“Climate of Change,” a play that depicts the impact of climate on rural folks, has won the third prize in the Drama Category at the recently-held Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Convention in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
According to Elaigwu Ameh, the writer of the play that has been published as a book, Climate of Change also got high commendation from ANA for its presentation “of the complex and often scientifically abstract climate change issue in a simple, educative and entertaining way.”
Ameh added: “As a result of the prize, some ANA chieftains have called for more readings and performances of Climate of Change across the nation in order to spread the climate change message to more people.
“I want to express my sincere gratitude to the Federal Ministry of Environment (FME), Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and JICA for using Climate of Change to elucidate and accentuate the plight of a plurality of poor rural dwellers in Nigeria, who livelihoods are maligned by the variability and unpredictability of climate.
“This award and widespread publicity for a cause that is dear to you and me would not have been possible without your generous and proactive support.”
The play is a snapshot of rural dwellers’ struggle for survival and integral development in a climate-constrained world. It takes the reader or audience on a journey into the lives of rural dwellers, while portraying their apprehension, courage, despair, hope, flaws and strengths.
By emphasising the linkage between climate change on one hand, and then gender, health, politics, conflicts and food insecurity on the other, the play seeks to draw attention to the fact that climate change is indeed one of the defining challenges of our time and must not be treated with levity, according to Ameh.
On why the UNDP/AAP is supporting the initiative, Muyiwa Odele of the Sustainable Development Unit of UNDP Nigeria submitted: “UNDP recognises that Art has a crucial role to play in changing society. Since behavioural and attitudinal changes are some of the keys to tackling climate change, this stage play is just natural. The play will not only engage everyone in a deep way but also in a personal way.”
The perception of the transition to a green economy requires a refocus, according to Environment Minister, Hadiza Mailafia.
Hadiza Mailafia
She said last Wednesday at the National Assembly in Abuja at a forum that legislative alliance is required in the shift to green growth which, according to her, is more than environmental issue but an economic revolution that presents tremendous opportunity for business.
Mailafia, represented by Samuel Adejuwon, Director of the Climate Change Department in the Federal Ministry of Environment (FME), emphasised that low carbon economy would increase competition, catalyse efficiency and innovation, create new jobs and open new exciting markets.
A green approach to business likewise directly reduces operational costs through motivating increased efficiency and innovation, added the minister, in an address at the opening of the event with the theme: “Pursuing a legislative agenda to enhance Nigeria’s green growth: Developing an efficient oversight framework for resource governance.”
The daylong Dialogue was hosted by the House of Representatives’ Committee on Climate Change, the FME, Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Mailafia said: “To achieve an effective policy blueprint, we need the lawmakers’ collaboration, commitment, support and, most essentially, strong legislative backing to establish a framework to guide the actualisation of this pathway.
“Furthermore, effective green growth will not be achieved without the push from the private sector. Direct leadership by business will help guide policy development and demonstrate a resolute commitment to drive forward the transition to a profitable green economy.”
She noted that the green economy approach requires a new level of mainstreaming that goes beyond business-as-usual.
“The linkage of ‘green’ and ‘economy’ with human well-being and social equity as core goals requires renewed commitment to measure and value human and natural assets more appropriately, and to put them at the centre of economic development. It also requires more inclusive and proper incentives provided through economic instruments, regulations, sound framework conditions for innovation and technology diffusion, distributional policies and voluntary initiatives that can help channel investments – public and private – towards targeted sectors and enhance the effectiveness and fairness of such investments.
“Indeed, there is a clear requirement for a stronger web of collaboration, partnerships and regulation that spans between levels of government and the private sector. Based on this premise, the Ministry of Environment welcomes this laudable initiative of pursuing a legislative agenda to enhance Nigeria’s green growth and the development of an efficient oversight framework for resources governance,” Mailafia stressed.
Greening the economy implies reducing emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in developmental pursuits to ensure economic growth and poverty eradication.
Todd Stern and Jonathan Pershing are President Obama’s diplomatic climate change negotiators, charged with representing America’s interests in the tumultuous U.N. global warming negotiations.
Pershing
They are described by environmentalists, fellow negotiators and former colleagues as smart, pragmatic and occasionally didactic. Nearly all used similar language to describe the tough political and diplomatic obstacle course Stern and Pershing have had to navigate over the past four years.
They were: “constrained” by Congress. “Hands tied” by the domestic policy and “walking a tightrope” between moving the U.N. negotiations ostensibly toward a global treaty while avoiding promises to cut emissions or deliver money that the government cannot keep.
Stern
With President Obama winning a second term last Tuesday, activists are hoping for a more productive environment. Now is the time, they insist, for the White House to embrace climate change as a priority, lay the foundation for domestic legislation and prepare the United States to join a treaty that will keep the global average temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
“There seems to be a little bit of an opening here,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists. He pointed to Superstorm Sandy, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s eleventh-hour presidential endorsement of Obama based on climate change, and Obama’s own victory speech, in which he envisioned an America “that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.”
But Meyer and others said significant action will require Obama to do what he didn’t in his first term: expend political capital.
“I think the question for the White House is, does the president want to make this a legacy issue?” Meyer said. If so, he said, that requires a “major effort” from the administration, starting at the very top.
Starting out with applause
Cheers greeted Stern at his first U.N. climate meeting in 2009 after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tapped him to lead the negotiations. “We’re back,” was Stern’s message in those first heady days, along with a promise to “make up for lost time” — specifically, time lost under the George W. Bush administration.
So happy was the United Nations to end the Bush era, in which the Kyoto Protocol was declared “dead” and the very words “climate change” verboten, that, as one developing country diplomat recalled, negotiators applauded Pershing — a scientist who headed the delegation of the World Resources Institute before joining the U.S. team as Stern’s deputy — as he walked into a meeting hall.
“I remember Jonathan being applauded as he came in. It wasn’t even a COP [Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change],” the diplomat said. “Then things started to get difficult. Not in the first moment. In the first moment, it was positive.”
Things soured quickly, from the perspective of European countries and developing nations. The United States put forward an emissions pledge most considered too weak. Meanwhile, the realization that carbon cap-and-trade legislation was simply not going to pass the U.S. Senate slowly snowballed through the international consciousness.
