Expert Identifies Challenges Facing Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist, Dr. Modupe Odubela has identified inadequate continental and global agreements, inadequate institutional capacities and ill-defined priorities among others as some of the challenges facing environmental sustainability even as she suggested incentivising compliance with environmental protection legislation among industries.
Odubela said that collaboration among stakeholders at all level was key to achieving a good regime of environmental governance for environmental sustainability in order to create a level playing field for the regulated community adding that non-compliance with environmental protection legislation engendered environmental degradation and undermines progress towards sustainable development.
Odubela, who was a former Director, Environmental Impact Assessment, Federal Ministry of Environment, Abuja stated so in her lecture titled “Developing a workable work plan for environmental sustainability: Cost implications, benefits and drawbacks,” during the 32nd Annual General Meeting of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), Ogun State branch.
While noting that there were conflicting instances in the body of statutory legislation around the monitoring and enforcement of environmental standard in Ogun State, she advised that Ministry of Environment in the state and the Ogun State Environmental Protection Agency (OGEPA) to work in unison since they were set up to achieve the same goal.
According to her, “Sustainable development is a state in which the demands placed on the environment can be met without reducing its capacity to allow all people to live well, now and in the future.
The main goals of sustainable development are economic growth, environmental protection and social and human well-being.