By Atâyi Babs
Abuja, Nigeria, is billed to host an international summit on “Enhancing legislations for the effective implementation of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in West Africa.”
The summit aspires to contribute to the ongoing global efforts at reducing environmental degradation, mitigate climate change, and encourage project implementation in a sustainable manner through implementable legislation.
Organised by Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Environment in collaboration with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Comity of Ambassadors of West African Countries in Abuja, the summit is expected to provide opportunities for key stakeholders in the Environment, Infrastructure, Agriculture, Oil and Gas, Power, Transport and Security Sectors to deliberate on approaches to improving the EIA Administration in Nigeria and West Africa through operational legislations
According to a release signed by Hon. Uche Ekwunife, the Chairperson of Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Environment, the bilingual summit is billed to hold from the 28th – 29th of April 2015 at Hall 028 of Nigeria’s National Assembly complex.
Development projects, by their very nature, may produce deleterious effects on the environment. In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental management legislations are devised to ensure that projects likely to cause significant impact to the environment are regulated. It is on this note that EIA as a decision-making tool is widely discussed as being capable of helping to attain goals of sustainable development.
