Says Carbon Credits Is New Gold

R/L: Representative of the minister of marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, Prof. Stephen Fakinlede, Dr. Felicia Mogo, Founder AFMESI, Managing Director of the National Inland Waterways Authority, Mr. Bola Oyebamiji, Capt. Warredi Enisuoh of Tantita Security and Vivian Chimezie-Azubuike, Director General, Nigerian Chamber of Shipping, at the 4th AFMESI Symposium and Workshop in Lagos, Tuesday, September, 24, 2024.

Captain Warredi Enisuoh  is the Executive Director of Operations and Technical Service at Tantita Security Services Nigeria Limited. Presenting a Paper at the 4^th African Marine Environment Sustainability Initiative, AFMESI, Symposium and Workshop, Warredi spoke on how Nigeria and indeed Africa could turn its vast forest marshlands into incredible wealth. As the Guest Speaker, the former NIMASA Director Shipping Services/Operations, Warredi spoke on Achieving Blue Growth In A Changing Climate (Integrating The Coastal Communities). As a new way of economic diversification, Enisuoh advocated and explained how the forests, swamps and marshlands could be converted to wealth through Carbon Credits; He Spoke with Maritime Nigeria on the sidelines of the event; excerpts

 By Kelvin Kagbare

Tantita seems to be expanding from its area of primary assignment/expertise, which is the protection of pipelines, into many other areas such electric cars, Decarbonization, education and interventions in several areas. What informs Tantita’s diversification into these areas?

One of the things that made the Tantita group to embark on this research is a way of trying as much as possible to find a lasting way of earning income for the communities so that the communities will avoid the pipelines. Once the communities go for the pipeline, they are literally going for the country. And far more often than not, a lot of them don’t have a choice because they have no livelihood. There’s no fish. There’s nowhere to farm. In other words, a lot of their land is polluted.  How do we gain back those land areas that are so badly polluted that even grass will not grow for 100 years? We have to convert those areas to green projects and if we convert them to green projects by putting sustainable or renewable energy in those particular areas or getting investors to come in and look at those places and put in the necessary things that will serve the communities, they will definitely avoid the pipelines. In that way, even the federal government is going to benefit from it because before we went and started this whole project of pipeline protection, you would have discovered that diesel was very cheap; that was because the natives were producing it and other products locally. At that time, locally made kerosene was, I think, about N250  per litre or so but today, you won’t even get it for N1,000  because of the many interventions that we have made and the gainful employments we have been able to provide for the people. The environment was very toxic and hostile then. In such an environment where the people are not earning anything new and cost of living is going up, it’s only fair that we come together and embark on some social economic projects that is going to make us all have a lasting peace. So that’s the whole idea and from several researches we are into, we found out that Carbon Credits is the new gold for our communities and people.

Captain, let’s take you back to your area of primary focus which is protection of the pipelines, how is it going?

Capt. Warredi Enisuoh, Executive Director, Operations and Technical Services, Tantita Security Services Ltd, making his presentation at the event.

It is going excellently well. We’re doing all we can. We are not 100%, but from where we are coming from, there’s significant improvements and we’ll continue to be grateful to those who made the decision because we are not into it because of the commercial side of it. Today, we can go to our rivers and see how clean it is. I remember the first time I went into Niger Delta regions to carry out  research on how we’re going to go about this job, the smell of crude oil was so much one could hardly breathe.You’ll find fish with their bellies up, they can’t survive.  And most Fish cannot grow beyond a certain level because of the pollution but now all of that is changing. So those are some of the benefits and we just have to be thankful to the federal government that this project came into being. We can’t say that we are 100%, but we’ll probably be at 70%  success rate, if not more.

Challenges

There are challenges and there will always be challenges as man strive to improve his environment and tries to improve the living conditions of the people. The major challenge we have is the fact that we still have foreign ships coming to our waters to steal.  It’s a very big problem; before now they were powerful and bold enough to come even inside, but now they know we can grab them so they are now keeping their nefarious activities a little bit away from the coast because they are very worried about what Tantita is capable of doing. But I don’t think it’s going to be for long because there is improved synergy and collaboration between those working on how to ensure security on Nigerian waters.

What would be you take home message from this Programme?

The take home message is that the federal government should be very interested in this new Carbon project because the population is huge and we have potentials in several other areas which we must explore for the good of our people and country because the more we make these communities become responsible and also take care of their environment, not only would Nigeria have come to terms with its responsibilities towards climate change, which we are signatory to and also we’ll be leading the world and helping the world a lot because we  have a large landmass which is still very green. This means we have a lot to offer the world.

The amount of income we are going to have not in terms of not just cash but in terms of renewable energy projects that can be cascaded and the multiplier effect into other types of development is enormous because there’s no point for us to continue to rely on fossil fuel which the world is moving away from; Africa missed out on the industrial age but let us not miss out on the future. We must work hard to benefit from the Carbon Economy.

How do your rate this environment sustainability event as put together by AFMESI?

It is a very good event. It came at the right time when we’re talking about climate change, temperatures rising, we are  having floods, even in desert regions, flash floods in cities across the world so it couldn’t have come at a better time especially with the issue of  global warming which the world is grappling with, so yes, the program is timely and of great relevance.

The Carbon Economy

The Carbon Economy, Captain Warredi explained, is premised on the theory of photosynthesis-a process where trees absorb carbondioxide and emits oxygen.

According to him  “One mature tree can absorb 80kg of CO₂ from the atmosphere in a year and several developed countries have adopted the carbon credit initiative to preserve their environment. For instance, If we map out 50,000 trees per coastal community and One carbon credit is equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide which is valued at $50; if you do the maths, you see that communities could earn over N300m annually which may not come in cash but in developmental projects such as renewable energy, solar panels and such projects from which communities will benefit from collectively” Enisuoh said.

Enisuoh further explained that all tree have capacity to absorb Co2 but some are more efficient than others. He named the bamboo tree as one of the most efficient in the absorption of Co2 from the atmosphere.

“It is all about reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions which the world is very concerned about and the United Nations is leading and exploring ways and means of drastically reducing, if not eliminating, GHG” Capt Warredi Enisuoh said.