Prof. Ben Ayade, a lawyer and Governor of Cross River State is a Professor of Environmental Sciences. He had led a delegation of some governors from Africa to participate in a Climate Change Summit in Paris, France. He was privileged to be the only African governor that spoke at the summit.
He discussed how to combat climate change through environmental laws and legislations as well as the global effects of climate change in this interview.
Excerpts:
By Onozore Dania
Our environmental laws governing and regulating the impact of human activities on the environment are still developing, like other human activities, there is always a room for improvement.
Mind you environmental law covers a broad spectrum of activities which include air, water, land, flora or fauna. It includes laws that relate to the protection of animals,the conservation and preservation of forests and plants.
How can the campaign for environmental protection work through appropriate legal frame works?
We can do this through our town planning laws. For example, in Cross River today, we are ensuring that for every single house, you must have a minimum of four trees on each side of the house to ensure that there is a full interaction between the plants and the residents in the house. Therefore, public campaign by way of advocacy, by way of doing it physically, by way of laws, by way of legislations, by way of radios, adverts, physical door to door campaigns are all the things you do to sharpen the consciousness of the ordinary man to the realities of climate Change. And of course, they also must have some posters that must show them the risks and incidental implications of climate change. I do know that where I grew up, most of the streams that we used to play in as little children have all dried up. Those are the effects of climate change because all the water sheds have all gone. These are the things we must distill down to the grassroots for them to appreciate that this climate change is real, it is not a theory, it is not academic, it is real.
Governor Ben Ayade
As a lawyer, what makes you engage in the campaign for the environment, environ-mental protection and climate change?
I actually feel that I am living out my dream, I am giving back to humanity. First of all, I am a Professor of Environmental Science and I do realize that the issue of climate change is real and Nigeria is affected seriously. I also understand that global problems are like environmental issues, even though global in nature, the solutions are local. And so, in my own little way as governor of Cross River State that has 58 percent of the entire forest cover of Nigeria, I owe Nigeria and indeed all Africa the responsibility of demonstrating that indeed, we can actually reverse the cataclysmic effects of climate change and instead of speaking, I am doing the working, talking. So, I talk it and I do it.
How can the common man on the street contribute to protecting the environment and ozone layer against climate change?
The immediate one is afforestation and of course training them to be able to prohibit or reduce or attenuate deforestation. When you are deforesting, because most communities are dependent on their forest resources for their means of livelihood and the issue of absolute conservation means that you are dislocating the communities from their dependence on the forests. The critical thing to do now, is forest management as opposed to conservation. So when it comes to forest management, it allows the community to harvest from the forest in a sustainable manner. So you take such trees that are old, tired and are of no value while replacing them with the young ones. It is completely different from conservation where it is absolute ban of some sort. And for the rural poor and for the general public to add value to the climate change, they must start from keeping their small nurseries, planting their own trees and ensuring that they live in green economy.
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