Africa and the Climate Change/Conservation Crisis

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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Mar 25, 2021, 10:27:12 AM3/25/21
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As an African, I've always wondered: do we Africans pollute as much as other people, and is our carbon footprint as large as that of other peoples?

 

I'll leave those who have more expertise on the matter than I to continue to make the argument that Africa, which has a low level of industrialization, is not and cannot be the continent responsible for depleting the ozone layer and exacerbating climate change.

 

I personally think that that argument makes itself convincingly, and the evidence of differential pollution is clear.

 

My own concern is at the micro level. We Africans were/are socialized in relatively deprived and low-resourced countries and communities. Because of this pedigree, we rarely overuse or waste resources.

 

When we take showers or take a bath, we use just enough water to get clean. We shut off the shower or tab instinctively between scrubbing and rinsing because of the way we were taught to conserve scarce resources in our countries. We cut off the shower between lathering and rinsing.

 

When we wash dishes or things in the sink or brush our teeth, we cut off the tap instinctively between soaping and rinsing. We learned that growing up.

 

We Africans do not need to be taught recycling as we do it on several items instinctively.


And we rarely waste food or throw stuff away when it can be reused or repurposed. Most of us, anyway.


We Africans have been using bath water to flush toilets since the advent of modern plumbing. And composting is an age-old African practice, perfected over centuries.


Some of these practices are giving way to more wasteful practices in African urban centers, but Africans are still largely conservation-conscious.

 

All of these are largely due to the upbringing we received in Africa, an upbringing that was shaped and constrained by the imperative of optimizing the utility of scarce resources and managing the overlapping pressures of limited availability, sustainability, and conservation. 

 

That's why I laugh at times when I see Western NGOs collecting and spending millions of dollars to fight pollution and carbon emission in Africa.

 

It is not that there is no pollution in Africa, or that Africans don't contribute their share to co2 emissions and other kinds of pollution, but go around Africa's big cities and you'll see small, subtle things that mitigate the worst form of such emissions. 

 

For example, in big African cities with bad traffic, when people get stuck in such gridlocks, they switch off the engines of their cars instinctively, restarting them only when the traffic moves. Heck, I'm in America and I still do it in traffic because it's seared in my head and I can't snap out of it.


It's true that Africans are felling trees for fuel and are not replacing them, thereby causing all kinds of environmental hazards, but it's not as if they have been given more easily accessible or cheaper alternatives and have turned them down, so for them it’s about survival in the present.

 

There are probably too many cars and too many badly maintained ones emitting carbon monoxide into the atmosphere in Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasa, Harare, and other big African cities, and the slums of these cities are ground zeros of urban pollution, but the big cities are not Africa. In the rural areas, where most people live, the cars are few, the air is still largely pure and fresh, and the flora is still lush and green, and traditional recycling methods are alive and thriving.

 

 

And, by the way, before Western NGOS have the mouth to speak on this issue of chopping down trees for firewood and cooking with open fires that don't burn cleanly, they would do well to remember that it's not Africans who have regular bonfires for the heck of it or organize silly festivals such as the Burning Man Festival, where they create giant fires that burn nonstop for days not for any utilitarian or existential purposes but for fun, just because they can.

 

At any rate, Africa possesses very few of the two biggest pollutants — greenhouses and manufacturing industries.

 

Africa and Africans have played at most a marginal role in the ongoing climate crisis, but they have borne and will continue to bear the brunt of it, unfortunately.

 

Biko Agozino

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Mar 25, 2021, 11:30:32 AM3/25/21
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Moses, do not forget the burning bush. The cutting down of trees for domestic cooking is contributing to climate change in Africa. If we can design solar-powered cookers, domestic energy generators will be more climate-friendly and our families will be spared the smoke that causes a lot of respiratory illness, exhaust fumes from gasoline generators that kill whole families, and the occasional explosion of gas cylinders.

However, Macka B agrees with you in this song:





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Moses Ebe Ochonu

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Mar 25, 2021, 2:43:05 PM3/25/21
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Yes, indeed, Biko, we can and should do much better to provide cleaner energy alternatives for our people for all the reasons you stated. It is an imperative in Africa precisely because Africa bears the bulk of the impact of the climate crisis and because unlike the West, we don't have the means to mitigate it and the medical infrastructure to tackle its effects on our people. We owe it to our people to therefore wean them off practices that endanger their environment and themselves, not because Western environmental NGOs are preaching it but because African humanity should be protected from a climate crisis that is largely created outside of Africa but whose planetary ramifications seem particularly poignant for the continent. Ka chineke mezie oku.

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Biko Agozino

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Mar 25, 2021, 6:31:13 PM3/25/21
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Ya gazie. 

