The 5th Lagos Climate Change Summit ended on Friday with participants resolving to focus on measures that would aid adaptation and mitigation, MAUREEN AZUH writes
Stakeholders have recommended that the Federal Government should create the enabling environment for the private sector to aggressively tackle climate change through mitigation and adaptation initiatives in the interest of green development.
This was one of the recommendations made at the 5th Lagos Climate Change Summit held from Wednesday to Friday.
In recent times, climate change has remained one of the most challenging issues the world has had to contend with. It has brought with it famine, flooding and other disasters, prompting world leaders to seek lasting solutions to the menace.
According to the stakeholders from different sectors of the economy, who deliberated at the three-day summit, governments at all levels should properly mainstream climate change into their infrastructural development agenda for sustainability.
In a communiqué issued at the end of the summit, participants recommended that Lagos State should ensure a multi-disciplinary approach to the planning, design, construction and management of urban infrastructure.
The communiqué read in part, “To make our urban infrastructure climate-resilient, the Lagos State Government should 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 allocation, and promote infrastructure with integrated design solutions.
“The Lagos State Government should further strengthen the capacity of its electricity board to pursue its energy conservation initiative; 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.”
The summit noted a report that although Africa was contributing only 3.8 per cent of the global greenhouse gas emissions, the continent would suffer most from the impact of climate change; hence the need for progressive programmes geared towards adaptability.
The participants also recommended that governments at all levels should properly mainstream climate change into their infrastructural development for resilience and sustainability.
The Federal Government was also advised to provide for the private sector an enabling environment to aggressively pursue climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives in the interest of green development;
Governor Babatunde Fashola had said at the opening ceremony that the only way to fight and win the war against climate change and global warming was through adaptation and a change in lifestyle.
Fashola said the summit with the theme, ‘Vulnerability and adaptability to climate change in Nigeria: Lagos State transportation, housing and infrastructure in focus,’ was aimed at broadening knowledge on how to preserve the world.
According to him, climate change is the biggest war humanity has ever had to fight as no war has claimed as many lives as natural disasters that accompany changes in climatic conditions, and the only way to survive is by adopting new methods of survival.
He said, “I tell my colleagues about the flooding challenge; we can fight fire but when water comes, everybody takes off. What is happening right now simply means we must slow down, we must slow certain things, and that is where adaptability comes in because nature’s reaction makes us vulnerable.
“Once we agree to slow down things, nature will also pull back. Every car you drive, every office or home you build has on impact on nature. Our central message is mitigation and adaptation; you cannot have everything you want and everybody has a role to play.”
Fashola said the state government was putting policies and strategies in place to mitigate the effects of climate change in the areas of transportation, housing and infrastructure, and urged everyone to adopt clean development mechanisms.
“If we are not adapting, it means we do not recognise how vulnerable we are and we want to surrender to nature,” he said.
The Deputy British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Mr. Peter Carter, who also spoke at the summit, said climate change was not only a burning issue in the 21st century but one that required the attention of governments all over the world.
He said it was a global challenge, which countries were better off facing together than alone as it was impacting on Gross Domestic Product and had the potential to affect the prosperity of the world and Africa in particular.
A professor of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sierra Leone, Prof Davidson Ogunlade, said climate change was no longer an environmental but developmental issue.
In his paper titled, ‘An overview of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies on infrastructural facilities,’ Ogunlade said the way humans lived had effects on the climate and canvassed a reduction in the use of energy.
He showed evidences and consequences of climate change in Africa, with emphasis on the continent’s vulnerability to the impact in the areas of agriculture, biodiversity, energy, water resources, and infrastructure, adding that until appropriate mitigation and adaptation measures were put in place, the continent would continue to be vulnerable to climate-induced extreme events.
In his goodwill message, the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change, Mr. Ezeuche Ubani, said the debate on climate change should be on what could be done to deal with the challenge.
The summit, which was the fifth in the series, reviewed the vulnerability and adaptability of various sectors to climate change in Lagos State as a coastal city prone to floods. Papers were presented on how adaptation and mitigation strategies could be used in combating climate change in the various sectors.
There were also eight panels spread across the three days to discuss climate change and infrastructure; financing mitigation and adaptation programmes; climate change on urban infrastructure; climate change on energy, housing, transport, rural development, coastal adaptation and local action for diversity.
The Commissioner for the Environment, Mr. Tunji Bello, said the objectives of the 2013 summit was to promote and sustain an infrastructural system that was environmentally friendly and geared towards reduction in carbon emission.
He said it was also aimed at analysing policy instruments for easy adaptation to climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gases’ emissions as they affected transportation and the housing sectors.
“The previous summits 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 global threat,” the commissioner said.
He said that the choice of the themes for the climate change summits had been propelled by the policy thrust of present administration in the state.
Bello expressed satisfaction at the successful hosting of the summit, saying the different sessions and panels engendered productive interactive discussions, which had contributed in no small measure to the building of national and international understanding of climate change and its impact on transportation, housing and infrastructural sectors of Lagos State.
At the opening ceremony the governor and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives Africa signed the Local Action for Biodiversity Declaration, by which the Lagos State Government committed itself to the protection and conservation of biodiversity for climate change mitigation and adaptation.