Lagos — Sometimes, issues of the environment are quite difficult even for groups with the best of intentions in the Niger Delta area due to wrong approaches employed in monitoring the environment. To guard against such situation, some activists from the area gathered in Benin recently for some tips on environmental monitoring.

Mr. John Wakoju (not his real name) works with a non-governmental organization that campaign for a clean and safe environment in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. His organization was informed about an oil spill in one of the riverrine communities playing host to oil exploration activities in the state and he was asked to proceed there and compile a report. Once in the community, the people's anger and frustration unleashed on him could not allow for a proper assessment of the situation. Disappointed, Wakoju left without doing a good job of what he was sent to the community to achieve.

The above case study clearly underlines the problem of proper assessment of the impact of oil exploration in the country. This is part of the problem thrown up by youth restiveness in these communities, which has resulted in further damage to the environment and prevented remediation that could have saved the livelihood of the people.

However, during a meeting recently with some select youth from the oil-bearing communities in the area, some tips to be used for a successful monitoring of the environment were impacted on the participants. In his speech at the two-day meeting, Mr. Godwin Ojo, programme director for the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), said his organization works for the poor and the oppressed. He said monitoring of the environment was an essential part of their work.

Ojo stated that before proceeding to the field, a monitor must be armed with a set of questions that he wants to find answers to. He said monitoring should be done with the purpose of empowerment for the people. He added that a field monitor must put himself in the position of the community he is monitoring in order to appreciate the full impact of the problem.

According to him: "A field monitor must love the people, have empathy and promote human rights and values. He must love the environment and be knowledgeable in both environmental and human rights issues".

He added that since all ecosystems are human ecosystems, monitoring should empower people to be able to defend their environmental rights in law. He stressed that the report accompanying monitoring should not be fabricated in order to stand the test of time. Furthermore, he said a monitor should be able to access information at whatever cost without threat to his/her life.

In his contribution, Mr. Nurudeen Ogbara, chairman of Ikorodu branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) noted that the Federal Environmental Protection Agency Act defines environment as "Water, air, land and all plants and human beings or animals living therein, and the inter-relationships which exist, among these or any of them"

Ogbara declared that field monitoring is a critical developmental issue. "Field monitoring is essential to address environment and sustainability issues.

Sustainability is a multivariable issue involving physical, chemical, biological, socio-economic as well as political dimensions with humans as the major driving force. Sustainable development requires wide participation from and consultation with various stakeholders. The use of spatial information and appropriate decision support tools has become essential in raising awareness, providing scenarios, reaching consensus and making decisions on a wide range of sustainability issues", he stated.

He explained that field monitoring has to do with the processes and procedures of direct, on the spot visitation, observation and evaluation of developments or occurrences or activities taking place in a given environment. He said this is usually done through field observations (in more developed countries, space observation system is utilized), on-site measurements and sampling in strategically selected fields and a wide range of modelling techniques and statistical formulae.

On the necessity of monitoring, Ogbara said: "There is necessity for continued research and observation to improve on the knowledge, awareness, understanding, documentation and exposure of the various dimensions and impacts of anthropogenic activities including emissions of greenhouse gases, ecosystems, sea level rise, agricultural production and economic development on the environment in line with the Kyoto Protocol, which requires every state party/signatory to reduce overall emissions of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, methane and others), by 5% below 1990 levels in the five-year "commitment period" from 2008 to 2012".

The 1999 Nigerian Constitution also provides that: "The state shall protect and improve the environment and safeguard the water, air and land, forest and wild life of Nigeria".

He said a common phenomenon in contemporary discourse on the environment is the unabated threats to the global ecosystem due to technological advancement as well as uneven development. It has been discovered that more than 110 countries, he added, suffer from desertification, which costs the world US$42 billion a year in loss of productivity.

According to him, with the projected world population of 7,824 million in 2025 (at the medium population growth rate) by the United Nations, the social cost of environmental degradation would be even more worrisome.

"Desertification alone has already prompted millions of poor farmers to move to urban centres seeking alternative livelihoods; this has put a tremendous strain on services which are already over-stretched. Ecological degradation in dry areas already affects an estimated one-quarter of the world's land area and some 250 million people on all continents. The continent loses 24 billion tons of topsoil annually and this process has accelerated over the last two decades. About 30 million more people could be compelled to vacate their homes in the next ten years if nothing is done to stop the root causes of desertification in many countries", Ogbara stated.

He justified field monitoring thus: "To prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, and within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner".

Other reasons include; to take stock and assess how the earth's environment has been continuously altered by humans and what responses can be introduced to reduce the vulnerability and enhance the resilience of various ecosystems; To observe and document any activity capable of affecting the environment in any way; To serve as checks and balances to environmental pollution; To generate evidence of onslaughts on the environment by individuals, groups or corporate bodies so as to be able to have relevant information or data; To protect, observe and promote human rights an sustainable development; among other reasons.

The legal practitioner counseled that in writing reports of field monitoring, all efforts must be made to ensure that primary or direct evidence is recorded, adduced or given rather than relying on reports by another person or a third party which may be discovered during cross examination to the disappointment of the cause of environmental justice. He stated that there is the need to develop clear-cut outlines or guidelines in conducting field monitoring and in reporting same long before litigation as they should form the very foundation of any successful litigation, adding: "Without credible evidence, no action can succeed".

He advised them to have a basic knowledge of the environment being monitored.

He said the monitor must propose recommendations and possible alternatives. He must also disseminate, circulate and democratise the findings of the monitoring.

In his own contribution, Mr. I. O. Omoruyi of the Faculty of Law, University of Benin, noted that people depend on the environment for survival. Thus, Omoruyi postulated that the ultimate preservation of the human species depend on the extent to which the environment is protected.

"Livelihood protection laws are legally enforceable rules which are geared towards protecting the means of sustenance of living populations. Specifically they include laws governing land tenure and ownership, fishery, farming, forestry and wildlife as well as natural resource exploitation as it affects the living conditions of the host communities", he stated.

He said the primary aim of the Land Use Act is the vesting of all lands in a state on the governor who holds them in trust for the people. According to him, the supposed objective of the statute is that it is aimed at democratizing the ownership of land by making it possible for everyone who so desires to possess land, whether for residential, industrial or agricultural purposes.

"While this objective may sound and laudable, the reality is that the regime of the Land Use Act has introduced more problems than it claims to solve, especially in the area of livelihoods protection. First, the process of acquiring a right of occupancy under the Act is unduly cumbersome. Again, the fees payable to government is usually too high. The result is that many potential applicants are scared away and they would rather not bother to obtain the right of occupancy. Land has become actually much more expensive under the regime of the Land Use Act than it was previously", he noted.

Omoruyi advocated the repeal of the Act forthwith since it is anti-people. He also counseled the participants to make their monitoring evidence-based in order to have a sound legal recourse in the event of degradation of the environment.