Improving Urban Residents’ Awareness of the Impact of Household Activities on Climate Change in Lagos State, Nigeria (original) (raw)
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Journal of Design and Built Environment, 2018
Some activities in all types of buildings contribute to greenhouse gas, GHG, emissions. This is especially so in case of residential buildings in cities as it has been observed that urban residents spend the greater part of their time indoors. During this time man is engaged in emission producing activities such as respiration, energy generation and consumption and waste generation. The behaviour of the users of buildings greatly influences the quantities of the GHGs resulting from their activities. There are certain ways of doing things especially in connection with energy use in buildings that have been identified to be more efficient and consequently less emission intensive than others. This study investigated the extent of observance of these energy efficient practices by the surveyed households and their willingness to adopt measures that will significantly reduce their carbon footprint. The findings show a generally low level of observance of the measures by the households but they also show a high level of readiness to adopt the suggested measures. The study concludes that emission of large quantities of carbon dioxide by the surveyed houses can be avoided and recommends a creation of awareness among households about these practices by the relevant stakeholders.
Variations in climate, one would expect to be perceived differently among people of different socioeconomic background and social strata. However, with the people of Akinyele LGA in Oyo state, the case is different where perception of the causes, evidences and response patterns to the impacts of climate change do not show any variation that can be linked with socioeconomic attributes across the political wards. A total of eight out of twelve political wards/health districts were purposively selected (being most rural with rapid transformation) where about 300 questionnaires were administered with a random systematic approach. Data collected were analysed using simple descriptive analytical tool. The hypotheseswere tested with Chi-square. The study reveals that causes and evidences of climate change are not significantly different across political wards except for fluctuations in food production and supplies, over-cropping, overgrazing, settlement expansion and excessive dryness with p-value of 0.012, 0.048, 0.049, 0.019 and 0.018 respectively. There is therefore urgent need for implementation of tree planting and landscape planning initiatives, farm practice improvement and re-introduction of neighbourhood parks and gardens so as to forestall the growing vulnerability of residents to climate change impacts and to enhance social integration, a vital ingredient to building community's resilience.
2019
Adequate knowledge of climate change scenario is essential to the success of its global remediation efforts. Thus, a study was conducted to investigate into the level of awareness of change in climate in a growing town of Iwo, Osun State, Nigeria. Data for the investigation was generated through the administration of 150 questionnaires across randomly selected adult inhabitants. Of the entire questionnaire, 123 were returned while the rest were either mutilated or returned uncompleted. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were conducted. Descriptive analysis showed that 74% of the respondents had no knowledge of change in climate while 21.1% claimed knowledge of it. All respondents that claimed knowledge got the information on television and 76.9% got it on radio. Also, 95.9% of those who had knowledge believed that the solution to climate change associated risks should be borne by international bodies because the menace is global while 86.1% believed it is the responsib...
Journal of Geography and Regional Planning, 2022
Many researchers, climatologists, engineers and environmentalists are expressing deep concerns about changes in the overall climate system of the earth. Does the public perceive climate change to have occurred already? What are their sources of information? This study analyzed the public perception of climate change issues in Zaria city and its environs, Kaduna State, Nigeria. The objective of this paper was to analyze the public's level of awareness and perception of climate change issues. Four hundred respondents were randomly sampled and administered a questionnaire. Open-ended questions were used to ask the respondents whether they had noticed long-term changes in temperature and rainfall. The study revealed that the public perceptions of climatic change in the study area were in line with climatic data records. Eighty-two per cent of the respondents are well aware of climate change issues. Electronic media (television and radio) was the major source of awareness on climate change issues followed by schools. The result further revealed that the inhabitants of the city are to a large extent aware of the dynamics of the local climate. Indeed, age, occupation and level of education affected the respondents' knowledge of climate change issues. Based on these findings, some recommendations were made, which include the need for comprehensive environmental education, studies on climate change and other environmental issues that should be integrated into the primary, secondary and tertiary school curriculum among others.
