ERA/FoEN National Consultation on the Environment Begins Today

The fifth in the series of ERA/FoEN National Environmental Consultation begins today at the Excellence Hotel & Suites, Ogba, Lagos.
The Consultation, with the theme: Corporate Accountability and the Environment will bring together critical stakeholders and international experts to interrogate the impact of big corporates’ activities on the ecosystem and policies to halt or remediate them. 

Availability of raw materials like coal, iron ore, tin and lately oil and gas, helped a great deal in moving  Nigeria from artisanal crafts type of industrialization to large scale corporations-driven manufacturing and most unfortunately, to large scale extraction of natural resources.

Corporation- driven industrialization comes with a huge price on the people and nature.  Big corporates have swarmed Nigeria with new technologies and faster ways of depleting natural resources, replacing human with machines and have caused great damage to the ecosystem.

Today global warming and climate change which are major threats to humanity have direct link to reckless extraction of raw materials and industrialization processes of corporations.

In Nigeria the activities of corporations have impacted negatively on local livelihoods, depleted natural resources and have caused pollution, deforestation, climate change and violence. Corporations in Nigeria are believed to have through bad government policies privatized the common wealth and pass on the real costs to the people.

The posers therefore are: What do corporations take and what do they give back?  How much do communities benefit from the activities of corporations?  What is the impact of corporate activities and how can they be mitigated? Can corporations be made to behave responsibly?  Do corporations have a role in national and global efforts at tackling climate change? How can corporations be held accountable to the people and the environment?

The 2012 Annual National Consultation on the Environment will push these issues through rigorous interrogation by development experts, environmental campaigners, policy makers and the media with a view to advance policy process as it concerns corporate behaviour, accountability and corporate giveback.

Conference Objectives

• Examine corporations activities and impact of such on the environment,
• Interrogate Corporate Social Responsibility and expose its myth and Lies,
• Explore policy options to strengthen corporate Accountability
• Build solidarity among civil society, policy makers, local communities and the media around corporate accountability, and
• Draw the linkage between corporate accountability and climate change and suggest change in practices.

The conference will end today with the issuing of a communique jointly signed by the participants.

Philip Jakpor
Head of Media
ERA/FoEN
08037256939

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