Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), an environmental rights advocacy group, has called for immediate switch to renewable energy to mitigate climate crisis induced by fossil fuels.
The foundation maintained that climate crisis had often led to global warming which necessitated the call to embrace renewable sources of energy that are cleaner alternatives to emissions laced fossils.
The Non-Governmental Organisation made its position known in a statement on Monday by Kome Odhomor, HOMEF’s Media/Communication Lead.
It said that Dr Nnimmo Bassey, Director, HOMEF made the advocacy at the opening of HOMEF’s School of Ecology series on ‘Overcoming Climate Action’ Inertia.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme of the School of Ecology was “Propelling the Energy Transition”.
According to the statement, the advocacy was a capacity sharing training for 50 volunteers of the NGO from selected locations across the country.
The hybrid programme comprised a physical session held at the Oronto Douglas Conference Hall at HOMEF’s International office in Benin, Edo.
Bassey observed that climate change was as a result of human activities with reference to production, movement, and consumption of goods.
According to the environmentalist, a lot of these goods are products of transformation of natural resources.
“This is to meet not only the basic needs of humans but to aid the drive for dispossession, accumulation, power, and despoliation”.
Bassey regretted that the ‘unholy wedlock’ between fossil fuel industries and governments had locked societies on the fossil pathway.
He noted that in Nigeria and other African countries, political leaders were creating the false impression that moving away from fossil fuels would spell economic doom, intensive energy deficits and a reign of poverty.
“This School of Ecology on Propelling the Energy Transition aims to achieve what the name says, force change from bad or dirty to good or renewable energy.
“We believe that there are lessons that can be learned from available wisdom and applied to tip the scales away from polluting and harmful activities.
“We are actively learning from indigenous wisdom which largely encourages living within planetary limits and in harmony with Nature,” he said.
He said that indications from multilateral actions prompted by the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) were tilting towards the perpetuation of polluting activities.
“This school denounces the intergenerational crimes connected to insistence on energy firms that harm humanity and the Planet.
“You have heard of on going moves towards divestment which the Niger Delta Convergence Manifesto characterises as criminal flight.
“A move to profit from avoiding responsibilities for current and historical ecocide,” HOMEF said.