Aragbiji Calls for Involvement of Traditional Institutions in Better Climate Evolution

OLOREDE Hollor4GGO

The Aragbiji of Iragbiji Oba Abdur-Rasheed Ayotunde Olabomi Odundun IV has urged the Nigerian government and relevant stakeholders in engineering and environmental sciences to engage traditional institutions in evolving better climates and habitable environments in the country.

The prominent Osun monarch made this call while delivering an address as the guest speaker during a maiden conference of the Faculty of Engineering and Environmental Science of the University of Osun held yesterday at the school's auditorium.

If our world would be conducive, according to Aragbiji, there was the need to address all the critical goals for environmental sustainability set out by the United Nations.

The guest lecturer also emphasized the need to proffer solutions to human activities causing climate change and its consequential effects.

"In doing this, traditional institutions should be involved",  Aragbiji said.

The monarch whose address was on "The Role of Traditional Institutions in Environmental Protection and Climate Change", said "there is much to learn from indigenous, traditional and community-based approaches to natural disaster preparedness".

Speaking further, the traditional ruler said that indigenous people have been confronted with changing environments for millennia and have developed a wide array of coping strategies.

Traditional knowledge and practices, according to the Oba, provided an important basis for facing even greater challenges of climate change.

Symbiotically, Aragbiji called for harmoniously beneficial relationship between scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge, adding that this "is desirable in developing countries where technology for prediction and modeling is least developed".

In order to reverse the ugly trend of human negative activities and their effects on our environment, the guest lecturer recommended that we should go back to the use of organic household utensils as against metals, plastics and polypropylene products. 

He also suggested that "we should imbibe the culture of planting at least a tree in every household every year".

Involvement of traditional institutions in the implementation of National Environmental Access to Generic Resources and Benefit Sharing Regulations 2011 for overall betterment of communities and people was another recommendation suggested by Aragbiji.

Among the participants at the conference were the host and Provost of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology, Professor S.R. Akinola, the former acting Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor O.J. Alamu, and the Chief Whip of the State of Osun House of Assembly, Hon. Tunde Olatunji.

Also in attendance were some prominent traditional rulers including Akinrun of Ikirun, Olororuwo of Ororuwo and Elende of Eko-Ende among other notable dignitaries.