Coastal, marine environment faced with many challenges – Minister

The Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed said the Nigerian coastal and marine environment, which accounts for over 50 per cent of the country’s economy is facing many challenges despite its importance to the ecosystem.
The minister, who stated this yesterday at the Nigeria’s National Consultative Meeting on Draft Additional Protocols to the Abidjan Convention, said the coastal and marine environment has enhanced the country’s  socio-economic development in many ways including revenue generation, tourism employment among others.
She said in an effort to ameliorate the challenges which include erosion, pollution, depletion of natural resources and sea level rise,  Nigeria, alongside other 21 member countries of the Abidjan convention started the process of regional cooperation instruments for sustainable and participatory management of their coastal areas.
In the last three years, the minister disclosed that additional instruments of intervention, which include environmental norms and standards, sustainable management of mangrove and intergrated coastal zone management, were developed.
While urging the participants to lend their expertise and time towards fine-tuning the draft protocols which will enable national action plans to be developed and implemented at the country level, she said the protocols will be the much needed instruments that will enable sustainable management of the  marine and coastal ecosystems
Representative of Abidjan Convention Regional coordinator,  Mr. Sahr Abraham Grass Sessay in his remark, said to foster sustainable management practices there is need to strengthen linkages between policy, practice and research sectors regarding mangrove management, integrated coastal zone management and respecting environmental standards  and norms on offshore oil exploitation, there by understanding their contributory role to climate change resilience and adaptation.