By Jerome-Mario Chijioke Utomi
Like every international day and week by the United Nations (UN), which it uses to educate the public on issues of concern, mobilize political will and resources to address global problems, and celebrate and reinforce achievements of humanity, the world, going by reports as part of activities lined up to mark Earth Day 2023, on Monday 24 April, converged for an interactive dialogue where speakers discussed how to live in harmony with nature instead of adopting an anthropocentric view in our relationship with Mother Earth.
Essentially, while this piece applauds the effort to promote harmony with nature through interactive dialogues that allow policymakers to learn about methodologies that enhance a balanced integration of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, there are, however, reasons to feel worried that majority of earth focused sustainable protection gatherings are neither ready to meet the commitments of the 2015 Paris Agreement nor ready to educate stakeholders about the latest scientific reports on the subject or take concrete steps on how to save Mother Earth from pollution, degradation and devastation among other injustices against the earth.
Compounding the challenge of this year’s celebration is the awareness that while climate change advocates insist on the need for the world to significantly reduce carbon emissions in order to slow down the pace of climate change due to its increasingly severe impacts in the years to come, there exists on the other hands, a veiled reluctance across continents and disciplines (academic and Environmental Professionals) about the authenticity and accuracy of such ‘sermon’.
Even in the face of a recent report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which called for international action to avoid increasingly severe climate impacts in the years to come as well as outlined steps to achieving the objective, many still consider such calls for a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from sectors such as energy production and transportation as a dangerous fiction targeted at suffocating some continents and business interests.
According to a recent report on climate issues by Pew Research Center, a non-partisan American think tank based in Washington DC, Americans are reluctant to phase out fossil fuels altogether, and Climate change is a lower priority for Americans than other national issues. The report explained that about three-in-ten (31%) say the U.S. should completely phase out oil, coal and natural gas. More than twice as many (67%) say the country should use a mix of energy sources, including fossil fuels and renewable energy.
While noting that the majority of Americans support the U.S. becoming carbon neutral by 2050, the report added that elected officials (58%) and the energy industry (55%) are doing too little to address climate change. In a separate Center survey conducted in May 2022, a similar share of Americans (58%) said the federal government should do more to reduce the effects of global climate change.
Pew in that report stressed that Coal mining is the one activity included in the survey where public sentiment is negative on balance: More say the federal government should discourage than encourage coal mining (39% vs. 21%), while 39% say it should do neither.
Democrats and Republicans, the two major political parties in the United States, have grown further apart over the last decade in their assessments of the threat posed by climate change. For Democrats, it falls in the top half of priority issues, and 59% call it a top priority. By comparison, among Republicans, it ranks second to last, and just 13% describe it as a top priority.
In like manner, concern over climate change has also risen internationally, as shown by separate Pew Research Center polling across 19 countries. People in many advanced economies express higher levels of concern than Americans. For instance, 81% of French adults and 73% of Germans describe climate change as a major threat.
Back here in Nigeria, the debate is no different. In fact, the conversation around climate change has remained not just a mystery and unending but elusive in the outcome.
Very recently, I listened with rapt attention to Professor Tosan Harriman of Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. Tosan, who spoke in Warri, Delta State, among other things, said the truth is this: we saw the hypocrisy of these people (Western countries) recently when, because of the Ukraine-Russian war, they are not talking anymore about clean energy, rather we see them go back again focusing on coal, getting out coal to drive the heat.
Africa, according to him, cannot give away its resources because Africa doesn’t need the English of climate change; our continent is blessed, our continent has resources, and our continent is galvanizing on those resources to ensure a global world order. Taking Africa’s resources from Africa is like committing Africa to another new colonial tendency that will finally incapacitate and make it useful in the global situation of things, and that’s exactly what my argument has been.
So, let’s have our mindset reconstructed about the fact that we are not a danger to Europe and America; we are not a danger to the politics of climate change. The only grammar behind climate change is the economy. If they take from you the resources that offered you a comparative advantage, it opens them up to their economic value in the context of a global chain; it opens them up to their own economic value where they now begin to sell clean energy to people like us in Africa who don’t need it. It’s so important we have these facts properly straightened out before we get into this other issue.
The world has been talking about clean energy, what we call resistance against greenhouse gas emissions. The kind of carbon deducted from the exploration of our crude oil, those are the carbons that we have, and that’s what the world has been talking about. They needed clean energy that would help the Arctic Circle maintain its height and then help the entire ecosystem to be properly balanced along the lines of certain determination that they thought had been there from the beginning and all of that.
In Europe and America, if you actually desire clean energy, you should not in the 21st century be talking about coal because coal is all about greenhouse gas emission; if you go to the home of the Queen, you will see them using coal, and I keep making this argument that if Norway as a nation has the level of oil we have, nobody will be talking about greenhouse gas, nobody will be talking about climate change, and I have always held the position that every nation should be allowed to grow within the context of its own resources.
He said that the best the world can do, which is an issue he raised at the recently held Cairo 27th conference, is that we should look at the conditions of African nations, what we call the dependent nations and all of that, dependent on the global world situation and all of that. We should look at their conditions, and then we can’t take them; we can’t take from them the issues that directly propel their own sustenance; we can’t be talking of climate change when the entire nations of Africa depend on what creates a greenhouse. The best we can do is to scientifically now begin to look at this resource and then redesign it in such a way as to mitigate the fears that are already being expressed by these other groups fighting for climate change. Those are the issues we raised, and it’s so profound that the world needs to hear us, he concluded.
Indeed, while Professor Tosan’s argument made a whole lot of sense, I, however, still recall with nostalgia how Mr Ronald Kayanja, Director of the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC), spoke on the same topic (climate change) but maintained a different view. This was at a function on Friday, September 20, 2019, in Lagos to mark the year’s International Day of Peace, which had as a theme; Climate Action for Peace. Kayanja’s understanding and postulations about climate change were the direct opposite of Tosan’s argument.
For instance, Kayanja, in that presentation, used analytical methods and properly framed arguments to underline how; the current conflict in North-East Nigeria is not unrelated to the changes in climate in that region over time. As well as provides a link to how; the climate change challenge also sets the stage for the farmer and herder violence witnessed in parts of West Africa and many countries that face violent conflicts in Africa: Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Sudan (Darfur), Mali and the Central Africa Republic among others.
He stressed that Local tensions over access to food and water resources could spill over into neighbouring countries as people seek to find additional resources and safety – placing more strain on the resources of those countries, which could amplify tensions. In these instances, climate change does not directly cause conflict over diminishing access to resources, but it multiplies underlying natural resource stresses, increasing the chances of a conflict.
Indeed, apart from Kayanjas’ definition of climate change as changes in these weather patterns over several decades or more which make a place become warmer or receive more rain or get drier, what made the lecture crucially is the new awareness of the dangers of, and warning on the urgent need to address climate changes which he said have become even clearer with the release of a major report in October 2018 by the world-leading scientific body for the assessment of climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change.
As to what should be done to this appalling situation, the UN Boss said that the UN Secretary-General had made climate action a major part of his global advocacy, calling on all member states to double their ambition to save our planet.
Finally, in my view, as the world celebrates World Earth Day 2023 amidst raging controversy surrounding Climate Change, one fact seems to stand out; the world is in dire need of livable earth. How that should be achieved is our collective responsibility.
Utomi is the Program Coordinator (Media and Politics) Advocacy for Social and Economic Justice (SEJA), Lagos. He can be reached via 08032725374