This paper assesses the people's awareness, knowledge and perceptions of climate change and environmental sustainability in Oshodi/Isolo local government area of Lagos state, Nigeria. A well structured questionnaire was administered to a total of 200 respondents through simple random sampling technique. The result showed that majority (86%) of the respondents strongly agreed that they have a part to play to sustain their environment, while 8% of the respondents disagreed. Also, the response of the respondents on the knowledge of changing climate revealed that 76% of the respondents strongly agreed that the world's climate is changing while 4.5% of the respondents disagreed. Also, majority (90.16 %) of the respondents strongly agreed that the initiative of the Lagos state Waste Management Agency (LAWMA) on mitigation and control measure for sustaining the environment will enhance environmental sustainability in the state while 5.25% on the average disagree. It was therefore recommended that comprehensive environmental education should be incorporated as one of the component of the national education curriculum as such a initiative will increase people's perceptions and consequently behaviour and the quality of responses and reaction to environmental problems will improved. Also, there should be integration of modern and effective, mitigation approach as well as adaptation mechanisms by the stakeholders in the council area towards achieving environmental sustainability.
AWARENESS OF CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, AND ISSUES IN CLIMATE CHANGE AMONG SELECTED NIGERIANS 1
Climate change (CC) is a major contemporary environmental challenge. Many scholarly works have been done on the subject. However, empirical studies on the level of awareness of climate change among Nigerian citizens are not sufficient to inform public opinion and policy. This study therefore examined awareness of CC, its causes and consequences and feelings, perceptions, and attitude about climate change among selected undergraduates and civil servants in Nigeria. The study adopted survey research design. A questionnaire titled "Survey of Concerns and Awareness of Climate change among Undergraduates and Civil Servants in Nigeria" was administered on a sample of 370 students of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti and 150 civil servants in Federal Ministry of Health and Corporate Affairs Commission, Abuja. Bourley’s formula was used to determine the sample size. Participants were selected using convenience and stratified random sampling techniques. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics. About 58% of respondents were aware of CC, while 28.4% were not aware. University education (19.8%), newspaper (14.9%), radio (10%) and television (9.8%) were the most regular sources of learning about CC. About 63% of respondents believe that CC is unlinked with human activities; comprising 42.9% who believed that CC is caused by natural processes and 20% who believed it is an act of God. Only 23.8% believed it is either solely human activity or a combination of human activity and natural processes, while the remaining 13.3% of respondents did not believe in climate change. In the absence of ‘Natural Processes’ and ‘Act of God’, only 27.4% of respondents linked contributing activities to micro activities of individuals such as using gas and electricity as home, majority (72.6%) only identified macro activities such as destruction of forests. Over 50% of our respondents blamed CC on the government (29.4%) and nature (23%), 21.2% blamed everybody, while 16.7% blamed the oil companies. Sixty-nine per cent linked future consequences of CC to water/rain-related issues that have direct effects on their daily lives such as less rain and hotter temperature (22.4%), more rain (14.7%), increased erosion 13.3%; only 0.9% linked it with destruction of public utilities, while no respondent linked it with such things as destruction of private business and properties or intrusion of salt into sources of drinking water. About 87% of respondents were either unsure of their feelings, feel powerless about CC, or were in a state of disbelief. Only 7.5%, comprising entirely of undergraduates, were hopeful about CC. Majority of respondents (73.5%) put the responsibility of tackling CC on government (29.4%), or Environmental organizations (22.9%), or International organisations (21.2%). Only 9.8% lay this responsibility on individuals’ doorsteps. When compared with four other social issues that should be government priority, CC was ranked fifth, that is, last (11.8%). Improving health services (33.3%), anti-terrorism (20.6%), economic growth (17.3%), improve education (16%). Despite Nigeria’s vulnerability to climate change, the educated members of the public possess critically low level of awareness on how individual micro activities contribute to climate change and how its future consequences will negatively impact individual’s normal lives. Hence, the motivation for responsible relationship with the environment is low. Therefore, there is need for affirmative action by government and other stakeholders to properly educate and enlighten the masses about the realities of climate change. Keywords: Climate change, civil servants, Nigeria, undergraduates.