Still, the United States promised to cut carbon 17 percent below 2005 levels this decade. All the while, Stern and Pershing insisted China and other emerging countries be held to the same legal terms as industrialized ones — a massive change from the status quo under Kyoto in which only wealthy countries were expected to act on climate change. They also pushed for what would become equally controversial: voluntary targets rather than legally binding ones.
The frenzy of 2009 culminated at the climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, where, instead of developing a new global treaty as many hoped, Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and a handful of other world leaders worked through the night to cut a deal.
Through the eyes of many American analysts, the Copenhagen Accord that emerged that night — recording emissions pledges of every major emitter — was a success for which the U.S. negotiating team and Obama himself deserve credit.
“I don’t think China would have inscribed anything on mitigation if not for the personal intervention of the president,” said Joe Aldy, an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a longtime White House aide who served as special assistant to the president for energy during Copenhagen.
Others agreed that the United States deserves credit for heralding a new era in getting other major emitters to pledge carbon cuts, though some also noted that countries were headed in that direction. One European diplomat conceded, “I don’t think the E.U. alone would have been able to pull that off.” And a former major emerging nation negotiator whose country made a Copenhagen pledge said, “It certainly helped to have U.S. pressure.”
Said Andrew Light, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, “They basically got the world to create what I think is a very good Plan B in the short term when it was clear that we weren’t going to get a new Kyoto-style agreement out of Copenhagen.”
‘They acted just like Bush’
For many developing nations, though, Obama’s failure in Copenhagen to deliver a treaty with a top-down target aimed at averting catastrophic warming to which all nations would be legally bound remains a bitter pill. Ensuing years, in which the United States made heavy demands on developing countries but made no move to show how it planned to meet its own target, rankled even more.
“I started out extremely hopeful that Obama would make a big change, and until the last minute in Copenhagen, I was expecting him to come up with something brilliant. But I was very, very disappointed. And since then, I’ve seen the Obama administration retrench,” said Saleem Huq, a senior fellow at the U.K.-based International Institute for Environment and Development.
“In some ways it’s almost as bad, if not worse, than the Bush administration, in the sense that the Obama people get it,” Huq said, noting several scientists in the administration. “We all think of Obama and the Democrats as the good guys, but in the negotiations, they acted just like Bush. The only difference was that it was harder to criticize them than it was to criticize Bush.”
The “no different from Bush” assessment doesn’t just come from across the ocean. One former U.S. climate negotiator made similar, albeit kinder comparisons, insisting that unlike Bush, the Obama team sincerely cares about climate change and has been far more inclusive internationally. Still, the diplomat said, “The irony is that it doesn’t actually translate into significant differences in policy.”
Others bristle at the comparison. They point to the 54.5 mpg fuel efficiency standards, billions of dollars in stimulus spending toward renewable energy and pending EPA rules addressing climate change and industrial pollution. At the multilateral level, American activists defend the administration as successfully finding an imperfect but robust way to curb carbon under the weight of knowing Congress had rejected before and would reject again any treaty that did not put China on an equal footing to the United States.
“If you compare this to the Bush administration and even to the Clinton administration, what they’ve done is way more proactive in the international negotiating scene,” said Jake Schmidt, international policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Neither James Connaughton, Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality adviser, nor his U.N. climate envoy, Harlan Watson, could be reached for comment. But other Republicans said the comparison between the Bush and Obama team goals before the United Nations were not far off.
“They acted fairly conservatively once they realized they weren’t going to get any carbon legislation out of Congress. I don’t think they played it very differently than, say, Harlan Watson did,” said George “Dave” Banks, who served a senior adviser on international environmental affairs under Bush. He added, “It doesn’t matter who is in the White House. It always comes down to national circumstances.”
Creating opportunities at Doha?
As Stern and Pershing prepare to attend their fourth and perhaps last U.N. Conference of the Parties later this month in Doha, Qatar, they have developed both personal friendships and a few animosities.
Stern, observers say, is low-key but can be undiplomatic and blunt. Yet he has built up a warm relationship with Chinese delegation leader Xie Zhenhua — even taking him to a Cubs game while meeting in Chicago in September, according to Aldy. Pershing, meanwhile, is widely described as brilliant — yet several diplomats said he has rubbed many counterparts the wrong way, coming across as a lecturer more concerned with winning an argument than finding common ground.
Environmentalists once enamored with the team are now openly bitter. But many say they hope Obama’s second term will breathe new life into the talks.
The looming question, though, is the end goal. Does the Obama team want a legally binding treaty?
Analysts and leaders close to the administration say the long sought-after goal of a global treaty to replace Kyoto might be dead. Or at least irrelevant.
“We’re too hung up on the negotiations in a traditional way. We’re too hung up on the traditional framework of the negotiations,” said Tim Wirth, president of the U.N. Foundation and a former State Department undersecretary for global affairs.
“I think the administration has been helpful in moving away from the idea of a single framework toward what is now popularly called the building block approach,” Wirth said, citing energy efficiency, building standards, renewable energy and clean cookstoves. “If I were Todd Stern and the administration, I would try to get the world to develop as many common standards as they could.”
Light, at the Center for American Progress, said from his point of view, it’s going to be the administration’s job to prove that the “bottom up” approach can actually achieve the needed global emission reductions. He thinks it is doable. “They’ve got a theory that I think has proven more useful than what many critics say, in terms of getting countries to articulate their ambition and the conditions upon which they would increase their ambition,” Light said.
Environmental activists who have fought for more than 20 years for a global treaty say they’re not willing to give up the quest. Meyer, for one, said the goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius cannot be achieved by voluntary measures. Regardless, though, he insisted that if the Obama administration intends to abandon the goal of a legally binding treaty, its negotiators need to say so publicly and clearly.
By Lisa Friedman, Deputy Editor, ClimateWire
Reproduced with permission, copyright 2012, E&E Publishing LLC. www.ClimateWire.com
Jude Okonkwo is a Lagos-based banker who resides in Surulere on the Mainland. Besides the traffic congestion, he considers power supply as a major worry since moving to Lagos nearly two decades ago. Though he has developed some sort of a thick skin to the erratic delivery, what he has been battling with entails achieving energy efficiency in his home.
