Eenvironmental Sustainability

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Sustainable Environmental Management in Nigeria: Pros and Cons

10JAN

CONCEPT AND MEANING OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

As the decade of the 1980s came to an end, it became obvious that there is a global need for a development paradigm shift. This is premised on the fact that development was running unsustainably at the expense of natural environment and its resources. Optimistic projections by the United Nations placed global human population at 6.1 billion by the end of the 20th Century and 8.3 billion by the year 2025. This population increase on its own would not have been a serious problem but the problem is with the realization that available resources renewable and non renewable) does not have the capacity to sustain the rate of depletion of resources that go with development and the rapid growth of population (Akpofure, 2009). These natural resources are being used up in a manner that appears wasteful and, thereby, forecloses options for development in the future (Oyeranti, 2001). Interestingly, however, the issue of the protection of the environment became a topical debate in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992. The World Bank estimates that more than a million people in Sub-Saharan Africa still live in acute poverty and suffer grossly inadequate access to resources required to give them opportunity for economic development (Adenuga, Ogujiuba and Ohuche, undated).

The immediate struggle for basic survival by the poor in various countries undermines the legitimate concerns of environmental protection and leads to consequent pressure on the environment, with attendant pervasive degradations (Hisham, 1993). For example, experts believe that by the year 2025, the quantity of clean water available to people on earth from groundwater sources may be cut by half. It is in process of a search for solution to the already manifesting consequences of poorly...