This evening as I stepped out of my office, I was greeted by
a huge cloud of smoke outside, it made the whole place so foggy that I almost
thought harmattan had made a comeback. As I drove a few meters I noticed the
smoke was coming from a nearby street, one part of me prayed it wasn’t a house
o fire or something. Turns out its just
big pile of refuse being burnt in an open field. As I drove away and saw just
how much smoke this fire was creating, I thought to myself, surely this must
have some very serious adverse effects on our climate, I mean the sheer volume
of that smoke being released into the atmosphere doesn’t just disappear, it
goes somewhere, doesn’t it?
Now I’m no
environmentalist or anything, in fact, the closest I came to appreciating the
environment is my younger sister who remains an unregistered but in her mind, avidly
enthusiastic member of green peace, PETA, you name it, she knows all their
policies and champions their commitment to making the environment more
sustainable.
Although I have to
admit I am a huge advocate of recycling. I remember years ago when I would come
on holiday, I always encouraged my friends to get a separate bin bag for
recyclables, I even made a separate bin bag for that at home but each time I
left the bag next to the big bin outside instead of throwing it in with the
garbage, some concerned citizen came along, ripped the bag, took what they
wanted and yep, you guessed it….tossed the rest in with all the garbage. I was
always so annoyed, for one, my friends always made fun of me, my parents called
me oyinbo and all for what? Despite all the efforts, sadly there are no
facilities out there to support recycling in Nigeria.
Now the thought about the environment and the effect of all
that smoke on climate change quickly fizzled out as I battled the usual
inexplicable lagos traffic. But as soon as I got home, I tuned into CNN and
caught Amanpour; she was talking about the effect of climate change with the
president of the World Bank Jim Yong Kim and he highlighted something that
really struck me. The gist of what he said was that people need to be more
aware and concerned about the effect of climate change especially in third
world countries where people are uninformed and even worse, ill equipped to
handle the effects that come with climate change. Now usually the skeptic in me
would have thought these people have come again with their third world country
this and that, but it rings true. The people in villages who rely on their
immediate surrounding for sustenance will not understand it when rivers start
to dry up or when the land gets too dry to farm on from extreme evaporation
brought on by harsh sun temperatures. They won’t get the reason why they
experience landslides or floods suddenly out of the blue, even worse they are
not prepared for the aftermath. The young boy living in Makoko with his family
in a small thatched stilt home won’t understand why the water level suddenly
rises to the point where their little home is no longer habitable. They simply
are unaware of what this whole climate change thing is about.
This is an excerpt from a 2013 world
bank report regarding sub Saharan Africa and climate change
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers found food security will
be the overarching challenge, with dangers from droughts, flooding, and shifts
in rainfall.
Between 1.5°C-2°C warming, drought and aridity, will contribute
to farmers losing 40-80 percent of cropland conducive to growing maize,
millet, and sorghum by the 2030s-2040s, the researchers found.
In a 4°C warmer world, around the 2080s, annual precipitation
may decrease by up to 30 percent in southern Africa, while East Africa will see
more rainfall, according to multiple studies. Ecosystem changes to pastoral
lands, such as a shift from grass to woodland savannas as levels of carbon
dioxide increase, could reduce food for grazing cattle.
This affects all of us, from the uninformed villager who
farms and relies on the stream for water to the educated upper middle class
family living in Lekki whose house turns into a mini swimming pool once the
rains come. Even as a Lekki resident, there are no impressive measures put in
place to help manage the situation, With
all due respect to all my Lekki peoples ofcorse.
Anyway, Amanpour has my attention tonight as she brings on
Darren Aronofsky, Director of the movie Noah. The film gained a lot of traction
since its trailer was released last year and as you may have guessed, there was
quite a bit of controversy but not enough to cause Darren much worry. For one,
Amanpour told Aronofsky that people labeled him an environmentalist wacko but Aronofsky
was quick to correct that it was the character of Noah that was labeled that
and not him. He highlighted that the world we now live in now is the second
chance God gave us after the flood and the rainbow signifying peace. But people
still continue to do damage and misuse the resources nature has given so much
that that the inevitable is bound to occur. It’s interesting that though the
movie is based on an occurrence in the bible, GOD wasn’t even mentioned once in
the entire 138 minutes of the movie and
that definitely speaks volumes, the movie had a clear message to pass and it
wasn’t going to hide it under a huge blanket of religion.
Even if the environment or the world as we know it doesn’t
implode in our generation, I’m scared to think what would be left of it decades
down the line.
I had a conversation along these lines this evening with one
of my friends and by the end he said “see, all this one na oyinbo wahala, na
naija we dey where people never chop belle full.
Yes o, we are in naija
but know this, climate change is no respecter of geographical location or
financial status and it sure as hell doesn’t speak pidgin. So I guess that guy
wey never chop belle full is about to have a few more problems than just food
by the time this is over.
