By Obiabin Onukwugha
Environmental body, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), has carried out a two-days training in Eteo community, Eleme local government area of Rivers State.
The training, which took place between April 29th to 30th at Salvation Ministries Hall in the community, aims to build capacity for community folks, especially farmers on how to monitor and report their environment.
It is also to build their capacity on advocacy on issues relating to their environment, especially when there is an oil spill in order to stand up and make demands for their rights.
Speaking with journalists shortly after the session, one of the resource persons and Coordinator Oilwatch International, Kentebe Ebiaridor, noted the importance of training communities on environment reporting, monitoring and advocacy as they are always the first to suffer impacts of any incident that occurs.
He described the training as toolkit for protecting communities from crude oil spill impacts.
“Health of Mother Earth Foundation is working with some communities in order to strengthen their capacities on environmental advocacy, monitoring and reporting. And we think that it is important that they have proper understanding and that is why we are here to see how their capabilities can be improved.
“Monitoring and reporting of the environment is something that constantly should be done, not just by journalists, not just by civil society organisations, but by community people because they are the first people to be impacted by what happens in their environment and they can be able to share such information.
“It is very important in any community and not just in the Niger Delta but anywhere that oil extraction and fossil fuel extraction is been done. And since it is not something they have been built for, they have to be taught through a period of time.
“You don’t expect to have a hundred percent response from communities. But from what we have seen going over this project, we have been able to understand that we are having a good success rate. Because the communities are now aware of advocacy, they are now aware of monitoring, they are also now aware of reporting the environment as at when due.
“And this is a toolkit that communities can hold down oil companies to say before you leave, you must be to do s lot of things that you should have naturally done. And that is one of the importance of this meeting”, he said.
On his part, Program Manager at HOMEF, Stephen Oduware, said the training is to empower the community on how they can effectively monitor and report the environment.
He pointed out that the community jas suffered oil spill, with the last occuring in June last year that is yet to be addressed by relevant authorities.
He stated: “We are here in Eteo community to have training session on environmental monitoring and restoration with the community people.
“We have had series of engagements with them but today we are here to have monitoring training on how best they will be able to monitor their environment, report effectively and carry out advocacy for justice to be done and served.”
Participants at the training were exposed to monitoring tools, strategies and advocacy.
It would be noted that HOMEF, through its School of Ecology have been training communities in the Niger Delta on how best to protect their environment, using tools like advocacy, art and culture.
