Nigeria recently joined the rest of the world in marking the United Nations (UN) World Habitat Day themed, "Cities and Climate Change." On the occasion held in Abuja on 10th of October 2011, stakeholders on environment and urban development, including Nigeria's policy makers and foreign experts, sought answers to global challenges in urban housing and the effects of climate change. Abdulrahman Abdulraheem reports.
In order to respond appropriately to the threat posed to the world by the effects of climate change and other environmental issues, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1996 set aside the first Monday of October every year for the commemoration of the World Habitat Day. The annual event provides stakeholders with the opportunity to brainstorm on the way forward since the global environment is under constant attack from climate change and housing -related issues in the cities.
This year's event was celebrated globally on the 3rd October 2011, a period, which coincided with Nigeria's 51st Independence Day celebration with that day (Monday) as a public holiday. This prompted the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, organisers of the event, to postpone it to 10th of October, 2011.
While representatives of foreign organisations focused their presentations on the global effects of climate change and how they could be tackled, Nigeria's policy makers, led by Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Ms Amal Pepple, spoke extensively on the housing challenges of Nigerians in the cities and what the FederalGovernment is doing to address them.
According to the 2011 World Habitat Day statement of UN Secretary Genera, Ban ki-Moon, represented by Resident Coordinator of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Daouda Toure, this year's celebration is significant because it coincided with the month when demographers predict that our planet's seven billionth inhabitant would be born.
"The future that this child and its generation would inherit depends on how we handle the competing pressures of population growth, urbanisation and climate change," the statement said.
It added that, "Experts predict that by the year 2050, global population would have increased by 50 percent from what it was in 1999. In addition, by that time, scientists say, global greenhouse gas emissions must decrease by 50 percent compared to levels at the turn of the millennium. I call this 50-50-50 challenge.
The statement said further that rising sea levels were the impact of major climate change- and an urgent concern and by the end of the century, the number would jump to 130 million. The UN Scribe also warned that major coastal cities such as Cairo, New York, Karachi, Calcutta, Balem, New Orleans, Shanghai, Tokyo, Lagos, Miami and Amsterdam- could face serious storm surges.
"The nexus between urbanisation and climate change is real and potentially deadly," he also warned.
The statement also said that cities were centres of industrialisation and sources of emissions, but they were also home to solutions. More and more municipalities, it said, were harnessing wind, solar and geothermal energy, contributing to green growth and improving environmental protection.
It advised that local efforts were critical to success but must be supported by international initiatives. The statement applauded the creation of the Climate Change Adaptation Fund and the adoption of the action plan to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD plus). "All countries agree on the goal of limiting global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celcius. Developed and developing countries have committed lower greenhouse gasses in a formal, accountable international agreement," the statement said.
Ban ki-Moon also wrote on the need to build on the above advances, challenging the UN climate change conference scheduled for December in Durban to achieve the needed progress. Urbanisation, he said, would be on the agenda of the 2012 Rio+20 UN conference on sustainable development.
According to the 2011 World Habitat Day statement of the Executive Director of UN Human Settlement Programme (UN- Habitat), Dr Joan Clos presented by the agency's programme manager in Nigeria, Professor Bade Falade, "we live in an age where the world's population would have grown to 7 billion by the end of October and where more than half of them live in towns and cities."
Projections, he said, indicated that this would increase to two- thirds in just over a generation from now. "How we manage this rapid urbanisation is one of the greatest challenges facing us," he said.
He quoted the UN- Habitat cities and climate change global report on human settlements which estimated that by 2050, there could be as many as 200 million environmental refugees worldwide, many of whom would be forced out of their homes by rising sea levels and the increased frequency of flooding or drought.
He suggested that prevention should be addressed through better urban planning and building codes so that city residents, especially the poorest, are protected as far as possible against disaster. According to him, such measures could also help to keep their ecological footprint to the minimum.
Clos added that climate induced risks such as rising sea levels, tropical cyclones, heavy precipitation events and extreme weather conditions could disrupt the basic fabric and functioning of cities with widespread reverberations for the physical infrastructure, economy and society of cities. These he said, include public health risks in urban areas.
"We already know that the impacts of climate disruption would be particularly severe in low-elevation coastal zones where many of the world's largest cities are located. And always it is the urban poor, especially slum dwellers, who are most at risk when disaster strikes.
We need to stress the provision of adequate adaptation measures based on urban planning," he submitted.
Clos further opined that the world has the know- how and strategies to take preventive measures even though some extreme climatic events still defy solutions.
He noted that urbanisation offered many opportunities to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with climate change.
"Given that most global energy consumption occurs in cities, roughly half of it from burning fossil fuels in cities for urban transport, the solution seems obvious," Clos said.
This he said, was due to the fact that the economies of scale produced by the concentration of economic activities in cities also make it cheaper and easier to take action to minimise emissions and climate hazards.
According to the statement, the social, economic and political actors within cities must therefore become key players in developing these strategies.
"Many towns and cities, especially in developing countries are still grappling with climate change strategies, working out how to access international climate change funding and how to learn from pioneering cities.
"We should reflect on this World Habitat Day on how we turn our cities- arguably the greatest achievements of human civilisation- into better cities for the future," he charged.
In her keynote address, Minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development, Ms Amal Pepple told the gathering that the Federal Government had begun a process to review the national housing and urban development policies in order to tackle climate change and other environmental challenges that bedevil modern cities.
She said the review was undertaken to re-establish order and create cities that are free from environmental disasters.
Pepple disclosed that a review committee earlier set up had, "carefully considered the contents of previous documents in the light of emerging national and global issues and has come up with a blueprint which is now under consideration."
She continued: "When adopted, the policies would provide an appropriate framework for the revitalisation, regulation and management of housing and urban development in order to achieve government's transformation agenda in the sector."
Also at the confab were the Chairman, Senate committee on housing and urban development, Senator Bukar Abba Ibrahim; his counterpart in the House of Representatives, Honourable Usman Adamu, Minister of Environment, Mrs Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia and the president, Association of Professional Bodies of Nigeria (APBN), Mr Joseph O. Ajanlekoko.
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