FACTORS AFFECTING RURAL DWELLERS' AWARENESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN SOUTHEAST NIGERIA
Nigerian Journal of Agriculture, Food and Environment , 2016
The study identified factors affecting climate change awareness in southeast Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 180 respondents for the study. Data was collected using structured questionnaire and interview schedule and analysed using descriptive statistical tools. Results show that the major occupation of the rural inhabitant in the study area is farming (82.5%). About 92% were aware of climate change and their level of awareness was high. The major areas of climate change were change in atmospheric temperature, rainfall pattern and solar radiation while the most prominent climate change event was variation in rainfall. Major source of climate change information was shown to be personal experience. The major factors affecting respondent's climate change awareness were availability of power, inadequate amount of money to purchase electronics, poor access to weather forecast technologies, traditional beliefs / practice, poor capacity of extension personnel to effectively educate farmers on climate change, little or no agricultural programme on television stations. Based on the result of the study, it was recommended that extension agents need to intensify their effort on creating more awareness, educating the farmers on the use of mobile phones for agricultural information dissemination and formation of cooperatives for information sharing.
The significance of air pollution as one of the contemporary issues and accelerating factors that propel climate change in both developed and developing countries cannot be overemphasized. The problem of air pollution has seemingly become intractable with the incessant failure of both global and local environmental policies purportedly emplaced to address its devastating trend, particularly in growing megacities of the world. The devastating effects of the phenomenon are more pronounced in megacities of developing countries than in developed ones. Lagos, as an industrialized, commercialized and an emerging megacity in Nigeria, has been subjected to several predictions of the negative impacts of changing climatic conditions partly caused by ubiquitous air pollution. Efforts at stemming the tide of the increasing challenges of air pollution worldwide has significantly been thwarted by inadequate funding, hence the need to review the literature on the environmental implications of growing air pollution, its contributions to climate change and its negative impacts on the lives and properties of teeming inhabitants of Lagos. A review like this will provide a synthesis of knowledge and information on mitigative and adaptive measures that can be adopted to minimize the impacts of air pollution on the mega city.This study utilizes consciously selected and current literatures on the subject matter and found that Lagos inhabitants have been vulnerable to virtually all forms of damaging effects of climate change majorly propelled by seemingly uncontrollable air pollution. This implies that the situation requires proactive measures, otherwise, avoidable loss of lives and large scale destruction of properties may be inevitable. The paper therefore advocates involvement of all stakeholders in both mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change through enhancement of indigenous knowledge and creation of awareness among citizens about the need to be conscious of their carbon foot prints.
Asian Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 2013
The study focused on the evaluation of rural households' awareness level to climate change indicators and their direction of change in Bayelsa state, Nigeria. The main objective was to determine the rural household's perception to climate change in the state and the specific objective was to determine the direction of change of the climate change indicators (whether increasing, decreasing or constant). Multistage sampling procedure was used in random selection of local government areas, communities and rural households for the research study. Two hundred and seventy eight respondents were utilized for this research study. Data for this study were obtained using structured questionnaire survey and also annual mean time series data from Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET) that include the following; temperature and rainfall were collected. Descriptive statistic was used to analyze the respondents' socioeconomic characteristics, climate change awareness and perception to climate change and direction of change in the state. Rural farming households noticed increase changes in climate variables and events like early rains not sustained, crops smothered by excessive heat, crops are planted and replanted, irregular rainfall pattern, delayed onset of rainfall, shorter raining season, floods, coastal erosion and higher temperature. The rural farming households' perception to the cause of direction of change of climate change indicators that is increasing in the state believes that it is a natural occurrence by God or gods. The study therefore recommends climate change awareness campaign with science-based data should be the beginning for policy making and implementation targeted at effective dissemination of climate change information to the rural farming households. Climate change awareness should be of immense importance for proper climate change adaptation. This will in turn reduce rural household's food insecurity situation in the state.
Public Perception of Climate Change Awareness in Akinyele Local Government Area, Oyo State, Nigeria
Journal of Geography, Environment and Earth Science International
Aims: The study investigated the awareness, causes, effects and mitigation strategies of climate change revealing that generally the people are knowledgeable of the issues involved. Study area: This study was carried out in Oyo state, specifically Akinyele Local Government Area Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. Methodology: Two hundred and forty copies of the questionnaire were administered to the residents of Akinyele local government taking into consideration the prominent areas within each of the twelve (12) wards of the local government area. Twenty respondents using simple random sampling from each of the 12 wards were selected making up 240 questionnaires. Results: The assessment of socioeconomic characteristics of the population showed that the area is male-dominated with only 45% being female. It is predominantly Yoruba (80.8%) with 55% being 40 years and below and Christians and Muslims sum up to 93.3%. The majority of the population are involved with various occupations while 30...