An environmentalist, Mr Emmanuel Emechete says conscious efforts must be made in tackling the effects of climate change, which he attributed to the current heat wave in the country.
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Emechete, a climate change enthusiast made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos.
The expert said the abnormalities being witnessed in the weather conditions was largely due to changes in climatic conditions around the world.
”The heat wave we are currently experiencing in the country is nothing other than climate change effects.
”It is obvious that this is not how things used to be, some days ago, we were talking about the dryness in the air and some sort of harmattan and in less than two weeks, everywhere seems so hot.
”This tells us that there is a sort of abnormality in the climatic conditions of not just Nigeria but the globe entirely. We need to start now in making conscious efforts to mitigating the effects of climate change.
”As we already noticed the first and immediate problem is adapting to the weather, our body system is unable to comprehend the sudden changes of the weather, and the drift from what we use to have.
“According to meteorologists, what we see as climate change is actually climate variation. We experience several sudden changes in weather, and an overall change in the climatic conditions,” the expert told NAN.
Emechete identified various challenges to the variations in weather conditions as he proposed means of tackling the effects.
”The impact of high temperature apart from the heat issues resulting to low agricultural production, water supply reductions, food scarcity and low productivity among workers due to stress,” he said.
He said that the hot weather also affected livestock production and not just crops and people would need to spend more on cooling, and for some it was an opportunity to make money.
”This heat has several implications, it causes imbalance in the ecosystem, health issues, reduced food production, stress and discomfort as well as low reproduction in man, animals and crop yields,” Emechete said.
The expert said man had constantly realised greenhouses gases that caused the ozone layer to be depleted, but that there was the need to do more to tackle its effects.
”The energy from the sun is a very key part of the earth’s ecosystem, an increase or decrease causes imbalance and a consistent rise is a big problem; Global warming is a big problem.
”This global warming situation is caused by atmospheric pollution by greenhouse gases, more heat come in than normal and is trapped inside the earth and we all are feeling it.
”Now the extra sun as stated above means extra heat, extra heat means ice melting and temperature rising, so the more solar radiation the more heat.
”Not in a bid to create panic, but it is time Nigerians take climate change issues seriously and call for all hands to be on deck to tackle its effects,” he said.