Five years ago, he was privileged to learn about the topic through a colleague. Impressed, Okonkwo set out to be domestically energy efficient, albeit at a cost. Immediately, he changed all the incandescent light bulbs in his three-bedroom bungalow apartment to the compact fluorescent ones; potentially saving, according to scientists, 82 percent of energy.
But, alas, instead of his light bills reducing, they shot up. Puzzled, he made inquiries and discovered that the power authority officials were generating estimated bills and not doing a proper assessment of his energy consumption. The scenario persisted despite several complains.
Then, as a way out, he applied for and obtained the pay-as-you-use (or prepaid) meter.
But catastrophe struck a few months later when, all of a sudden, a power surge from the neighbourhood’s transformer occurred and damaged the meter. The development has left him at a crossroads over the much-vaunted campaign on energy efficiency, which entails improvement in practices and products that reduce the energy necessary to provide services.
The concept is gaining prominence nonetheless, thanks to a $3 million initiative launched in May 2011. Titled: “Promoting Energy Efficiency in Residential and Public Sector in Nigeria,” the programme is being promoted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Global Environmental Facility (GEF).
Apparently in line with one of the scheme’s four components that seek to enhance stakeholder capacity to understand the concept, nature and potential of energy efficiency, a national summit (the second in the series) held last week in Abuja, the Federal Capital City.
Stakeholders observed with concern at the close of the two-day event that, besides the fact that energy supply in the country is inadequate and thus far from efficient, many Nigerians do not have access to prepaid meter.
They flayed the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), saying its services are at variance with the use of energy saving bulbs, which get damaged from the power firm’s incessant voltage fluctuations. They likewise frowned at the fact that the cost of energy saving lamps is relatively high compared with that of incandescent lamps.
“Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing the world today, Nigeria inclusive, and this is mainly caused by greenhouses gases (GHGs) as a result of energy generation. If we save energy and reduce wastage by using efficient appliances, we will increase access to electricity in Nigeria,” they submitted in a communiqué.
Participants then called for intensive awareness creation and sensitisation on energy efficiency best practices; declared that regulatory agencies have a critical role to play in ensuring that only energy efficient appliances are in the market for patronage; urged government to make policies in the area of standards and label and develop frameworks for enforcement; suggested that government should adequately address cost and quality of energy efficient appliances; and, encouraged Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as well as organisations to carry out energy audit and to adopt energy efficiency and best practices.
Besides clamouring that energy efficiency best practices should be mainstreamed into the housing policy, they charged government to put in place a policy to gradually phase out incandescent bulbs, while providing incentives for large scale energy consumers to retrofit their obsolete appliances with energy efficiency ones.
“Nigerians need to change their lifestyle by changing the way we consume energy. It should be made mandatory for utility companies to provide prepaid meters to all consumers. Certain percentage of interest from electricity sales should be set aside by government to promote energy efficiency,” declared the participants.
The forum had “Promoting energy efficiency for national development and environmental sustainability” as its theme.
As part of its Momentum for Change Initiative, the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has begun presenting the latest round of public-private Lighthouse Activities in developing countries which either help to curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or help people adapt to climate change, while at the same time benefit the urban poor.
Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC Executive Secretary
The nine Lighthouse Activities will be showcased at special events at the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar, scheduled for 26 November to 7 December.
The activities include the promotion of electric buses and rickshaws in Sri Lanka, energy efficient brick kilns in Peru and a project to support to the work of clean energy entrepreneurs in Uganda.
“We are very excited to showcase this year’s lighthouse activities as they demonstrate the commitment by communities, civil society organizations, local governments and private businesses to take concrete action to address climate change. The examples are inspiring and encouraging, not least for governments who have already set the course towards greater climate resilience, but who need to take the next essential steps to galvanize the speed and scope of climate action,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres.
Two key criteria for the selection of the initiatives are that they have proven to be effective and have the potential to be replicated in other countries and communities. They were selected by an international advisory panel as part of the UNFCCC’s Momentum for Change Initiative, which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Interested stakeholders will have the opportunity to interact with the activity partners in two social media discussions ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, on 14 and 21 November.
Participants can join in via Twitter using the hashtag #m4c2012, according to the UNFCCC.
The Lighthouse Activities are: Solar Sister, a door-to-door green energy social enterprise in Uganda; Ahmedabad bus rapid transit system in India, which created an integrated and accessible public transport system; BioComp Nepal, a waste reduction project involving composting organic waste in Nepal; Energy efficiency in artisanal brick kilns in Latin America (EELA) in Peru, which promotes cleaner-burning artisanal brick kilns; and, Lifestraw Carbon For Water in Kenya, which uses carbon financing to fund household level water purification packs.
Others are: Adaptation to coastal erosion in vulnerable areas, an Adaptation Fund-supported activity in Senegal that fights coastal erosion; Lanka Electric Vehicle Association in Sri Lanka, who have piloted the use of electric buses and rickshaws in Colombo; Holistic approaches to community adaptation to climate change, a Namibia-based activity that uses a six-point method to assist local communities in adapting to climate change; and, Guangzhou bus rapid transit system in China, one of the largest integrated bus rapid transit systems in the world.
Momentum for Change aims to create a public platform that raises awareness about concrete mitigation and adaptation actions being implemented by a wide range of stakeholders at regional, national, or local level. It seeks to demonstrate the multiple benefits of addressing climate change and to transform misperceptions surrounding taking action on climate change.
The project was launched last year at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa. Activities showcased in Durban included providing farmers in the Horn of Africa with micro-insurance against crop failure, the distribution of clean cook stoves, and the use of solar bottle lights in the Philippines.
With 195 Parties, the UNFCCC has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, ratified by 193 of the UNFCCC Parties. Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialised countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilise GHG concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.
No fewer than 5,000 volunteers are being mobilised by Passion House International (PHI), a Lagos-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), towards the “Clean-up Oshodi Project”, scheduled for Friday, December 1, 2012.
The initiative entails the cleaning of major dirty streets in Oshodi Local Government in Lagos to promote health and well-being. Drains, gutters and streets will be cleaned, towards fostering a healthy Lagos environment free of diseases like Cholera, and reducing infant mortality, according to Alexander Akhigbe, Executive Director of PHI.
