Land Grabbing: HOMEF Trains Okoroutip Community on Environmental Monitoring, Reporting

 

 

By Ekemini Simon 

 

The oil and gas community of Okoroutip in Ibeno local government area of Akwa Ibom State have been trained on how to routinely checkmate current trends with established baseline in order to protect themselves and environment against toxic contaminants.

 

The training carried out by Health of Mother Earth Foundation on Thursday is the organisation’s intervention project on Farmers’ Land Rights and Fighting Land Grabbing.

 

The Resource person, Umo Isuaikoh in his presentation noted that the community which has suffered years of extractivism need to monitor their environment in order to protect their health, livelihood and also bequeath a liveable environment to their future generations.

 

He identified some of the things the community needs to monitor to include; aquatic, animal species, water sources, land, air, fishing practices, occupation and livelihood, social infrastructure, government/ corporate presence in the community.

 

Isuaikoh said after the monitoring, the community must document environmental challenges observed and activities that have mostly impacted their environment.

 

The Resource Person charged the community members not to stop at monitoring but also take steps to report.

 

 

He said ” Reporting is an essential aspect of any monitoring activity. It affords the opportunities to track the activity and its impacts. It makes an activity visible- draws attention to it. Also, it helps to identify associated risks, and to know the required controls and learning outcomes needed to prevent reoccurrence of failures of an activity.

 

“No monitoring exercise is complete without a report of observations and a point of action”.

 

Isuaikoh noted that for a report to be meaningful and useful, data generated must be authentic, correct and must reflect the prevailing situation at the time of reporting.

 

He said to aid the authenticity of such reports, the environmental monitor must have a baseline knowledge about the marine environment before the pollution,

he must identify what caused the pollution, state the name of the community and landmark and if possible, use GPS, time and date the pollution was observed.

 

Isuaikoh who is also an environmental activist recommended the use of mobile phones to take real time photos and videos

 

Earlier, the Project Lead, Stephen Oduware said HOMEF is training the community to show their solidarity in order to help them get justice over their land that has been grabbed.

 

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Offering insight to their travail, Oduware added ” Okoroutip is one of the communities highly impacted by oil and gas exploration and exploitation. The community members are predominantly fishers and some farmers. The impact is really grave on them. A lot of them can no longer go about their livelihood. Some of them, their farms have become infertile and their crops no longer yield. There has been a high level of degradation.

 

“The issue here is not only about land grabbing but shoreline, river, sea, creek grabbing. Communities have been banned from getting to several places they used to carry out fishing because of oil installation around there now. That is a form of grabbing. Also, when pollution happens, communities are unable to use their space as they used to.”

 

The Project Lead said the training is geared towards equipping community members on modern techniques of environmental monitoring and reporting, and then use such reports for advocacy towards engendering justice for the community.

 

The Woman Leader of the Community, Mary Hanson thanked HOMEF for the training and assured that they will implement the information they have gotten and will not relent in pushing for justice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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