Industrialization without smokestacks is a new mantra being recommended for Africa but it is not only for Africa. The rest of the world has gone far in search of alternative energy which should actually be called the original energy while hydro carbon fossil fuels are the true alternatives. 




Let our scientists team up to manufacture better solar panels and more powerful storage batteries or let us just buy them for starters and install them all over Africa. And let us plant a tree for every African annually to reforest Africa with billions of trees to sequester the carbon in the atmosphere while producing fruits to feed the people as Schumacher suggested in Small is Beautiful. It go better.




Biko

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Mar 26, 2021, 5:49:43 AM3/26/21
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Biko, 

This was why I said in one of my write ups that for Africa, Nigeria must lead the way and for Nigeria to lead the way, the Federal Government must demonstrate leadership as enshrined in the Constitution.

In chapter 2 Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy section 20 it states:

'The state shall protect and improve the environment and safeguard the water, air and land, forest and wild life of Nigeria'

I said in the write up that the FG must lead the way toward solarisation of energy resources in tiers:

Tier 1 government ministries and seats of government.

Tier 2 First generation universities designated as centres of excellence which serve as hub around which other universities  can source computerised and digital materials (including publication of books) and locally based publications for effective distribution even if such university beneficiaries will pay nominal fees for the services and improve the financial base of such provider universities.

University teaching hospitals will also benefit from such provisions as centres of state of the art research facilities in health care provisions.

Tier 3 will be the general populace in which government loan scheme from both State and Federal  governments that enables the citizenry acquire solar panel roofing that protects the environment improves domestic social welfare as well as productivity.

These objectives can be met by a focused government and should be written into the manifesto of a people centred government at the next general elections.  This was the basis I said Nigeria needs a third alternative government in waiting apart from the current dominant two that dont seem to have a clue about how to pull the citizenry into the 21st century.


OAA



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Biko Agozino

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Mar 26, 2021, 12:30:13 PM3/26/21
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You are right Yinka but part of the problem is thinking only about the next elections and thinking within the box of the colonial boundaries. The sustainable solution lies beyond the national boundaries and beyond the next elections.

Biko

OLAYINKA AGBETUYI

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Mar 26, 2021, 3:27:07 PM3/26/21
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Biko:

The electoral cycle is the shortest way to secure change in modern democracies.  The present government might say the solarisation programme was not in their current manifesto and they cannot deliver what they did not promise at the expense of what is promised in a situation of limited resources.  ( We must remember that manifesto pledges need to be costed and prioritised.)

The presence of a third alternative party of government in waiting galvanises the other two from their mutual complacent resolve of not working for their compatriots' urgent needs to rewrite their manifestos for the upcoming elections to stave off the challenge to their power base.  So its a win-win situation for the Nigerian electorate in choosing a party that best meets their needs.

My usual response to your regional preferences is that for now the nation state is the atomic model of national development while the regional base is the molecular (to use a chemical metaphor.)

Let us start from humble beginnings with an eye to the bigger picture, because resource base for now is nationalised and better managed at the national level.  ( for instance the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria , which is the power house of the Nigerian government is not binding on the citizens of Ivory Coast or the rest of West African nations let alone the whole of Africa )

 There can be scope for regional pooling of resources based on shared agenda, in the African leadership suggested for Nigeria. The country can commence initiatory moves of harmonising its policies with regional priorities. If we wait till such regional priorities are formalised and actualized it will be a longer and costlier route fraught with red tape which might never be realised.  The waiting is too long already.

Remember the Soviet regime fell mainly for the same reasons.  The EU faced bureaucratic problems for the same reason.  

The UK may not have been emerging head and shoulders above its erstwhile EU peers with regards to Covid 19 scouurge, if it did not decouple from the EU.  The decoupling allowed for accelerated uptake of national priorities.


OAA



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-------- Original message --------
From: 'Biko Agozino' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Date: 26/03/2021 16:36 (GMT+00:00)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Africa and the ClimateChange/Conservation Crisis

Boxbe This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (usaafric...@googlegroups.com) Add cleanup rule | More info
You are right Yinka but part of the problem is thinking only about the next elections and thinking within the box of the colonial boundaries. The sustainable solution lies beyond the national boundaries and beyond the next elections.

Biko

On Friday, 26 March 2021, 05:49:44 GMT-4, OLAYINKA AGBETUYI <yagb...@hotmail.com> wrote:


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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Mar 26, 2021, 4:52:36 PM3/26/21
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beautiful discussion.

biko, please share your view on the sustainable solution.

toyin

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biko...@yahoo.com

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Mar 26, 2021, 9:59:55 PM3/26/21
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Toyin, the sustainable solutions are all there in my previous post, including links to books for those interested to download and read.

If an African kid can build a wind power generator from scraps, no thing holds African scientists from scaling it up.

Biko

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