing). Out of the calculated $2.5 billion annual investment required to meet the MDG targets, only about $550 million is being injected by the Nigerian Government due to limited resources and competing needs, leaving a huge investment gap to achieve these targets.
“On the occasion of the 2013 World Water Day celebration on March 22, the Water and Sanitation Media Network urges the Nigerian Government to stop ‘talking the talk’ but start ‘walking the talk’, because 33 million people are without toilets, over 868,000 Nigerian children die each year, about a quarter of which are from water-related and vaccine preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, meningitis and measles; and, according to a UNDP report, Nigeria may not achieve the MDG water target before 2046 and that of sanitation by 2076.“
Climate change and violence against women, girls
The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day celebration, “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women,” signals the urgency to take concrete actions to monitor and address the drivers of violence against women and girls in Nigeria.
Apart from HIV/AIDS and social cultural norms that tend to permit violent behavior, the devastating impact of climate change is another key driver that may increase and even undermine efforts to end violence and impunity against women and girls in the country.
Last year alone, the combination of violence unleashed by the dreaded Boko Haram Islamic sect in the Northern part of the country, effects of the devastating floods and the various communal conflicts occasioned by competition for scare grazing land by nomards, has left many women and children on the receiving end of violence in Nigeria.
The sexual violence suffered by women and girls who were displaced as a result of the deadly floods which ravaged about 30 out of the 36 states of Nigeria last year was horrifying. It was reported that over 19 young girls were raped and many others molested in the camps where they took refuge from the floods that displaced them from their homes.
The circle of violence and the capacity of climate change to deepen the violence already faced by women and girls were highlighted in the case of a friend In Lagos who, after escaping from a violent relationship and a break-up with her husband, sought refuge in cultivating a rice farm. The impacts of the 2011 July 10 heavy rainfall and floods in Lagos that washed away her rice farm and destroyed her apartment ensured that she was rendered homeless without any means of livelihood.
The economic violence imposed by social and economic losses as a result of the floods have left many families without any means of livelihood, triggering another level of violence against women and girls. Men tend to vent their frustrations and unleash violence on their wives and children when faced with economic hardship as their breadwinner status in the home is perceived to be threatened.
Women and girls living with disability face double jeopardy from climate change and violence. Most of them are already experiencing sexual violence which they cannot prevent by reason of their disability. On the other hand, climate change could be a cause of further disability to them, thus increasing their exposure to violence.
It is evident that we cannot win the battle against violence without responding adequately to the threat of climate change. The intersection of climate change and violence has profound implications for women’s livelihoods and well being. Thus, to combat the threat of climate change and the violence that it may likely bring is an extremely important task which demands a comprehensive approach.
One important strategy which is needed first and foremost is to map the various drivers of violence against women and girls and review existing strategies to combat violence to take account of climate change. One of the many ways of doing this is to strengthen existing social protection mechanism by integrating climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and gender.
An extremely important intervention which can have far reaching impact in reducing the exposure of women and girls to violence triggered by climate change is the articulation of a framework that addresses loss and damages from the impacts of climate change. A systemic compensation initiative must be worked out to speedily compensate women and men immediately after a climate disaster to help them cope with the aftermath of climate disasters.
Local climate change financing should also take a gender and social inclusion approach to ensure that finance to address climate change takes account of women, children, people with disabilities and other vulnerable and marginalised groups who are often the victims of climate change and violence.
As we celebrate the International Women’s Day, let us remember that the time to take action to combat climate change and end violence against women and girls is now! Together we can end violence against women and girls in Nigeria.
Titilope Akosa is the Executive Director, Centre for 21st Century Issues (C21st) Nigeria, while Titilola Kazeem is the Programme Officer, Climate Change and Environment, C21st Nigeria
