No fewer than 200 women and people with disabilities from the Agoro community of Oyingbo, Lagos, were on Saturday engaged in climate change action under the Community Conference on Climate Change for Coastal Rural areas.
Residents of the community have experienced floods in recent times and some are yet to recover from damages wrecked by the flooding this year.
The conference which is the maiden edition was organized by Revamp Rave Network for women and people with disabilities who are the most vulnerable to climate and environmental challenges in Kadara, Coates, Araromi and Market area of the community.
Revamp Rave Network is a climate change-based organization that seeks to change the African narrative and push its climate agenda through high-impact capacity-building programmes and projects through education and advocacy.
Speaking at the event, the founder of the organisation, Abimbola Abikoye explained that “the objective of the Conference is to document details of environmental change realities caused by climate change, industrial and domestic solid waste pollution while spotting out local practices through dialogue to improve climate action and ocean conservation for communities such as Agoro.
“Furthermore, she stated that it seeks to engage and co-produce environmental-smart solutions with marginalised women, increase their active participation in climate governance, and deliver on climate-smart skills through corporate partnerships to improve lives.”
Lectures on “Women Involvement and their Role in Ocean Conservation” was done in the local dialect after which the women were given the opportunity to speak on their challenges while also making recommendations on how to overcome the challenges.
Lack of water disposal, poor hygiene, blocked drainage, lack of clean water, lack of access to healthcare were some of the challenges identified by the women.
One of the women, Afusat Ajibike, who spoke at the event, criticised the government for not providing a waste disposal system which has made the women resort to dumping waste into water bodies, drainage, canal and others to burning their waste, thereby threatening the environment.
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“There was a time we have where we drop our waste and LAWMA will come and pack it, but we are not seeing them again. If we leave our waste at one sport for more than two days, it will start smelling, which can cause other things in the environment, so our only alternative is to either drop them in the water or burn them. We will comply with whatever good alternative comes up”, she said.
Meanwhile, some of the women blamed the challenges on some actions of the residents.
Abimbola, in thanking the team, the guests and the women, explained that all the contributions of the women would be presented as a policy paper to the Lagos State government and would be an open source accessible to all who would require it.
Relief items were also donated and shared with the women, some of whom had been affected by the flood.