The world today is eleven years into the
millennium, a milestone in the history of man kind that spurred heads of state
and government of 189 nations in total, to commit them to making the right to
development a reality for every one to freeing the entire human race from want.
There was first and foremost an acknowledgement of simple fact that progress is
based on sustainable economy, which must focus on sustaining the environment.
A
key to the success of this initiative is the term development in the state of
progress. A process, which obviously takes place in space that is, thus one
cannot discuss development without ultimately not pining it down to specific
location and territories. The millennium development goal was conceptualized
and environmental sustainability was initiated. The frame work of 8 goals,
18 targets and 48 indicators, as adopted by a consensus of experts from the
United Nations secretariat, IMF, OCED and the World Bank, with emphasis mainly
on the seventh of this goal is to ensure environmental sustainability and
development which seeks to lay out in board terms, a strategy for Africa’s
economic renaissance and a sustainable development and political priorities.
For any development to be sustainable it has to fulfill the principles of
sustainability. As an idea, it can be traced back to the ‘’limits of growth ‘as
justified in the debates of the 1970s and the 1972 UN-Stockholm conference.
However, the single most frequent
understanding of sustainable development is that which meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generation to meet their own
needs. This however, modified as improving the quality of life while living
within the caring capacity of the ecosystem that will ensure a better quality
of life for all, now and into the future, in a just equitable manner, whilst
living within the limits of the supporting ecosystem. In the realm of
sustaining Nigeria’s environment, its ignominious challenges as revealed in a
report on physical planning within the context of millennium indicates that
Nigeria is currently losing about 350sqkm of its land mass annually to the
advancing desert in the northern states of borno, yobe, katsina, sokoto and
Kano. 72 million Nigerian have no access to safe drinking water while
55.2million Nigeria has no access to improved sanitation.
Report also indicate that Nigeria is ranked
among the poorest in the world as result, the millennium development goal come
at an auspicious time as a new
reawakening to the relevance of the attainment of meaningful development and
environmental sustainability in Nigeria. Government for instance, as way of
institutionalizing the process in other for the goals targeted to be meet ,following the
granting of debt relief to Nigeria, the then
president directed that the saving made from it be channeled to the MDGs in
meeting with Nigerians commitment to the Paris club. Regrettably, one of the
major problems confronting Nigeria in its plight to sustainable development is
the challenges of having access to building material in large quantity, in good
quantity, and at affordable price. Reports
from the MDGs office in
Nigeria also indicates that 100billion representing the federal government
shares of the debt relief gain were allocated in 2006 budget for ten ministries especially to
housing and urban
development. Today, as we speak, in spite of the institutional and financial
support from government, it is obvious that the mdg target may not be meet by
2015 that is less than three years from now. In
the affirmation, chief Olusegun Obasanjo the former president also sounded a
note of warning when he
declared that the chance of meeting the millennium development goals by the year 2015 is slim. For
instance, report from human development indices classified Jordan in the past
as one of the country that is making appreciable progress. It indicates
that poverty in 21% has decreased to 14%, access to water to 97% and 65% access to sanitation while recent robust growth performance of the
Ghanaian economy has led to an accelerated pace of poverty reduction. The
annual pace of GDP growth
has increased steadily from 3.7 percent in 2000 to 6.2 percent in 2010. This
record of growth and poverty reduction underscores the primacy of growth in
reducing poverty in Ghana and therefore, the criticality of pro-growth policy
environment.
Policy formulation takes place at all level of
government administration in the area of preparation of physical development
plans of urban centers to guide the distribution of various land uses and
infrastructure routes thereby facilitating the orderly distribution of water
and social infrastructures; using statistics collected in the process of plan
making to determine the distribution and location such as school, health centers and
water pipe routes in
achieving environmental sustainability, giving an idea of how city profile would look like. The
MDG is basically an intervention initiative to rescue the world from major
development impediments. This initiative that was lunched some eleven years ago
is being rigorously pursued by government all over the world is an
acknowledgement that progress is based on sustaining the development of the
environment. The continent of Africa and particularly our country Nigeria lags
behind on almost all dimension of development were much of questions is being
asked on how it can meet its target in 2015, that is less than three years from
now? It has, therefore been established that a sustainable environment remain a
veritable instrument through development that mitigates imbalance between and
within generation could be realized. Hence a pride of place should be accorded
it as a major roadway towards the realization of the generation affecting MDGs.
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