By Sheikh Alkinky Sanyang
The Executive Director of the National Environment Agency (NEA) has said that positive attitudinal change towards the environment is a driving force for any socio-economic development of the country. Being a cross cutting issue, he said environmental issues are paramount to any sustainable development agenda and therefore warned that we must take-care of the environment and failure to do that the environment will take-cares of us.
Dr. Dawda Badgie make these remarks in all the regional capitals including Kerewan in the North Bank, Janjanbureh in the Central River, Basse in the Upper River, Mansakonko in the Lower River and Brikama in the West Coast Region during an official nationwide familiarization tour of NEA`s regional offices, projects under his purview and meeting with relevant stakeholders including Governors, members of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Agriculture & Natural Resources (ANR) Working Groups in the regions.
The objective of the trek is to help the Executive Director familiarize with regional authorities, environmental technicians including Technical Advisory Committees (TAC) in the regions in a bid to build their capacities in the agency`s decentralization efforts for the dispensations of regional environment programs through an integrated approach. The tour party also assess the level of enforcement efforts of environmental laws and had open discussions with stakeholders through conclaves staged at conference halls or bantabas of regional Governors.
In Kerewan, the regional capital of NBR, Dr. Badgie and the entourage were received on behalf of the Governor Lamin Saidykhan by the Deputy Governor of the region Dembo Samateh. He told the regional authorities and TAC family members that they at the regions are at the center of protecting and conserving natural resources. Dr. Dawda Badgie, Executive Director of NEA
He revealed that the NEA will help build the capacity of TAC/ANR/EIA Working groups in all the regions to give a national face to their decentralization efforts, and this will also further nurture and develop sustainable use of local resources to increase adaptive measures against climate change which is a leading agent to deforestation and poverty. He therefore called on the TAC members to be committed to the global fight against the impacts and phenomenon of climate change that has cause and is still causing negative impact on the livelihoods of the people.
Commenting on Operation Clean the Nation, he said this will soon be reintroduced as it aims to transform the nation to a clean and healthy one for the benefit of everyone. It has positive environmental, economic and health impacts on the livelihoods of Gambians, noting that even the prevalence of malaria has drastically dropped in some areas. Among others, he said NEA has given all Area Councils and Municipalities assorted amount of dust bins and soon again supply them with tricycles motorbike to enhance and facilitate their waste collection processes.
Dr. Badgie called for attitudinal change from local communities towards what he described as self-destruction exercise of pilling off the remaining sand cover and natural sand dunes, felling down of tree vegetation covers, bushfires and charcoal production. Environmental protection help enhance livelihood support systems so therefore incumbent on us all to stop any individual, group or organization that is tampering it, he posited.
These natural resources, he pointed out, are often exploited unsustainably as the demand is very high coupled with unsustainable practices of utilization as well as other drivers of environmental degradation that have placed undue pressure on the natural resource base thereby impacting negatively.
Responding to questions on plastic pollution, he said it rendered severe environmental and health threats to human, livestock and Marine Eco-system and due to its adverse effects and uncompromising hazards, the Government of the Gambia has on 1st July 2015 banned the use, production and sell of single use plastics bags in the country. “The continuous use of plastic bags threatens our food security as they resist decomposition for decades and becomes a virtual eye-sore in public places. Most plastic wastes find their ways into gutters and water ways and cause blockage during rainy season and subsequently cause flooding in cities and growth centers”. Dr. Badgie pointed out.
In Kerewan in NBR, in Janjanbureh in CRR, in Basse in URR and in Mansakonko in LRR, Dr. Badgie was respectively received by the Deputy Governors Dembo Samateh, Alh. Sainey Mbye, Mamanding Ceesay and Fakebba Darboe. In the final face of the tour, the NEA boss and the entourage were received by Ousman Bojang, Governor of West Coast Region.
All these regional high authorities thanked the leadership of the NEA for their foresight leading the well anticipated decentralization process. They however agreed with Dr. Badgie`s challenge, that everyone is part of the problem so therefore everyone should also be part of the solution to address environmental problems.