The 5th in the Clean-Up Nigeria Project Campaign series, the Clean-Up Oshodi Project is supported by the Clean-Up the World Campaign in Australia and Let’s Do It Foundation in Estonia. It is being organised in partnership with the Lagos State Ministry of Environment, Africa Youth Initiative on Climate Change, Youth Water Sanitation and Hygiene Network, Oshodi-Isolo Local Government, Nigerian Youth Climate Coalition, Ovacom Media and Lagos Waste Management Authority (LAWMA).
In collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline, PHI had previously carried out Clean-Up Ajegunle in December 2010, Clean-Up Mushin in March 2011, Clean-Up Amukoko in June 2011 and Clean-Up Surulere projects in October 2011, mobilising thousands of volunteers in the process.
Akhigbe stated: “Our local efforts will be recognised internationally as part of the global campaign that is supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In past events, Passion House has successfully hosted thousands of volunteers and cleaned up tonnes of garbage. We have consciously and deliberately promoted the message of a clean and healthy environment free from all forms of diseases.”
The volunteers cut across: National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members, LAWMA street captains, NGOs, Red Cross Society, Oshodi Local Government Youth Council, Community Development Associations (CDAs), Secondary Schools (public and private), churches/mosques, market men/women and Environmental Officers.
Minanuel Investment Limited, developer of the Minanuel Estate, Goza, Lugbe 1 Extension in Abuja that was recently demolished, has demanded for an apology as well as compensation from the authorities.
The firm, through its lawyer, Femi Falana (SAN), submitted that the demolition of the 372 housing units by the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) through self-help cannot be justified under the current democratic dispensation.
“In the circumstances, we have our client’s firm instruction to demand for a public apology and payment of adequate financial compensation to atone for the demolition carried out by the FCDA without a valid order of court of competent jurisdiction,” Falana contended in a statement.
According to Minanuel Investment, on Saturday, September 29 and Sunday 30, 2012, the Development Control Department of the FCDA rolled out its bulldozers and demolished all the 500 houses in the estateworth N3 billion.
“Permit us to state that Minanuel Investment Limited, the owners of the demolished Minanuel Estate, is a registered legal entity under the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria. For many years, the company has been carrying out businesses on property acquisition, building construction, and mass housing estate development, and has presence in many states of the Federal Republic of Nigeria including Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
“The company set out and acquired the land for Minanuel Estate from Messrs N.C.R. Associates in 2004. The papers and other documents to support the development of the land are valid, free from all encumbrances before and after the company took possession of it.
“That is to say that the company received all approval to build and develop the demolished residential houses slated to be handed over to the companies’ contributors by October 2012.
“It is also very important to state that since and before we took possession and commenced development of the land, Minanuel Estate is designated in Goza District, Lugbe 1 Extension and not Kyami District. We are not aware it has been re-designated unless for the purposes of this mischief.
“It is sad and provocative that, without warning or notice to us, the houses built with the contributor’s money and bank loan could be demolished in one fell swoop in a country with over 18 million housing deficit.
“In view of the foregoing, therefore, we demand that this horror, carnage, animalistic behaviour and man’s inhumanity to man which has obviously visited and violated the Transformation Agenda on Mass Housing of the present administration that encouraged private developers like us to participate, be urgently addressed, adequate compensation paid and perpetrators brought to book.”
The 14th session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) held recently in Arusha, Tanzania. Among the key resolutions in the Arusha Declaration is the endorsement of the updated common African position on climate change as the basis for negotiations by African States on strengthening the international climate change regime through full, effective and sustained implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol.
Arusha, Tanzania
AMCEN affirmed that the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol constitute the fundamental global legal framework on climate change, and that the climate change negotiations in Doha (26 November – 7 December) must conclude agreed outcomes in line with the Bali Road Map as well as progress under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. It called for outcomes of the Doha conference to be based on science, equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, reflecting the latest scientific, technical, economic and social information, as such outcomes will significantly influence efforts to secure Africa’s sustainable development.
The ministers resolved further that a long-term global goal must include ambitious short-, medium- and long-term mitigation commitments by Annex I parties (developed countries), reflecting their historical responsibilities, and an equitable and appropriate contribution to the global effort, as well as the provision of adequate means of implementation – finance, technology and capacity-building – to enable Africa to address its adaptation needs in particular.
They encouraged Annex I parties to the UNFCCC that are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol to undertake commitments under the Convention that are comparable in magnitude and effort and are measurable, reportable and verifiable through an agreed set of common accounting rules and a compliance framework (the key countries in this group are now the United States and Canada).
AMCEN also called on developed country parties to urgently scale up support for the implementation of adaptation measures and plans, through, in particular, the Cancun Adaptation Framework and the Nairobi Work Programme, and to support and expedite work to understand, reduce and compensate for loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including impacts on agriculture.
On funding, the ministers called on developed country parties to provide new and additional resources to the climate funds under the Convention, in particular the Green Climate Fund, as well as the Least Developed Countries Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund and the Adaptation Fund, which are currently the only financial means to fund adaptation under the Convention.
On the work to enhance ambition under the Durban Platform to adequately address the need to limit the increase in global average temperature to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius, AMCEN emphasized the urgent need to reflect ambitious commitments under the Bali Road Map in order for Annex I parties to reduce their emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2017 as an equitable and appropriate contribution to achieving the objective of the Convention.
AMCEN called for efforts under the Durban Platform to reflect all principles and provisions of the Convention, including equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in order to limit the increase of global average temperature to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius while ensuring equitable access to sustainable development and the sharing of atmospheric space and resources, taking into account cumulative historical responsibility and the use of such resources by Annex I parties.
The ministers also agreed on a set of key messages for the upcoming Doha climate negotiations.
Key messages on climate change negotiations for the eighteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the eighth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol
1. We, African ministers of the environment, recognize that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and represents an urgent and irreversible threat to human societies and the planet. We express our deep concern that the window of opportunity to avoid dangerous human interference with the climate system is closing, with a growing risk of run-away climate change and catastrophic impacts for natural ecosystems and humankind, particularly in Africa.
