‘Study coastal areas' vulnerability to sea rise’

Bennett Oghifo in This Day (Nigeria):  It is imperative to map the vulnerability of sea level rise on coastal areas, Director of the Climate Change Adaptation Unit of the Federal Ministry of Environment, Dr. Samuel Adejuwon has said.

He stated this at the Climate Change and Coastal States Dialogue. A two-day Workshop organised by the UNDP in collaboration with Lagos State Government at the weekend in Lagos. The theme was ‘Challenges of Sea Level Rise Induced Flooding in Nigeria; Coastal States in Focus. States in attendance were; Lagos, Delta, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Cross River, Ondo and Ogun.

The first paper; Potential Consequences and Response Strategies to Sea Level Rise in Nigeria’ was presented by Prof. Emmanuel Oladipo; the second paper was; ‘Industrial Pollution and Water Quality in Coastal States in Nigeria’ by Prof. Labode Popoola and the third paper, ‘Climate Change and Coastal Environment: A Case Study of Lagos State’ was delivered by Prof. Jide Alo, who was represented.

Adejuwon while commenting on the presentations said different coastal states have separate characteristics and that it would be good to map individual state’s vulnerability. “We have not been able to really do this. We need to do the mapping to see the adaptation measures we can put in place in order to combat the effect of climate change.”

He also agreed with the Cross River State Commissioner for Environment who said there were other factors that cause flooding that should not be ignored, stating that there was need to do research to unearth these factors. “All these factors are being [ex]acerbated by climate change.”...

The Third Mainland Bridge in Nigeria, one of three bridges from Lagos Island to the mainland, shot by Zouzou Wizman, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license