By Engineer Abdullahi Usman
In my previous columns, I charged the governments with the entire negligences and failures exacerbating the impacts of climate change especially the frequent occurrence of flooding in Nigeria. Actually, the governments were bestowed with the power to wield and decide all the aspects of their citizens’ lives. It was believed that the governments care about the lives and welfare of their citizens and that’s why the calls for a climate actions focus on them. Unfortunately, five reasons were outlined as the challenges that hinder the climate actions from the governments around the world.
1- Competitive politics: It’s evident that our governments especially in Nigeria politicize everything to the best of their interests, as such, leaders fail to act on climate change mitigation accordingly. For example, I vehemently bet that the incumbent government of Nigeria will not support the development of Baro port, because it will undermine the president’s interest of making Lagos great. This has perfectly epitomised the competitive politics that hinder the climate actions. Moreover, our politics has automatically metamorphosed into a perfect autocracy, and this has directly emasculate the power of legislatives, judiciaries and citizens to play their role optimally in a climate actions.
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2- Short-termism: Although it’s a general human nature to prioritize the present, governments care most to fulfill all their policies within their tenures. Yes, our consciences make us think about the future, but a lot of reasons deter our willingness to hit our climate targets. For example, some of the climate actions require a long term plan to be fulfilled and a lot of money to be achieved, hence if the government engage in such a climate actions, people may not identify the success of that government especially if the aims were not achieved within the government’s tenure. Whether our short-termism is innate or driven by our environment, political leaders know that citizens primarily care about the here and now and so they focus on that too.
3- Absence of better alternatives: A lot of governments and people will be happy to support climate actions with their resources, however, in most of the cases, getting a better alternative became a problem. For example, as the use of electric vehicles increases, the users inveigh much about lack of a charging infrastructure and short milages of the available EVs. In fact, some of the users have dropped their EVs for petrol vehicles. This justifies that the technologies supporting the climate actions are not fully metamorphosed to support wide adoptions of the necessary measures to tackle the climate change.
However, this should not encourage the total deterant to the climate actions rather, to spur the governments’ to provide subsidies, develop charging infrastructure and support further researches. Hungary became one of the countries where EVs market increases due to government subsidies and provision of charging infrastructure.
4- Other Priorities: Due to the individual preferences and lack of understanding of various menaces contributed by climate change, mitigation and adaptation strategies may heavily be affected. Most of the people prioritize their egos and have no intentions of compromising whatever will barricade their priorities no matter how good it is. This is especially ubiquitous where people lack social amenities and illiteracy predominates. For example, some militant choose to dump their refuse in gutter especially during the raining season, instead of paying the refuse pickers. They rather protect their fiscal priorities than to protect themselves and their environment. Moreover, prioritization is not attributed to only militant because, government may be cagey to implement whatever may not attract political commendations especially when election approaches. In short, all the negligence being observe from militant is attributed to the governments, because they have power to promulgate strict law on their citizens. It’s more escruciating to notice that some governments do not believe that climate change exist, just to protect their priorities, American president Donald J. Trump is among the notable figures who deny climate change. Right from his first tenure, he withdrew all the supports giving to the climate actions by his country.
Limited Resources: As everyone has insatiable desire for resources, not only individuals ululate on limited resources, but also governments. Hence, most of the governments respect their preferences and claim limited Resources as their cogent reason for their failures on climate actions. Indeed, climate change mitigation and adaptation are capital intensive tasks, but governments need to weigh the gravity of the disasters that may be caused before making any decisions.
Lastly, since climate change is a global disaster that affects everything on earth, it must be stopped with all might, and this could be achieved through individual contribution. Since we all know the activities that aggravate the climate change, let’s avoid them and embrace conducive environment for ourselves and future generations to come. One more advice that can inspire us, is to believe that our individual activities count and we should be cautious of any activity that will lead to our suicide. This will be more important when we accept the world citizenship.