2. We reaffirm that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol constitutes the fundamental global legal framework on climate change and that all actions or measures related to climate change must be in full conformity with the principles and provisions of the Convention, in particular those of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.
3. We reaffirm that achieving sustainable development and poverty eradication are the priorities for Africa. We recognize that today Africa faces numerous, severe and growing negative impacts arising from of climate change and that these impacts are undermining Africa’s efforts to attain its development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals.
4. We note with concern that wealthy Annex I parties increased their emissions by approximately 8 per cent between 1990 and 2008. We further express concern that the current inadequate mitigation pledges, in particular by Annex I parties, are likely to lead to an increase of the global average temperature of greater than 20C – and possibly as much as 50C – threatening catastrophic impacts worldwide, and particularly for Africa due to its high vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and low adaptive capacity.
5. We acknowledge that there is an urgent and immediate need to avoid further loss and damage to Africa and call for an intensified action, in particular by Annex I parties, to reduce their emissions in line with the information set out in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and more recent scientific studies in a way that will limit the global average temperature increase to well below 1.50C.
6. We are aware that, despite the urgent threat facing human societies and the planet, the mitigation pledges by Annex I parties in the context of the climate change negotiations amount to less than the voluntary mitigation pledges by non-Annex I parties. We recall that the Convention requires Annex I parties to make equitable and appropriate contributions to achieving the objective of the Convention and therefore stress that Annex I parties should show leadership, including through raising their level of ambition to the scale required by science and equity.
7. We urge Annex I parties to provide scaled-up new and additional financial resources to enable developing countries, particularly to countries in Africa, to mitigate and adapt to climate change without diverting scarce resources required for poverty eradication and other sustainable development objectives.
8. We recognize that Africa needs its fair share of atmospheric space in order to meet its development needs, and acknowledge that this may result in increased emissions.
9. We note that in the absence of increased ambition, the projected emissions of Annex I parties would consume almost half of the 44 Gt emissions budget for 2020 that is estimated by the United Nations Environment Programme to have a likely chance of limiting temperature increase to 20C or less, thereby limiting the atmospheric space available to non-Annex I parties and allocating to the Annex I parties an excessive share of a global atmospheric resource.
10. We express concerns that rather than increasing their ambition some Annex I parties have refused to ratify, or have withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol or intend to do so. We further express concern at the apparent intention of some Annex I parties to move away from a legally binding regime applicable to them into a weaker pledge-based regime, while shifting the burden to non-Annex I parties.
11. We reaffirm that adaptation is an essential priority for Africa and that there is an urgent need for immediate and adequate support for the implementation of country-driven adaptation measures and actions through the provision of grant-based public resources including through direct access to the Green Climate Fund and other relevant financial entities.
12. We also recognize, in this context, the importance of agriculture to Africa and reaffirm our recommendation that a comprehensive work programme on agriculture in non-Annex I parties is to be established under the Adaptation Framework, and that agriculture is to be addressed as a matter of priority in relation to the mitigation commitments of Annex I parties. We confirm that Africa’s emissions, including from the agriculture sector, are low and that most of the global emissions from the agriculture sector derive from industrialized, subsidized and fossil-fuel intensive agricultural practices in Annex I parties, and that the overriding priority for Africa in the agriculture sector is food production and rural development.
13. We express concern about the lack of clarity on long-term financing of results-based REDD+ activities in phase three. We call for a transparent process for the provision of adequate and equitable long-term financial resources. We further call for the establishment of a simplified structure that would allow broader participation of countries in accordance with their national circumstances.
14. We recall that the effective implementation of mitigation and adaptation actions by non-Annex I parties depends on the fulfilment by Annex I parties of their commitments relating to financial resources, technology development and transfer and capacity building. We recognize, in this context, the insufficient transparency and slow disbursement of the financial resources pledged by developed country parties as “fast start” finance for the period 2010-2012 and indications that only a small proportion of these resources are “new and additional”, and we call on Annex I parties to fully implement their commitments relating to financial resources and the transfer of technology as an important step towards addressing the common challenge of climate change.
15. We further call for an agreement in Doha on scaled-up public resources to be provided by Annex II parties commencing in 2013, building on lessons learned from fast start finance and reaching a scale adequate to meet the needs of developing countries up to 2020 and beyond.
Negotiations under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto
Protocol thereto
16. We reaffirm that the outcome of negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change must be based on science, principles and provisions of the Convention. Such an approach must include ambitious short- medium- and long-term mitigation commitments by Annex I parties that reflect their historical responsibility and an equitable and appropriate contribution to the global effort to tackle climate change, and the provision of adequate means of implementation – finance, technology and capacity building – to enable non-Annex I parties to address mitigation and adaptation.
17. We reiterate that the climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change should produce: (a) an amendment to Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol regarding further mitigation commitments of Annex I parties for a second commitment period from 2013 to 2017 under the Kyoto Protocol; (b) a set of outcomes in line with the Bali Road Map regarding an agreed outcome on long-term cooperative action to enhance the implementation of the Convention; and (c) a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention addressing mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, transparency of action and support, and capacity-building through the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) no later than 2015 to come into effect and be implemented by 2020.
18. We call on all parties to respect the balance of the outcome at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, held in Durban, South Africa. We urge Annex I parties to join us in ensuring an ambitious and legally binding second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, an ambitious and comprehensive set of outcomes under the Bali Action Plan to ensure the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention, recognizing that progress in the ADP negotiations is premised on successful conclusion of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) and Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP). We affirm that these three negotiations are interlinked and that new discussions under the Durban Platform must build on conclusions agreed in longstanding negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention.
19. We emphasize that work under these negotiations must be carefully balanced and sequenced to ensure that Annex I parties take on equitable and adequate mitigation commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, that parties achieve the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention in accordance with the Bali Action Plan, and that the ambition gap on mitigation and means of implementation is closed prior to 2015 to ensure the highest level of effort by all parties, as a sound basis for negotiations towards a new protocol, legal instrument or agreed outcome for legal force under the Durban Platform.
20. We call on all parties to join us in preserving and building on the architecture of the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol developed over almost two decades, and we warn against the unravelling of the international climate change architecture into a weaker regime based on “pledge and review” for Annex I parties, as this will undermine environmental integrity thus increasing the risk to the African continent of climate change. We call on all Annex I parties to fulfil their commitments through an ambitious and legally binding second period of commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, comparable efforts by Annex I non-Kyoto parties, as well as full implementation of commitments relating to adaptation, finance, technology transfer, capacity-building and related matters.
