Don Charts Path For Environmental Emergencies

In the face of global concern over inadequacies in the way and manner environmental emergencies were handled, the need for professionals on the environment to be more proactive has been stressed.

Prof. T.K.S. Abam of the Institute of Geosciences and Space Technology, Rivers State University of Science and Technology (RSUST) who stressed the need at a 2-day workshop organsied by the Nigerian Environmental Society (NES) recently in Port Harcourt,  said with the advent of globalisation and information technology, set standards were being applied in the handling of the environment.

He said the environment was highly endangered due to unfriendly activities by man without attaching value to it, a situation he said, has placed the environment in danger.

He said the part man played has been a difficult one for the environment especially in human and industrial activity. He said the community of environmental scientists was now in a challenging time for the environment and corporate environmental management has not been fully developed in many of our organisations.

According to Prof Abam, it was gratifying that since the establishment of the Federal Environmental Management Agency, (FEMA), and the evolution of the Ministry of Environment, there has been a lot of Environment Impact Assessments and various industries were adopting favourable measures in protecting the environment.

Lead speaker at the event and Director, Centre for Energy and Environment, Energy Commission of Nigeria, University of Benin.

Prof Lawrence Ezemonye in his submission lamented that though nature has put harmonizing things in place to make the environment clean, man in his exploitative nature has not been able to manage the environment properly.

He said environmental contamination was an inevitable consequence of activities of man and natural occurrences which flood the contaminate the air.

Prof Ezemonye said Nigeria was faced with environmental degradation arising mainly from oil prospecting and desertification and deforestation affects 40 per cent of the nation’s land mass.

He said environmental protection was given a passive attention especially in the era between 1960 and 1988 and “existing guidelines for environmental protection in Nigeria was more of non compliance than more on non enforcement”.

He said environmental management was intended to checkmate recklessness in the handling of the environment and recommended “selective harvesting” a process where you take and replace in order not to damage the environment.

He emphasized that since it was possible to foresee damage to the environment, it was safer to take proactive measures instead of being in the habit of accessing damage when in fact, damage could be predicted.