NEMA, UNESCO Seek Modern, Indigenous Interface To Tackle Climate Change
The National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA has partnered with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO in a bid to seek modern and indigenous ways of tackling climate change in Nigeria.
Speaking at an expert meeting on Interfacing Modern and Indigenous Early warning systems for disaster reduction, the director general of NEMA, Engr. Mustapha Yunusa Maihaja said “Informal Disaster risk management in Nigeria, and Africa at large has been profoundly rooted in local communities even before the advent Of modern sciences. Indigenous knowledge has been applied in evaluating climate trends and further used to establish early warning in our communities particularly with regards to rainfall patterns.
“However, with the intensity and frequency of the changing pattern of climate and its impacts, the effectiveness of indigenous knowledge for disaster risk reduction measures is becoming grossly inadequate; there is therefore a need to link modern science with indigenous knowledge in order to build a culture of early warning systems and disaster risk reduction by vulnerable communities to the negative consequences of climate change.
Rod Waddington