Implementing the Kyoto Protocol
21. We call on developed country parties to the Kyoto Protocol to honour their commitments through ambitious mitigation commitments for a second commitment period and to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 40 per cent during the second commitment period from 2013 to 2017 and by at least 95 per cent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels, as an equitable and appropriate contribution to achieving the objective of the Convention. We stress the urgency of concluding all issues for a second commitment period in Doha and of elaborating measures to avoid a gap between commitment periods.
22. We confirm that negotiations towards a new agreement under the Durban Platform must not detract from agreement of ambitious further commitments for Annex I parties under the Kyoto Protocol. We join other developing countries in confirming that the second commitment period shall end in 2017 to avoid locking in low levels of ambition by Annex I parties until 2020, which would risk extremely dangerous levels of warming and an inadequate contribution by Annex I parties towards addressing climate change. Individual contributions by Annex I parties are to be agreed and converted into quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives (QELROs) for inclusion in Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol to be adopted in Doha and further urge those Annex 1 parties that have not submitted their QELROs to do so.
23. We call on Annex I parties to ensure the environmental integrity of their emission reduction commitments, and to guarantee an equitable and appropriate level of domestic emission reductions, by closing existing loopholes, limiting the use of carbon markets and project-based mechanisms to 10 per cent of their quantified emission reduction commitments, and ensuring the additionality of carbon credits.
24. We recognize that the continued existence and effectiveness of the Adaptation Fund is contingent on an ambitious second commitment period by Annex I parties under the Kyoto Protocol, including ambitious emission aggregate and individual reduction commitments as well as the effective closure of all loopholes, as a precondition for a functioning project-based mechanism and delivery of carbon credits. As a means for increasing funding for the Adaptation Fund we call for financial resources to be raised through a levy on emissions trading and other carbon mechanisms and markets.
25. We reiterate that Annex I parties that do not sign up to the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, and have therefore not taken on a legally binding QELRO under the Kyoto Protocol, shall not have access to the mechanisms established by the Kyoto Protocol, including emissions trading, joint implementation and clean development mechanism.
Implementing the Convention
26. We reiterate the importance of fulfilment by all parties of their commitments under the Convention and call for the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action to continue its work to reach an agreed outcome pursuant with decision 1/CP.13 (the Bali Action Plan) and conclude its work in Doha in accordance with decision 1/CP.17.
Shared vision
27. We emphasize that avoiding dangerous interference with the climate system and achieving a global goal of limiting temperature increase to well below 1.5ฐC will require an integrated approach based on science, equity and the principles and provisions of the Convention. We are concerned that temperature increases above 1.5ฐC from pre-industrial levels pose catastrophic impacts to poor and vulnerable people and communities worldwide, in particular Africa, and is inconsistent with the fundamental objective of the Convention.
28. We recognize that a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050 and the time frame for global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions cannot be undertaken in the abstract and will necessarily involve matters related to the context of such considerations including ambitious short, medium and long-term mitigation commitments by Annex I parties that reflect their historical responsibilities and an equitable and appropriate contribution to the global effort to tackle climate change. We confirm that a long-term global goal for reducing emissions by 2050 and a time frame for global peaking can only be understood in the context of a global goal for adaptation, finance, technology support and the implications for economic and social development in developing countries, particularly in Africa.
Adaptation
29. We welcome the operationalization of the Cancun Adaptation Framework, in particular the Adaptation Committee. We urge the Adaptation Committee to expedite its work on facilitating the support process and implementation of national adaptation actions and plans of non-Annex 1 parties through the relevant linkages between the finance and technology mechanisms of the Convention.
30. We affirm that adaptation activities should be funded at full cost through direct and simplified access to adequate, new and additional public grant-based financial resources, following a country driven approach, as well as to environmentally sound technologies and capacity building in a predictable and prompt manner as part of a balanced package on all issues to implement the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol.
31. We urge that measures should be taken to expedite work on strengthening international cooperation and expertise in order to understand, reduce and compensate loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including impacts on agriculture, water, human health, and other economic and non-economic losses related to extreme weather events and slow onset events.
Mitigation
32. We reiterate concerns about efforts by Annex I parties to move away from a legally binding into a weaker “pledge-based” regime, the conditional nature of Annex I pledges, the low level of mitigation ambition and the associated party specific rules and accounting methodologies which may undermine environmental integrity and significantly reduce the contribution of Annex I parties to the global mitigation effort by 2020.
33. We call on Annex I parties that are not parties to the Kyoto Protocol to undertake legally binding commitments under the Convention that are comparable in magnitude and effort and are measurable, reportable and verifiable with regard to mitigation and the provision of financial and technological resources. We call for the development of an agreed set of common accounting rules and a compliance framework for Annex I parties that have not subscribed to the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol to assess their quantified emission reductions.
34. We reaffirm that a firewall must be maintained between mitigation commitments of Annex I parties that are legally binding in nature and appropriate voluntary mitigation actions by non-Annex I parties.
35. We stress that the extent to which non-Annex I parties will effectively implement actions under the Convention will depend on the effective implementation and fulfilment by developed country parties of their commitments under the Convention related to financial resources, capacity-building and technology development and transfer.
Means of implementation
36. We welcome the adoption in Durban of the governing instrument of the Green Climate Fund and stress the need for concrete outcomes on the long-term finance work programme and the work of the Standing Committee. We call for enhanced transparency in the provision of support through a common reporting format, definitions and methodologies.
37. We note the pledge by developed country parties to mobilize jointly $100 billion per year by 2020, and reiterate Africa’s position that developed country parties should by the year 2020 provide scaled-up financial support based on an assessed scale of contributions that constitutes at least 1.5 per cent of the gross domestic product of Annex I parties, in order to curb climate change and meet the needs of non-Annex I parties to tackle climate change and its adverse effects.
