Research Agency Trains Student on Climate Biodiversity In West Africa

Participants at Lagos State University, Ojo, Lagos State, South West, Nigeria have been trained on nature approach in solving perennial food crisis relating to climate and biodiversity in West Africa.

The training came at a workshop to ‘expose postgraduate students and early career academics among other stakeholders to the methodology as a tool in constructing a future where we make the right balance of choice between resources as presented by nature (animals, plants, etc) and benefits for humanity’.

Named Solving Food Climate and Biodiversity Nexus, the global project was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, SSHRC, a Canadian Federal Research Funding Agency, University of British Columba in Canada led the project as it was co propounded by Dr. William Cheung, a Professor and Director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and Dr. Rashid Sumaila, a Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in the Interdisciplinary Ocean and Fisheries Economics at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, the scientists and the brains behind the project.

The workshop took place simultaneously in five different countries including Nigeria and Ghana that were used as a case study during the workshop.

Focusing on West Africa, the Nigeria and Ghana case study would be solving problems of depleting fish stocks in the Gulf of Guinea. For example, in Ghana, studies showed that fish consumption rate was 26kg per person in 2006, per year but has now dropped to 19 to 20kg per person, per year due to less fish production.

The IUU – Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported fishing has been discovered as one of the major factors leading to the decrease in the overall fish production in West Africa.

This calls for concern which was why the project was aimed at resolving the problem and boosting food production using Nature Future Frame work method for sustainable future. During the workshop, five institutions within Nigeria and Ghana were selected with each having a representative and coordinator.

For Lagos State University, Professor Shehu Latunji Akintola, a Professor of Fisheries and former Dean of Faculty of Science was the coordinator and co convener of the workshop from Nigeria.

Dr. Temitope Sogbanmu, a senior lecturer, an environmental toxicologist and pollution management specialist was a co convener, she headed a team from University of Lagos.

University of Cape Coast in Ghana as well as two other partnered institutions, GIMPA and UNEG was represented by Magaret Akuete. Although, despite working together as a team, each university had a specific role to play in the overall interest of the project.

Voice of Nigeria’s correspondent gathered that Lagos State university would be working to understand the operational modes through which ships, both big and small vessels are exchanged for catching illegal fishes, resulting to several cases of Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

Professor Olatunji said, ‘We in LASU are focusing on trans-shipment to understand the modus of Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and the nexus of food, climate and biodiversity in Nigeria’s marine fisheries to gain a better understanding of the impact of global warming on fish biodiversity and consequent impact on food security’.

Dr. Temitope from University of Lagos stated that participants from the institution would be resolving the IUU fishing within the Gulf of Guinea, through: ‘coupling along with micro plastic pollution in the fisheries and climate change in these marine waters, sampling across fish landing sites from Lagos to Calabar and extracting potential micro plastics that are in them and also acquiring climate indexes data from NIMET and looking at how these three couple’.

She stated further that, ‘we are doing focus group discussion and key informal interviews with fisher folks and key stakeholders along that network to be able to establish their own perspectives with respect to this issues around IIU fishing and hope’s perspectives and observations with respect to micro plastic in the fish any changes that are observing in the climate’Working along this line, the organisers hoped to apply nature for nature, nature for society and nature for culture, assuring that it would help ‘build models and scenarios which enable experts develop sustainable pathway for pluralistic need for the future we may desire’.

Participants who comprised of a team from both Nigeria and Ghana were divided into three groups; each of the groups at different sessions was allocated time to discuss one of the three sustainable methods given to it, outcome reached within each group was presented to the general team at the end of the day.

The project’s facilitator and moderator, Professor Laura Pereira, a researcher from University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, disclosed the rationale behind the exercise, she stated that: ‘participants were divided into three components to enable them think and discuss on how to bring different stakeholders together with the communities so that their voices could be heard and people come up with plans on action to be taken for more sustainable future’.

Speaking after one of the sessions, Margaret Akuete, a representative from Ghana raised a serious concern about food insecurity in Africa which in the past was not. She said that the challenge was mostly due to human activities.

Margaret cautioned that although human beings might not be able to control environmental change, there was need for people to have change of attitude to their environment, advising that resources should be managed and preserved for the future. She added in affirmation to Sanaupon’s cultural method of protecting the environment. Sanaupon Seton, a doctoral student from South Africa, had earlier argued for Sangbeton, as a popular deity for protecting mangrove among the people of Benin.

He was Professor Laura Pereira’s doctoral student and one of the co participants at the workshop. In her words, Margaret said, ‘Let be very honest, in the olden days when we had cultural means guarding our eco system the environment was very clean, there was sanity, our resources were not over exploited because we were scared of the deity’ Badmus Akorede was another participant and a doctoral student of Professor Latunji from Lagos State University, said that the workshop had afforded him the opportunity to learn more on how to protect aquatic environment using indigenous knowledge.

Among other methods which were learned and agreed at the workshop by the participants were general change of attitude of people to the environment and managing of waste through recycling and other means. Finally, Dr. Awe Adekunle, Chairman Local Organizing Committee who was a lecturer from Department of Fisheries, Lagos State University revealed that the workshop was organised through efforts from various individuals and stakeholders, saying that government cannot do except people also contribute their own quota to achieve maximum results.

The project which started since 2022 had reached mid way and it was expected to end in 2028.