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NES tackles Lagos government over EAR
By Steve Omolale
Head,
Property and Environment,
Lagos
The Nigerian
Environmental Society (NES) is not happy with the Lagos State government over
its directive that the Environmental Audit Report (EAR) for existing industries
in the state should be changed to Environmental Assessment Report.
The society said the
directive, which was handed down to the Lagos State Environmental Protection
Agency (LASEPA) through the state Ministry of Environment, was unprofessional
and retrogressive.
Besides, it was
“not in compliance with Decree 86 of FEPA promulgated in 1992, which
makes EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) a prerequisite for all new
developmental projects, be it on housing estates, dam construction, highway
construction and industries, among others,” NES explained in a communiqué
at the end of its 33rd Board of Directors/National Executive Council meeting,
held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. It was signed by its Executive Secretary, Mr. Ane
Leslie Adogame.
The society lectured the
state government on the report, saying for any major development project, an
EIA should be conducted, while for existing industries, an environmental audit
should be carried out and an Environmental Audit Report (EAR) submitted every
three years.
Calling for a reversion
to the status quo, the society said Environmental Assessment Reports are not
synonymous with Environmental Audit Reports and added, however, that certified
professionals should carried out all environmental studies.
It identifies
incompetence and lack of enforceability as the major problems in the
environment sector. To NES, environmental management in Nigeria was still
largely unregulated and full of people, who called themselves experts but were
ill equipped to cope with the professional demands of environmental management.
“As a result, a
number of the international organisations operating in Nigeria now resort to
bringing in overseas environmental experts to handle routine environmental
management projects; a situation which does not allow Nigerians to compete
favourably in this age of globalisation,” it added and called for
better-trained and more environmental experts, as a way of moving the country
towards a sustainable environmental development.
NES stressed that the
best way to regulate the sector is to pass into law the Nigerian Institute of
Chartered Environmental Practitioners (NICEP) Bill before the National
Assembly. Besides, it asked the Federal Ministry of Environment to quickly
institutionalise the proposed regulatory agency for the sector.
On solid waste
management, the communiqué noted that “solid waste management in
Nigeria is still a major problem in most urban cities, which the government is
yet to find any sustainable solution to.”
It, however, praised the pioneering effort of the Akwa Ibom
State government for the on-going construction of sanitary/engineered landfill
site, urging the Federal Government to revisit without delay the 14 abandoned
sanitary/landfill sites, proposed since 2000, as a way of solving the problem
of solid waste disposal in the country.
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