By: Felix Ikpotor
The Rivers State Government has expressed its readiness to partner with a non governmental organisations, Ashoka Africa and other relevant agencies in addressing environmental issues in the state.
The State Commissioner for Environment, Sydney Gbara declared the state’s readiness at a capacity building workshop organised by Ashoka Africa for women and youths from Alode Community in Eleme and other environmentally impacted communities in Rivers State with focus on demanding for climate justice from polluters of their environment.
Gbara said the Rivers State Government led by Sir Siminialayi Fubara is concerned about the environment because according to him, whatever affects the environment affects everybody in the state.
He said: “For us as a government, we pledge our commitment to ensuring that we partner with all relevant stakeholders, non governmental organisations, institutions, individuals including the international oil companies who are the ones polluting our environment, we want to partner with everyone of you so that we can know what you have to bring to bare for us”.
“We feel happy to see individuals and organisations coming out voluntarily to bear some of our burdens because what you are doing here are some of our works and so our doors are open as a government and as a ministry to work with you. Whatever thing you want us to do, tell us we are ready to give you that support,” Gbara added.
Earlier, Josephine Nzerem, the Regional Director, Ashoka West Africa, while addressing journalist said the aim of the engagement is to bring about an empowered community of people that can stand and demand for their right from the powers and organisations degrading their environment.
She said, the era of community people standing aloof and expecting strangers to fight for environmental justice for them was no longer tenable, calling on the communities to own up to the challenges facing them and be the advocates for whatever intervention they desire.
She added that one way of ensuring that community members are able to demand for climate justice was boosting their awareness and capacity through such engagement.
She said: “We have to first of all build the power of the community members to understand and own the problem in order for them to be advocates of the community because if you don’t do that, they will always be at the other end expecting an outsider to come and do it and give them dividends because its their climate that’s being destroyed. But we are now putting their power into their hands, telling them, you are the ones that know where the problem is, an outsider does not know. So any intervention must be designed by the community people.
“We want to stop the practice of people throwing their hands in the air and pointing fingers and nothing gets done, so what’s the purpose? We want everyone to own this problem, we want everyone’s voices to be heard, and we want all of us to collaboratively come to a solution and begin to implement that solution”.
Nzerem expressed the hope that the engagement and trainning would lead to an empowered community that can demand access to resources to improve their living standards and also improve their health saying; “This will improve economy and health because part of the problem that the women identified is how all the environmental degradations have affected their health especially respiratory challenges”.
On her part, Dr. Mina Ogbanga one of the partners on the programme said it is important to train community women and youths on how to speak up and engage because they are the most impacted by climate change and environmental degradation.
She emphasized that the trainning would help them tackle most of the challenges that comes with environmental degradations including improving on their coping skills.
Port Harcourt Spectator reports that the trainning was part of a Stakeholder Engagement Session for the Climate Justice Community of Parties (CJCoP).
According to Ashoka, the CJCoP initiative aims to foster collaborative solutions to address pressing environmental challenges in the Niger Delta, bringing together diverse stakeholders to co-create strategies that promote climate justice, resilience, and sustainable development.
