Environmental Regulations and Rules: United Nations Perspective and the Nigeria Experience

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A B S T R A C T This research reviewed the Nigeria’s environmental laws within the context of Agenda 21 at the three levels of water, forest degradation and solid waste management with the intent of evaluating the importance of Agenda 21 on environmental sustainability in the country. Furthermore, the study examined the Nigeria’s environmental laws to determine its effectiveness. In this way, the study provided information on the effectiveness and extent of United Nations interventions on environmental issues in Nigeria thereby revealing the gap between such interventions and actual environmental challenges of the country.

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Environmental Regulations and Rules: United Nations Perspective and the Nigeria Experience *Ph.D. Candidate FASHUYI OLUGBENGA Federal University of Technology Akure Ondo State Nigeria, Nigeria Email: olugbeinga@gmail.com A R T I C L E I N F O: Article history: Received 5 April 2018 Accepted 25 April 2018 Available online 27 June 2018 Keywords: Agenda 21; Bunkering; Oil Spill; Nigeria; Cook Stove. A B S T R A C T This research reviewed the Nigeria’s environmental laws within the context of Agenda 21 at the three levels of water, forest degradation and solid waste management with the intent of evaluating the importance of Agenda 21 on environmental sustainability in the country. Furthermore, the study examined the Nigeria’s environmental laws to determine its effectiveness. In this way, the study provided information on the effectiveness and extent of United Nations interventions on environmental issues in Nigeria thereby revealing the gap between such interventions and actual environmental challenges of the country. CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2019), 3(1), 62-66. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2018.4683 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2018 Contemporary Urban Affairs. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction With the advances made in globalization resulting in progress in international integration and interchange of world views, global environmental concerns have assumed a more germane dimension. It has therefore become easier to realize that local environmental challenge in certain parts of the world have widespread reverberations on some other parts of the globe. In fact, it has been pointed out that recent global issue in form of depletion of the Ozone layer and global warming are the result of greenhouse gases and other complex processes (Blodgett, 2004). These have further resulted to major environmental devastations and called the attention and interventions of the United Nations. These interventions precipitated two major and important events, vis-à-vis: the Rio conference of 1972 and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992. At these meetings, global environmental issues were dialectically analyzed and a broad template for Earths sustainability (the Agenda 21) was realized and adopted. Agenda 21 discussed Earth’s environmental problems and suggested solutions within the frame and peculiarity of each member state of the United Nations. It is within the context of these suggested solutions that Nigeria (a United Nation member state) re-defined her constraints, priorities and environmental laws in order to meet up with United Nations criteria for Earth’s sustainability. In view of the foregoing, this research intends to review Nigeria’s environmental laws within the context of Agenda 21 with the intent of evaluating the importance of Agenda 21 on environmental sustainability in the country. The study will also examine the Nigeria’s environmental laws to determine its effectiveness. In this way, the study reflects on the United Nations interventions in Nigeria thereby taking a position on the extent and effectiveness of such interventions on the environmental milieu of the country. Moreover, this study examined the Nigeria environmental challenges at the three major levels of water problems, waste management and forest degradation and the issues involved at these levels are discussed in different sections of this work. 2. Environmental Regulations and Rules 2.1 United Nations Perspectives Environmental laws stems from the recognition that the natural environment is fragile and needed special protection (Environmental law, Mold and Water Damage Expert, 2018). Following this important realization, it became imperative to protect the Earth natural assets. Addressing these challenges the United Nations (UN), summoned the ‘Stockholm conference’ which converged at Rio de Janeiro in 1972. This was succeeded by another major meeting in 1992 referred to as the United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or simply Earths summit. These world conferences were targeted at addressing the Earth’s environmental challenges. According to the UN the major environmental challenge in Africa and Nigeria inclusive, are related to issues of drought, flooding, deforestation, and widespread poverty (Table 1). Table1: United Nations perspective. 2.2 Nigeria Perspective Nigeria is a tropical country located in western Africa on the Gulf of Guinea and has total area of 923,768km2. 2.2.1 Perspective of the Federal Government of Nigeria on Environmental Challenges. Literature has shown that environmental challenges in Nigeria, at their primary levels, manifest in three major forms vis-à-vis: water problems, forest degradation, and solid waste management (Ogunleye, 2004). Nigeria (Fig. 1) is largely an agrarian economy until more recent times when the economy relied heavily on petroleum resources for development. Figure 1: Map of Federal Republic of Nigeria. At the secondary level (Table 2), these challenges are recognized by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) in relation to: drought, flooding, air pollution, deforestation, loss of bio diversity, fresh water availability, and widespread poverty. Table 2: Showing Federal Government Perspective of environmental challenges in Nigeria.

Perspectives