38. We note with concern the gap between the end of fast start finance in 2012 and the $100 billion pledge by 2020. We call on Annex II parties to significantly scale up the provision of new, additional predictable and adequate resources in the interim period. We also call on those parties to contribute to the Green Climate Fund and to accelerate its operationalization with a view to addressing the most urgent adaptation needs of developing countries.
39. We emphasize the need for an appropriate body under the Convention with respect to mobilization of financial resources to address the ambition gap on finance, and to look beyond the short-term financial constraints faced by developed countries, in order to raise in a predictable and identifiable manner the amount of new and additional funding necessary and available for the implementation of this Convention and commensurate to the adaptation, mitigation and technology needs of developing countries, and establish the conditions under which that amount shall be periodically reviewed.
40. We stress the importance of ensuring direct access to financial resources for all developing countries through a transparent process, ensuring equitable allocation taking into account geographical and needs based criteria, a balance between adaptation and mitigation, and grant-based funding for adaptation activities.
41. We emphasize that public finance should be the main source of funding to ensure the sustainability, predictability and adequacy of funding, bearing in mind that private and market finance can play a complementary role.
42. We stress the urgent need to fully operationalize the technology mechanism in 2012 and taking into account the need to resolve the outstanding issues such as the link between the Technology Executive Committee and the Climate Technology Centre and its network, the operationalization of the Advisory Board, the identification and removal of all barriers preventing access to climate-related technologies and the appropriate treatment of intellectual property rights, including the removal of patents on climate-related technologies for non-Annex I parties.
43. We welcome the Durban Forum on Capacity-building and call for its further development through the establishment of a work programme. We acknowledge the creation of performance indicators for monitoring and review of capacity building is paramount. We further stress that capacity building activities should not be left to the private sector.
44. We welcome progress made in Durban in the establishment and operationalization of effective and accountable institutions under the authority and guidance of the Conference of the Parties in relation to adaptation, finance and technology transfer, including the Cancun Adaptation Framework, Green Climate Fund and Technology Mechanism. We further call for the prompt effective, and full operationalization of these institutions including through the provision of required financial resources to ensure these institutions are not “empty shells” and that adequate financial resources, including for time-bound deliverables and work programmes, are available for action in developing countries, particularly in relation to adaptation, mitigation and technology development and transfer.
Negotiations under the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action
45. We welcome the successful launching of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the Convention addressing, inter alia, mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, transparency of action and support, and capacity-building, as well as the workplan on enhancing mitigation ambition to identify and to explore options for a range of actions that can close the ambition gap.
46. We express satisfaction with the adoption of an agenda and initial exploratory discussions among Parties in Bangkok. We look forward to the successful completion of the mandates to implement the Convention (AWG-LCA) and Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) in accordance with the Bali Road Map, as part of the Durban package. We call for ambitious and comprehensive outcomes under the Bali Roadmap, noting that unresolved items under this negotiation shall be dealt with in appropriate bodies under the Convention, including the Durban Platform.
47. We stress that the negotiations of a future legal outcome under the Durban Platform are under the Convention and, as a result, all of the principles and provisions of the Convention apply including the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. The outcome must reinforce a fair, multilateral and rules-based regime that brings into effect the right to equitable access to sustainable development, sharing of atmospheric space and resources taking into account cumulative historical responsibility and use of such resources by Annex I Parties, with the principle of equity reflected in all aspects of a future agreement.
48. We stress that the outcome must fulfil the objective of the Convention including a limit in the increase of global average temperature to well below 1.5ฐC. We emphasize in this context the urgent need to reflect ambitious commitments under the Bali Road Map in order for Annex I parties to reduce their emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2017 as an equitable and appropriate contribution to achieving the objective of the Convention. We further reaffirm that the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol thereto are the multilateral platform for climate change action, as such additional actions under the ambition work stream of the Durban Platform require agreed transparency, accounting, and recognition provisions. To enhance action by developing countries a clear process to scale up the means of implementation including finance, technology and capacity to support is necessary.
49. Finally, we affirm that the outcome of negotiations should culminate in an enhanced multilateral rules based regime that implements the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol thereto through a common vision covering global goals relating to temperature, global emission reductions and trajectories, adaptation, finance and technology transfer in the context of an equity reference framework, as well as means to record additional specific commitments by Annex I parties and contributions by non-Annex I parties, operational mechanisms with dedicated funding, work programmes and deliverables, and arrangements for accountability, compliance and review.
The nation’s vulnerability to the adverse impacts of climate change will cost it dearly, according to an expert.
Dr Victor Fodeke, formerly Nigeria’s climate chief, is particularly worried over the threat of extensive damage to petrochemical industrial installations presently concentrated in the coastal belt from sea-level rise. According to him, the numerous industries clustering around Nigeria’s seaports are seriously threatened by sea level rise.
He said: “Most petrochemical industrial installations are concentrated along the coastal zones as offshore and onshore installations in the country. Accelerated sea level rise associated with climate change poses significant threat to all these critical economic installations. In an event of extreme climate change hazard of sea level rise, not only lives will be lost, irreparable damages would occur in all our oil installations due to the rising ocean wave.”
According to him, extreme climate change has being predicted could result in failed states, saying that it is on record that over 90 percent of the nation’s economy depends on oil and gas.
“Apart from the attendant human calamities, the country’s foreign earnings will be affected and this will in turn affect the country’s economic performance both in the short and the long runs. The coastal states of Nigeria play a national strategic role of economic, environmental, social, political and security significance, and should be designated as such,” he said.
He stresses that failure to plan is the surest way to hasten such a disaster, saying that this is a wake-up call to the coastal states in the country to arise to defend Nigeria for sustainable national development and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
“Given the current level of development, with the projected climate change and sea level rise of 0.5m and 1.0m, the capital value at risk would be about $8.05 billion and $17.5 billion respectively. With 30-year development and population growth of 5 percent and, without any measure, the capital value at risk would be between $20.13 billion and $43.13 billion.”
Fodeke stressed that the nation’s energy sector is also vulnerable to the impacts of response measures, which are measures being taken by the developed countries Parties to the Convention and the Protocol in their various countries to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
“A specific example is the introduction of carbon tax on consumption of petroleum. Since the source of greenhouse gas emissions, to a very large extent, is the production and consumption of fossil fuels, both the Convention and the Protocol are largely targeting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and by extension, fossil fuels including oil, gas and coal. An increased carbon tax will lead to a reduction in the consumption of these fuels under the guise of combating climate change which is injurious not to Nigeria economy alone but also to the economies of fellow Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries, whose economies largely depend on foreign earnings from sales of fossil fuels.
