Climate Change and Human Activities
Climate Change and human activities have become a thread in recent time. The change in the climate system and human activities has since created many shocks.
Human activities have constituted many greenhouse gases, causing a massive change in the global atmosphere. The changes have led to numerous clamour for change and urgency to educate more people on climate change.
The 15th and 16th of April, Revamp Rave Network had the first session of its Virtual Cohort Programme on Climate Change. The session themed “Basics of Climate Change” was taught by Olumide Idowu — Co-founder International Climate Change Development Initiative Africa and Abikoye Abimbola — the Project Coordinator and Founder for Revamp Rave Network.
The first session held on the 15th of April had Abimbola Abikoye discussing how climate change occurs, what is the Greenhouse Effects, why global warming is a threat and how our life is sustained on planet earth through the workings of the Earth and the Sun.
Abimbola began with her session saying “human existence is sustained by three major elements: Earth, Water, Air also known as the atmosphere — wind”.
She mentioned that the earth is 70 per cent water were resting the global ocean — the habitat of all marine species — and 30 per cent continental landmass which rest the continents of the world and hosts humans, plants and animals.
But many human-induced activities, she said, against the natural occurrence of the earth’s climate system has affected the number of gases trapped in the atmosphere, given rising to the temperature of the global ocean and the intensified the amount of heat experienced — by humans, plants and the soil on the continental landmass.
She narrated stating that the change in the global atmosphere caused by the large emission of these greenhouse gases — mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), the deadly methane (CH4), nitro oxide (N2O), and ozone (O3) has led to “global warming”. Therefore, Global Warming is the rise in the earth’s temperature, causing climate change.
The change in the climate system led by global warming, she said, triggers a rise in sea-level, higher precipitation, ocean acidification and heat waves to mention a few. These occurrences have created many disastrous impacts on our natural environment, such as introducing many zoonotic diseases, large- scale migration, ocean surge and marine species extinction.
She defined climate change as “as any significant change in the measures of climate lasting for an extended period”. In other words, climate change includes significant changes in temperature, precipitation, or wind patterns, among other effects, that occur over several decades or longer.
She further narrates that since the industrial age, humans have increasingly influenced the climate system by burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees to build numerous industries that have produced varieties of products affecting the environment.
These varieties of products, ranging from the production of plastics and use of single-use plastics, deforestation in the sake of erecting urban structures, manufacturing different materials and burning of firewood for cooking purposes, not forgetting to mention, the unsustainable mining of natural resources has proved again and again to be a threat to all living things and non-living things.
Nevertheless, our everyday activities are rapidly adding to the significant impact caused by climate change. The activities such as usage and improper disposals of waste — from food to products to water waste etc. and scrabble for nature’s resources found within and around us have led to many natural disasters such as drought, flood, and loss arable lands.
All these and more add enormously to the greenhouse gases rapidly increasing the pace of global warming.
In conclusion, she mentioned that we could help the climate, environment, and earth by reducing our carbon footprint. Examples of how we can do that through daily actions are switching to alternative products such as riding bicycles in place of driving cars, disposing food waste properly and reusing or reducing plastics, engaging in reforesting through tree planting as against deforestation and many more.
The 16th of April, Olumide Idowu, a renowned environmentalist in Nigeria pinpoint logic of environmental policy, climate governance, mechanisms and response measures aimed at steering social systems towards preventing, mitigating and adapting to the risks posed by climate change.
Olumide sharing the basics, touched on Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs), the Kyoto Protocol, and the transition to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) until the Paris Agreement as a fundamental step towards learning about climate change to foster action.
On his session, he mentioned that the Paris Agreement is the complete document aimed at strengthening the global response to the climate change threat with a collective effort to keeping a global temperature well below 2 degrees.
The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and for the first time brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects. With enhanced support to assist developing countries in achieving the mandate, the Agreement charts a new course in the global climate effort.
In closing his session, he said, “everyone had their part to play in reducing the impacts of climate change”, starting from the way we live our lives, the products we use, our water usage, the food we eat and how we dispose of items.
The session came to an end with the instructors stating other possible solutions every attendee could make based on their skills and how they can work on them.
Read about climate change impact on our well-being here- https://climate.nasa.gov/
