Speeches

7th Chief S. L. Edu Memorial Lecture On “Threats To The Nigerian Environment – A Call For Practical Action”

Jan 8, 2009 - Issues of the environment anywhere is an issue of environment everywhere. No subject has taken more public space in recent times than concerns about the environment.

While poverty threatens 4.5 billion of the earth’s population of about 6 billion people, issues of the environment threaten the whole of our planet and our specie as human beings.

No discussion of the environment should ever be taken lightly because it is a discussion about humanity itself.

Very soon, I predict that all of us will spend more time in search of news about the weather than we will about soccer, stocks, politics or entertainment.

We must acknowledge those leaders across the world and organisations such as Nigerian Conservation Foundation, Chevron and the family of Late Chief S. L. Edu, who have persisted and insisted that all of us individually and collectively must re-appraise our attitude to our environment and have invited world leaders to lead from the front by paying more attention to the environment than they have paid to politics, the economy, crime and other issues that challenge the modern state.

How right they have been. The environment has more economic impact than we have cared to think about. Who can count the cost in dollars of the aftermath of Katrina or Tsunami?

Our Bar Beach restoration and sea defence wall cost billions of Naira but interestingly provided jobs and has brought about an economic boom on the beach and property valuation and re-development.

The impact of the environment on crime and social behaviour as I have argued in respect of the Lagos environment is real. Reducing levels of crime now being witnessed in the State are consequences of a more friendly and less frenzied environment.

The secure leisure parks, pedestrian walkways which separates and protects pedestrians from motorists whilst maintaining order between them as they equally share the roads have contributed to the calmness and harmony that is becoming the daily norm in many parts of Lagos today.

As Bishop Desmond Tutu said, “If we want to reduce crime, we must first of all reduce the conditions that make people desperate”. To reduce these conditions in my view requires amongst other things, the promotion of a regime of order, to create an environment of orderliness.

This position has been validated by recent scientific confirmation published in the Economist Magazine that

"There is scientific confirmation ... of the fact that social behaviour tends to conform to its surroundings. It is notable that anti-social behaviour fell by roughly half when the environment was ordered (as opposed to disordered). But the relative ranking of people's behaviour also tells us something: 82% took a naughty short cut in violation of trespassing signs, dropping to 27% when the surroundings were ordered; 69% littered a graffitied alley, 33% did so in an alley with clean walls, and so on. Most encouraging of all, only 27% of us are tempted to steal, falling to 13% when order surrounds us."

As for the environment and education or lack of it, the impact on the whole world is amply illustrated by the Indonesian, Nigerian and Arab league stories and what we have each done with huge reserves of nature and what may have been if appropriate investment had been made in Education.

Indonesia holds the world record for the fastest rate of deforestation in the world. According to Thomas L. Friedman in his book, “Hot, Flat and Crowded at page 552 Indonesia is now losing tropical forests the size of Maryland every year, and the carbon released by the cutting and clearing of all these trees … has made Indonesia the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world after the United States and China. Brazil is number 4 for the same reason.”

The source of this deforestation is lack of education. Indonesia exports labour to the whole of the construction world from China to Dubai to Argentina in the same way they export trees, because they lack education.

According to Friedman, “unless … people get $10,000 worth of products from just one tree rather than sell a hundred trees for $ 100 each – the illegal logging of Indonesia’s rain forests will likely continue, no matter how many police you put on the case.”

In my recent article I asked whether the Sun was inexhaustible. The point simply is that our search for solar energy, just like the logging in Indonesia must not disturb nature’s natural order in the way the choice of petrol instead of ethanol made 100 years ago as the choice fuel for automobiles is exacting a huge cost from our environment today and threatening our planet.

Permit me to emphasise that the threat to the environment and our planet is real and we ignore it at our peril and at great danger to the safety of the generations coming after us. This is the inconvenient Truth.

Apart from the evolving environmentally friendly habits that will protect and preserve nature and the ecosystem such as tree planting, protection of trees from being felled, developing of more sanitary habits and appropriate disposal of solid waste, observance of building codes and regulation and protection of natural waterways and canals to prevent flooding, two of the most practical actions we can take is increased advocacy and action in all forms.

In Lagos State we are developing Environmental Studies as part of our school curricula and have established Climate Change Clubs in all our public schools to provide interactive fora to broaden environmental issues among our children.

I must thank the organizers of this memorial lecture for keeping the faith and sustaining the crusade of a foremost environmentalist, Late Chief S. L. Edu, who saw the future before many people woke up.

I am truly honoured to have had the opportunity to speak at such an exalted forum on such matter of global importance and I hope that discussions and ideas generated at this forum will be of immense value in developing practical solutions to address the environmental challenges that face our generation.

Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State