As Lagos signs Local Action
for Biodiversity, Declaration, gives specification for roofing sheets
 |
| Governor Fashola |
The Governor who spoke at the Convention Centre of the Eko Hotels and Suites in Victoria Island during the opening ceremony which also featured the signing of Local Action for Biodiversity Declaration, added that the people must slow down on certain things, change some and stop certain things all together about the way they live because nature’s reaction makes man vulnerable.
Once we agree to slow down things nature will also pull back. This is the story about environmental impact because every building, every car you drive, every office you build has an impact so our central message is about mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is about slowing down, compensating for it, the Governor added.
Explaining the impact of several human activities on the environment, the Governor made a clarion call for increased awareness to stave off possible consequences. For me climate change is not new, what is new is our understanding and increased awareness of how bad the problem is today. Our experience and pursuits of common prosperity have naturally interfered with nature. Take a look at nature about transporting ourselves and take a look at the heating and cooling systems for us to be able to stay together in this kind of environment even though it is very hot outside, now you will see how much of nature’s natural resources, gas, oil and so on that we have extracted and have necessarily involved the interference with nature so that we can survive, he explained.
If you look at our quest for water supply and even for energy, how many rivers we have dammed, how many water bodies we have altered their courses so that we can take what we want. Nature will not sit back and watch us do this without responding.
As long as we continue to do this, we are disturbing the natural balance for our own survival, nature will react and when it reacts it could be devastating. So our existence here is a continuing battle with nature. Many times we win but occasionally nature fight back vengefully, the Governor further , he said.
The Governor said as part of conscious efforts to prevent avoidable disasters, the State Government is recommending 0.55mm as roofing sheet size for private concern and 0.70mm for commercial and industrial concerns adding that the State Government wants agencies like the Standard Organisation of Nigeria to ensure that substandard materials are not brought in to the country and the State.
This is the time when we cannot afford to build with substandard materials. Our professionals should not be a part of lowering the standard. We will act severely to punish anyone who participates in it. The Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development is already issuing notice of non compliance to professional associations and members who we find as accomplices in the construction and built environment, he said.
He stated that year after year, the State holds the Climate Change Summit as a demonstration of its commitment to make it better, adding that a look around today in the last five years of conflicts globally will show that no human conflict has claimed many lives as the disasters of nature have claimed.
No war has devastated human property and assets as natural disasters have claimed. It is a war that if we work together to fight, human civilisation will win, he said.
Governor Fashola noted that this year’s Climate Change Summit, the focus on housing, adding that this explains why the state is cleaning over 1000 of drainage network round the city spread across 24 Local Government Areas and Local Council Development Areas.
He said since the stock of houses are not enough and more houses are needed, the emphasis should be about the people not allowing the houses to be taken over by floods dumped in the canals.
As part of efforts to protect the environment, Governor Fashola urged everyone to change their construction methods by ensuring that half of the laterite, granite and sand that they use for construction is not dumped in front of the drains in the neighbourhoods because once it is obstructed, there would be problems.
Continuing, the Governor gave further insights into the impact of human activities on nature. I tell people that it is an unnatural act for people to fly because only birds should fly. But we have defied nature and fly above 30000 feet across continents extracting huge reserves of energy from nature. Even on some airlines now, you can have showers when you are not supposed to fly. All of this continue to test the limits of how much of what we extract from nature. Have we tried to quantify how many cubic tonnes of laterite we have extracted from nature? How many tonnes of granites we have blasted in order to mix cement and gypsum we have extracted.
What large areas of forests we have deforested in order to make best furniture? Are we even asking how much of copper we are mining today in order to film as that man with ipad is doing over there so that we can text and tweet because it is copper that drives all of these machines?, the Governor asked.
The Governor said the Eko Atlantic City is one of the mitigation and adaptation strategy adopted by the administration to protect the real estate, adding that if the Eko Atlantic City had not been started it would not have been possible for people to converge at the coastline today.
Today many of the liaison offices that were deserted have come back because of the far sighted resourcefulness and commitment that led to the birth of that project. Jobs have returned to that coastline, the road then had disappeared but many of you drove through the road today because that project provides the defense for the coastline of Lagos, he said
The Governor stated that in the implementation of last year’s budget , government did not forsee that the uncompleted part of the Eko Atlantic would be overrun by the sea when the sea surge surged into the Kuramo late last year and took away the walls of most of the properties there down to Alpha beach.
In the last quarter of the year we called all the departments together that everybody must contribute some capital votes so that we can start the urgent protection of all the properties starting from Oniru right down to Alpha Beach. It is a project that will cost N27Billion over three years.
We are not getting any help from anywhere, but we have committed about N6 Billion to it already and it gladdens my heart when I went there with my colleagues and saw that the shoreline that was already on the fence of those properties was already moving back and giving them a breather.
He stated that in the field of transportation, the government’s pursuit of other options like rail, water , mass transit is aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of the environment because the lower it becomes the healthier the people would live adding that people are dealing with choices they made in the past.
Governor Fashola also called on the people to put a stop to the practice of burying people at home adding that it portends danger to people even with the drilling of boreholes for water with the prospects of toxins from decomposing corpses mixing with the water.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Commissioner for Environment, Mr Tunji Bello said the previous sumits have clearly shown that the state’s commitment to the development and evolvement of a climate change conscious society so as to lay the foundations necessary to counteract the prospective global threat is yielding positive results.
He said the desire has propelled the administration to come up with a topical issue that is in tune with the policy thrust of the administration as the theme which is Vulnerability and Adaptability to Climate Change in Nigeria with particular focus on transportation, housing and infrastructural sectors of Lagos State.
In a message of goodwill, the Deputy British High Commissioner, Mr Peter Carter said Climate Change is a global challenge which countries are better off facing together, adding that it poses a fundamental threat to man’s long term prosperity and security.
He said the United Kingdom is working to build the capacity of African nations to better coordinate and communicate messages of the threat that climate change poses, adding that UK is also helping African nations to adapt to climate change and promoting low carbon development/renewable so that they can avoid being locked in to high carbon as they industrialize.
In another message of goodwill, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Environment and Ecology, Hon Eziuche Ubani congratulated Lagos for blazing the trail in terms of focussing on Climate Change.
He expressed appreciation to Governor Babatunde Fashola(SAN) for his commitment to the cause of improving the environment.
In the lead paper titled An Overview of Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies on Infrastructural facilities, Professor Ogunlade Davidson said the way forward is for everyone to change the way they do business and the way the people live.
Deploying slides and statistical, he said that Climate Change is no more an issue of the environment alone but that which also involves developmental issues.
The Local Action for Biodiversity (LAB) Declaration by the Lagos State Government and International Council for Local Environment Initiatives (ICLEI) was later signed by the Governor and Programmes Director of ICLEI, Mr Russell Galt after the opening ceremony.
The event was attended by experts on the environment, academics, representatives of various organizations on the environment, members of the State Executive Council including the Special Adviser to the Governor on Environment, Dr Taofeek Folami, Permanent Secretary in the Office of Environment, Mrs Adebola Afun and Permanent Secretary in the Office of Drainage Services, Engineer Muhydeen Akinsanya and guests from far and near.
[Culled from
LTV]
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