Emerging Scholars
Featured Reimagining Loss of Cultural Heritage in Changing Climate View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Olufemi Adetunji
Climate change and its associated impacts such as extreme heat, flooding and rising sea level, pose immense threat to cultural heritage including artefacts, built heritage, archaeological sites and cultural landscapes. The changes and variabilities of climate are driven by human activities such as burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other lifestyle choices such as excessive consumption of electricity and food waste. In the context of cultural heritage, retrofitting historic buildings contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emission. The study, therefore, examines the impacts of climate risks affecting protection of values and attributes of cultural heritage in Lagos (Nigeria), a key socio-economic city in Africa with high vulnerability to climate change impact. A city-wide vulnerability assessment was conducted to understand the key climate drivers affecting the cultural heritage located around the city. Eighteen key stakeholders were interviewed to understand perceptions of the values and interventions implemented to address the impacts of climate change. The findings reveal while awareness about climate change is increasing, skill capacity about assessing climate vulnerability is weak. Members of local communities are, also, excluded in planning and implementation of climate policy resulting into dwindling sense of ownership of deteriorating heritage sites. The study, further, demonstrates that combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches, stimulated by non-government organisations, professional bodies and community groups could improve protection of cultural heritage, implementation of climate-friendly interventions and mitigation of loss of heritage across communities.
Featured Climate Change Adaptation Policy for Women in Indigenous Communities in Bangladesh: A Critical Assessment of Law and Policy Pertaining Human Environmental Rights View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fatema Jahan Sharna
The linkages between human and environmental rights have become issues of vigorous debate and become particularly relevant as to issues of migration and gender equality present emergent challenges in the face of climate change. The forced migration of the Rohingyas people into Bangladesh following persecution in Myanmar illustrates pressures put upon migrants and the indigenous communities in the areas to which they move. These pressures are especially acute for women, raising important considerations about gender equality. This research critically assesses the adequacy and effectiveness of the legal framework in protecting women in indigenous communities in Bangladesh against the human rights impacts of climate change. The research examines the challenges faced particularly by indigenous women in trying to ensure climate change adaptation measures to protect the environments they live in, the challenges of being displaced by climate change impacts, and in receiving other displaced indigenous community members into their own communities. This is in the context of many indigenous communities adopting a matriarchal model of governance. It explores human and environmental rights to critique the Bangladesh domestic legal and policy framework for the protection of women in indigenous communities of Bangladesh in the facet of climate change impacts.
Featured Environment Pollution, Human Health and Governments Regulations: Encouraging Government Policies to Take Necessary Actions towards Waste Management View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Benjamin Adebisi
The vulnerability of human health is apparently linked to climate change. Invariably, a clean environment is essential for human health and wellbeing; conversely, unrestrained and uncontrolled development contributes to environmental health issues because it overexploits the natural environment and its resources. Undoubtedly, environmental health challenges have become worldwide issues and the consequences can be immediate and chronic, including water-borne infections caused by inadequate sanitation or skin cancer caused by exposure to arsenic in groundwater or excessive UV radiation (due to depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer). Furthermore, growing environmental pollution has caused major concern to population lives since the liberalization and deregulation, in tandem with rapid economic expansion. Wildfires in Australia and California, China's worst floods, the first-ever heatwave in Antarctica with rising temperatures above 20 °C, microplastic discovered in Antarctic ice, and crop destruction by locusts swarming across parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia occurred in the year 2020 alone. Additionally, habitat loss is also an important environmental problem, and it is being caused by land clearance for agriculture cash crops, making agriculture the largest driver of deforestation. This research emphasizes the role of environmental quality, government policies, and human health, and it is imperative that government actions and health systems must be modified as soon as possible to address these rising concerns successfully. The goal of the work is to elucidate an overview of environmental change's health impacts and explore how health hazards may be reduced or eliminated through effective adaptation strategies.