“Nigeria’s offshore and onshore coastal zone (800km. in length) is rich in biodiversity, and could be vulnerable to climate change impacts. The region also harbours a lot of infrastructure, particularly those related to the oil and gas industry, which are equally vulnerable to climate change impacts. Sea level rise (SLR) will bring about coastal inundation which may destroy coastal infrastructure and biodiversity and salinisation of coastal fresh water resources. Storm surges, higher waves and flooding will accelerate the incidence of coastal erosion and beach destruction. Severe coastal inundation may lead to the displacement of population and the incidence of migration, with accompanying social disharmony.”
Fodeke emphasised that the most important significant impact of climate change on energy will include higher electricity demand for heating, cooling and pumping water, and reduced availability of hydroelectricity and fuel-wood.
“Inadequate supply of power is already forcing the closures of many industries thereby rendering several Nigerians jobless. This, in turn, will aggravate our macroeconomic problem of unemployment and accelerating poverty. Products from such industries become unavailable and where available through importation, the prices are beyond an average Nigerian.”
He urged the authorities to deploy and foster the use of sustainable, less carbon intensive, clean-energy and climate friendly technologies, from mitigation and adaptation view points.
“This cannot be overstated if Nigeria is to achieve the MDGs. Transfer of such technologies that should enhance our efforts towards implementation of the Convention and the Protocol are yet to come from the industrialised countries that have a duty to work assiduously towards the implementation of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto.”
Like most Nigerian teenagers who have dreams and ambition after secondary school to further their education, Miss Oluwashayo Elubode had high hopes. Miss Elubode is a young and aspiring Agronomist I met when I visited the International Institute of Tropical Agricultural (IITA) in Ibadan, Oyo State, in company of the Youth Voices for Small Scale Farmers which recently toured the Institute.
Twenty-nine-year-old Elubode wanted to study Nursing at the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) in Ogbomosho, Osun State, but was offered Agronomy; reason being that the institution’s Nursing Department had reached it maximum number of applicants to be absorbed into the school that year. Elubode explained that she was disappointed but nonetheless decided to visit the Head of Department (HOD) of Agronomy who explained to her what Agronomic meant.
She said: “When I was offered the course, I did not know or even heard of the word Agronomy. After the brief lecture by the HOD, I was able to understand what the course was about subsequently after five years of studying Agronomy. I was glad I did.”
What I saw was a young lady who was happy doing what she does for a living.
Elubode said after her youth service corps programme, she applied for work at IITA to broaden her knowledge and prepare her for further research towards her post-graduate studies as she plans to specialise in Agronomy, which she described as the backbone of agriculture that brings about innovative ways of boosting agricultural production.
At the Cassava Unit in IITA where she is undergoing a six-month training programme, she highlighted the vast potential in cassava, which is touted to herald the next big boom in agriculture in the country. According to her, cassava is a food security crop that is able to transform the country’s economy.
“It is well known that Nigeria is the largest producer of cassava in the world. All environmental factors that can boost maximum yield of cassava are available in Nigeria. That is why IITA is undertaking a lot of research in cassava such as improved varieties like the Beta-carotene fortified cassava. The days that cassava is regarded only as a source of carbohydrate are gone. Improved varieties now have vitamins and proteins. There is yellow garri which in the past you have to add palm oil to produce a yellow garri which is more expensive due to the addition of palm oil.”
She maintained that, through cassava, a green revolution in the agricultural sector can be achieved. Cassava is a staple food in most homes in Nigeria either processed as garri for eba, fufu or lafu. She urged those into large scale production in the manufacturing industry to embrace cassava production and and use it as a by-product. If more cassava flour is used in the production of bread this would impact on the income and livelihood of small scale farmers.
Lots of money is used to import wheat flour into this country for bread production. There is cassava fortified with Vitamins that can be processed as flour and use to bake bread and other pasteries. Elubode maintained that cassava flour would add value to bread production and appealed to large scale bakers to introduce cassava flour in the production process.
“I am an agronomist and I have carried out research into this wonderful crop called cassava. It is the next big thing to happen to Nigeria. More youths should come into agriculture. I am glad I am able to contribute my quota to national development. If the youths don’t see agriculture as a way of life, very soon the old farmers who are growing weak and old would be no more. Does it mean we would no longer eat in this country?
“The youths have the energy and idea. We are the ones to bring back the past glory Nigeria achieved through agriculture. That means now we can do better with science and research. I appeal to Nigerian youths to engage aggressively in agriculture because there is vast potential in this sector,” she said.
Elubode bemoans the gradual switch in science education, as young entrants into higher institutions prefer other courses, but she expressed optimism that through science a lot can be transformed in the country.
Similarly, a young lecturer at the Nassarawa State University in Lafia, Mr Tunde Taiwo, who studied for his post-graduate research at IITA, decried the neglect in the area of science. Taiwo noted that science research in Nigeria is not receiving adequate attention and funding. He said the specialised higher institutions in the country like Universities of Technology and Agriculture are gradually becoming conventional universities.
“There are only three Universities of Agriculture in Nigeria; those at Abeokuta, Umudike and Makurdi. But, because of revenue generation, more non-science courses are being introduced into these schools,” he said, even as he called for more support by the government and corporate organisations in the area of science education and development.
Taiwo went on: “I am about going to the United Kingdom for my doctorate degree because there is not enough research materials in my area of interest. I believe that in the UK there will be well-equipped laboratories and not a case where I will be choked with theories and few practicals. Nigerians are intelligent and do well when they go abroad to study because of the enabling education environment.
“The recently presented 2013 budget shows that the education sector has a good allocation from the budget. The success of this budget would be if the funds are appropriately disbursed to the relevant areas where they are needed and proper monitoring of its use put in place.”
According to Elaigwu Ameh, the writer of the play that has been published as a book, Climate of Change also got high commendation from ANA for its presentation “of the complex and often scientifically abstract climate change issue in a simple, educative and entertaining way.”
