Nigeria Content Online

The National
Biotechnology Development Agency said it is working on a new technology
that will help Nigeria protect and conserve its environment through
re-vegetation and remediation.

Solomon Bamidele,
Director General of NABDA said on Wednesday in Abuja at a sensitisation
workshop on management of non degradable wastes that the project
entitled “Establishment of Centers of Excellence on Environmental
Protection and Conservation through Re-vegetation and Bioremediation”
embraces the major environmental problems that affect all parts of
Nigeria from the farthest North to the extreme Southern part of the
country.

“The Environmental
Protection and Conservation through Re-vegetation and Bioremediation
project is a multi institutional project involving the University of
Port-Harcourt (bioremediation), University of Maiduguri (combating
desertification), University of Nigeria, Nsukka (Gully soil erosion)
and NABDA ( non- biodegradable waste materials); NACGRAB(Tissue
Culture),” he said. “The project is an imperative step taken by
environmentalist and scientists alike to forestall degradation in the
environment.” He said biotechnology has a significant impact in the
bioremediation of polluted lands by breaking down oil molecules into
useful organic soil components; as well as in combating desertification
through the propagation of sustainable plantlets.

“What they plan to
do is use the technology to develop trees that can survive in the
desert and make the area more habitable. They will also come up with
trees that can stand erosion and also grow in an oil spill environment.

Unprecedented
population growth and emerging technologies have placed pressures on
the biophysical environment resulting in degradation that can sometimes
leave permanent impact on the environment.

The rapid growth of
urbanisation in addition to industrialisation has brought astronomical
increase in anthropogenic activities with their attendant huge
generation of wastes, thus the need for a systematic management of an
ever-increasing trend of municipal solid waste generation complicated
by complex waste characteristics has become an urban challenge.

The agency said it
is also looking at using biochemical processes to convert non-
biodegradable plastics to ethanol. This, the DG said will go a long way
in contributing to economic growth in the country.

Explaining further,
Christy Onyia, Director of Environmental Biotechnology at NABDA who
gave an overview of the project said management of non-degradable waste
materials, particularly plastic wastes in Nigerian environment is a
challenge.

According to her,
some of the problems involved in process of managing solid waste in the
developing world like Nigeria include huge solid waste generation from
all sectors of economy, absence of framework for waste collection,
transportation and disposal and inadequate solid waste dump sites.
Others are absence of engineered dump site, non-sorting and non
segregation of solid waste, legislative issues and enforcement of
regulations and limited available standard analytical laboratory for
research and development in environmental research and sample analyses.

“Now we are
introducing proper research and development into waste management in
Nigeria. We have a plant for biodegradable waste. We are now proposing
for this biodegradable waste gasification. It is another plant that
gasifies non biodegradable waste and produce ethanol from it. At this
stage it is at pilot scale.” The project is funded by the Science
Technology Post Basic (STEP-B) programme of the World Bank.