Tunde Akingbade
28 January 2007
column
THE harmattan haze is blowing across Nigeria in an unusual manner. People have ascribed unusual weather patterns in the world to climate change problems in recent times.
Mr. Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, is worried that the world's climate is changing fast. Blair has been telling everyone who cared to listen in and outside the British parliament that governments all over the world have to do something about the world's changing climate which he attributed to the use of greenhouse gases in combustion and industrial processes. Even though Blair seems to agree with President George W. Bush on virtually everything under the sun including the invasion of Iraq, the only area where the British PM differs with the American President is in the area of environment, specifically climate change.
Blair appears to be a lone ranger on this particular issue if one looks at him and his counterparts in the coalition forces since the first invasion of Iraq by President George Bush, snr." About that time, the German Bundestag (parliament) had brainstormed on the problem of climate change for which German experts are among the best researchers worldwide. They came out with a book of over 900 pages on global warming and climate charge. The German parliament focused on various issues affecting the climate and the danger they portend to the world.
The United Nations has always brought experts and politicians together through the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) on annual basis. These experts have met in Bonn, Kyoto Japan, Morocco, New Delhi, Nairobi etc to debate on the problem and find ways of reducing man made green house gases. While many people have criticized the government of the United States over alleged lackadaisical attitude towards putting in place global efforts to reduce level of greenhouse gases, GHG, in the atmosphere, the Americans have argued that sudden greenhouse gases reduction will affect their economy and cause unemployment, and local efforts are being made by some institutions.
The United States has been supporting other developing countries such as India, etc. in the reduction of GHG, technology transfer, etc. even though the US is known as the biggest polluter in the world. The energy consumption and use in the US is the greatest in the world. Besides, the average American car is a gas-guzzler. Canada is also a culprit in GHG consumption. Climate change issues have raised passion in some international fora especially at The Hague, the Netherlands, where the American head of delegation to the climate change conference was stoned by a woman as he read his anti-global warming address to the UN gathering. This had hardly settled down when two Canadians renounced their citizenship because they felt "betrayed' by their country which had not done anything concrete to ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
President Olusegun Obasanjo has voiced the need to protect the climate at a conference organized by Germans in Accra, Ghana, recently. As a farmer, the President should know better the danger of erratic weather patterns to agriculture. What has Nigeria done concretely on the issue of global warming? Let us not forget that one of the effects of global warming is sea level rise. Lagos, according to a recent United Nations report, is low lying and, as such, very vulnerable to any flooding due to the melting of the ice because of global warming. Nigeria is a member of OPEC and flares over 70 percent of its gas emanating from oil production. Gas flaring is also a contributor to GHG emissions.
Experts have predicted that some parts of Lagos might be swept off due to sea level rise. Professor Benjamin Akpati, marine geologist and former assistant director, Nigerian Institute of Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR) Lagos, has constantly warned that Lagos is below the sea level and very vulnerable to the impact of climate change. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) hinted that the average sea level has globally risen by 10 to 20cm in the past 100 years.
Experts believe that the sea is eroding 10 times faster than before. It is believed that more flooding will take place in places such as Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki. Already, some parts of Niger Delta are at risk and Nigeria has even lost some oil rigs to coastal erosion. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said, in a study once published in the science journal, Nature, that over one million species could die due to global warming within the next 50 years.
The Atlantic Ocean, which is generally known to be peaceful, has had over 16 separate hurricanes which wreaked havoc on the north east coast of the US around New Orleans, North Carolina, etc. Hurricane Katrina was known to be so devastating across the nation. Hurricane Fabian, which hit Bermuda, was the most destructive there in 75 years. In 2003, over 20,000 people were killed by catastrophies and insurance companies paid over $ 15 billion claims.
Mr. Oladipupo Bali, the managing director, Ambal Seaworld, a Lagos based non-governmental organisation that showcases over 90 species of Nigeria's ornamental fishes, said, last week, that climate change is real and may have affected some of Nigeria's rare fishes.
According to Bali, weather fluctuations affect the breeding of fishes because, naturally, our waters are either low belt or high belt. He said that in the rainy season, you cannot find some fish species and its only in the dry season that fishermen can find them. Bali said that as a result of this, his organisation is aware that weather fluctuations can affect its stock and has, therefore, put in place breeding ponds to make fishes available all year round for people to see. Bali expressed fear, however, that when people do pond breeding to mitigate the effects of climate change on marine and aquatic life, it cannot be the absolute solution because these ponds are not the natural habitat of these threatened species.
He said that global warming had affected everything in all spheres of our lives but wouldn't know the extent it had affected Nigerian fish based species. Sixteen years ago, Mr. M.A.A. Mulero, a meteorologist with Nigeria government, warned that the sun was getting hotter and, over the millennia, has emitted more energy. Mulero said that the sun now radiates to earth, perhaps, as much as 30 percent more heat than it did when the earth was first formed.
The first chief executive of Federal Environmental Protection Agency, FEPA, Dr. Evans Olu Aina, was then of the opinion that what he used to know had changed. The type and current level of hammattan being experienced in Lagos is probably the first in seventeen years. For example, Lagos had always experienced intense heat emanating from vehicular emissions and industrial machinery that any influence of harmattan was hardly noticed following the erratic weather pattern of December 31,1990 when it rained heavily in Lagos.
Trace of harmattan
While harmattan generally featured in some parts of the southern hinterland, there were hardly traces of harmattan in many areas from October to January which were supposed to be effective seasons of harmattan. This prompted this writer, in 1997, to write a piece entitled; Welcome to the season of Rainmattan, an impression that raining season had mixed up with harmatton. It will be recalled that, in 1990, experts were worried that for a long time, there was no trace of harmattan during its season. But, Mr. Thaddeus Obidike, chief meteorologist central forecasting officer, Lagos, explained that the erratic weather was caused by "a very deep low pressure area centered around Europe and North America which persisted between October and December 1990."
In the last two decades, it has become unusual to have the type of harmattan currently being experienced in the south. The carrying of the Sahara dust haze during this season now appears to be unusual. As a Kenyan farmer innocently commented on the change in weather pattern some years ago, "the weather is confused"!!
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