Due to much focus on the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental issues the world is facing will worsen in 2021.
This is the view of Professor Emmanuel Ofoezie, the Director of Nigeria’s Institute of Ecology and Environmental Studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
He told Nigerian Tribune that since the onset of the Covid-19 last year, much attention and funding have been diverted to battling the pandemic. Meanwhile the issues of climate change, flooding, desertification were still there.
He said, “Covid will still take centre stage until vaccination goes round and it reaches a threshold where we have herd immunity in the community.
Covid and the environment run on parallel grounds. The environmental problems we had before Covid are still there, and will still be there after Covid. They will even get worse because attention and funding have been diverted to Covid. They (environmental problems) might get worse by the time we return to them fully.
Covid has not stopped erosion. Covid has not stopped global warming.”
The professor said that latest report says that despite the lockdown, the concentration of greenhouse gases was higher than expected.
He therefore noted that environmental issues will remain or worsen as we are dealing with Covid. Government attention, and not just attention but resources both human and finances, have been diverted to Covid.
Professor Ofoezie noted that though Covid-19 has an environment component as its manner of transmission depends on environmental factors like the air, the pandemic has added to the problems we have in the environment.
This, he said, was a global issue.
He predicted a bleak outlook for the environment sector in 2021 in the face of the pandemic except vaccines are able to contain it. Maybe by the end of this year, we may be free from it if the vaccination works. Apart from the vaccinations working, access and coverage is another issue.
“Up till now, there is no vaccination taking place in any third world nation.”
He said that 75 per cent of any population must be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity. Therefore the government of Nigeria and other third world nations must step up their efforts in this regard.
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