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By Joel Anekwe
Environmental Right Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has charge youths in Nigeria, especially the Niger Delta region to resist energy colonialism by embracing renewable energy technologies.
This, the environmental campaign organisation said, the youths could do through conscious effort and actions to provide solutions and partner with government, institutions and NGOs such as ERA to produce energy saving cookstoves to reduce deforestation and fuel wood consumption.
Speaking to about 120 youths drawn from the four Niger Delta states for the Youth Environmental Camp Meeting 2019 in Port Harcourt at the weekend, the executive director, ERA/FoEN, Dr. Godwin Ojo, challenge the youths to see environmental protection as their responsibility.
“Young people should have a problem-solving mentality to poverty and climate change as opportunities to generate ideas, conduct advocacy, creation of jobs, renewable energy solutions in mini-grids and off-grid systems for rural electrification, solid waste management that emphasises reuse, reduce and recycle waste in all our productive and consumptive activities,” he stated, stressing that they should do so by employing arts and literature.
The executive director, ERA/FoEN, noted that some of the activities designed to empower the youths included: training in the fabrication of clean energy-saving cookstoves, training for solar gadgets installation and repairs and solar drier tent project for processing tomatoes, pepper, fish and vegetables as alternative income generation in Bodo City, Rivers State.
He explained the importance of the training programme which was the maiden edition, adding that youths mostly impact and carry the burden in the communities that are in the frontline of extractive activities and climate change impacts.
Dr. Ojo stated: “The youths suffer loss of livelihoods, disorientation, fear of a bleak future and the desolation wrought by extractive activities.”
He added: “The youths are also the target of the capitalist globalization concept of the impossibility of a world without dirty energy. This is the narrative the Federal Government’s return to Ogoniland to extract oil is built upon. That Nigeria cannot survive without oil. This is equally the narrative that Nigeria’s foot-dragging to leapfrog to just energy built on energy democracy and community ownership through the production and supply as end user.”
Prof. Fidelis Allen, associate professor at the University of Port Harcourt, in a lecture on Climate Change and the Need for Transition from Fossil fuels to Renewable Energy, expressed gratitude to ERA for organising the programme.
He said that the switch to renewable energy cannot be automatic but by an incremental approach.
He also said the rural area can be the cornerstone of the energy revolution in this country and called for equity and ambition within and around the renewable energy discussion, adding that these could come by way of finance, support, sustained interest and drive.
He however regretted that the government has not done enough to encourage interest and Investment in local manufacturing of renewable energy gadgets.
