Climate Change Law and Policy in the Middle East and North Africa Region

Damilola S. Olawuyi

Climate Change Law and Policy in the Middle East and North Africa Region provides an in-depth and authoritative examination of the guiding principles of climate change law and policy in the MENA region.

This volume introduces readers to the latest developments in the regulation of climate change across the region, including the applicable legislation, institutions, and key legal innovations in climate change financing, infrastructure development, and education. It outlines participatory and bottom-up legal strategies—focusing on transparency, accountability, gender justice, and other human rights safeguards—needed to achieve greater coherence and coordination in the design, approval, financing, and implementation of climate response projects across the region. With contributions from a range of experts in the field, the collection reflects on how MENA countries can advance existing national strategies around climate change, green economy, and low carbon futures through clear and comprehensive legislation.

Taking an international and comparative approach, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners who work in the areas of climate change, environmental law and policy, and sustainable development, particularly in relation to the MENA region.

Environmental Law in Arab States

Damilola Olawuyi

Environmental Law in Arab States

• The very first book-length examination of the essential features of environmental law and regulation in the Arab region

• Outlines guiding principles for a sustainable, integrated, and rights-based approach to environmental law and policy

• Explores how legal innovations relating to Islamic green finance, climate infrastructure, and renewable technologies are shaping environmental regulation and governance

• A complete survey of how international and regional instruments on environmental law are applied across the area, focusing on the influence of Islamic principles on the development of environmental law and policy

Principles of Green and Sustainability Science

Adenike A. Akinsemolu

The Principles of Green and Sustainability Science

• Focuses on the principles of green and sustainability science using various case studies

• Contributes to literature in the science and environmental field by providing information on the scientific aspects of sustainability

• Offers extensive information on viable solutions for the problems besetting our societies, especially the environment and unemployment

• Draws on insights from many experts with a diverse range of backgrounds in sustainability The first text to deal exclusively with sustainability issues in Africa

  This book uses the concept of sustainability in science to address problems afflicting the environment, and to devise measures for improving economies, societies, behaviors, and people. The book pursues a scientific approach, and uses scientific evidence as the basis for achieving sustainability. The key topics addressed include: unemployment, health and disease, unsustainable production, our common future, renewable energies, waste management, environmental ethics, and harmful anthropogenic activities. Whereas past literature has mainly examined sustainability as an environmental issue, this book expands the conversation into various sciences, including mathematics, biology, agriculture, computer science, engineering, and physics, and shows how sustainability could be achieved by uniting these fields. It offers a wealth of information across various disciplines, making it not only an intriguing read but also informative and insightful.

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Sustainable development and the water-energy-food nexus: Legal challenges and emerging solutions.

Damilola Olawuyi

Abstract

Traditionally water, energy and food (WEF) resources are governed in many countries by separate sets of laws, rules and institutions. However, recent studies have increasingly underlined the WEF nexus approach as a framework for coherent, holistic and integrated implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address fragmentations and ensure cleaner and efficient production methods in each sector.

This article examines the legal and governance aspects of integrating and implementing the WEF nexus in practice. Various legal and institutional challenges that arise with a nexus approach, such as incompatibility of WEF nexus aims, limited rule linkages, institutional limitations and resource constraints are examined in order to identify the ways in which an integrative legal framework on WEF can help close these gaps.

The study suggests that enhanced levels of legislation and rule linkage; elaboration of common and shared principles by institutional actors in WEF domains; as well knowledge, expertise and information sharing on WEF-related decision making are significant steps towards advancing systemic and integrated governance of WEF resources.

Keywords: Water, Energy, Food, Sustainable development, Climate change, Systemic integration, Multi-level governance

The vulnerability of women to climate change in coastal regions of Nigeria: A case of the Ilaje community in Ondo State

Adenike A. Akinsemolu and Obafemi Alaba Olukoya

Abstract

Values, patriarchal norms, and traditions related to gender and gendering are diverse among societies, communities, and precincts. As such, although climate change is expected to exacerbate vulnerabilities and deepen existing gender inequities and inequalities, the impacts will be unequally felt across geographical strata. This implies that the specificity of the vulnerability of women to climate change may also vary from community to community and society to societies. However, mainstream literature on the vulnerability of women to climate changes in coastal zones trivializes the plurality and nuances of different geographical contexts by universalizing context-specific vulnerability to climate change. Mindful of the limitations associated with the generalizing conception of women’s vulnerability, this paper is therefore underpinned by the implicit assumption that a successful response to the vulnerability of women to climate change in coastal zone is forged in the nexus between contextual investigation of climate change parameters and a localized investigation of differentiation in gender roles, patriarchal norms and other unknown factors in a particular setting. Thus, this paper presents a case study of the contextual vulnerability of women to climate change in Ilaje coastal region in Nigeria. Examining the intersecting complex of contextual factors, the paper establishes that beyond patriarchal traditions and norms: economic, political, educational and environmental factors are at play in the vulnerability of women to climate change in Ilaje community. To this end, this paper posits that to alleviate the vulnerability of women to climate change in coastal zones, the understanding of contextual factors play a fundamental role.

Keywords: Women, Vulnerability, Coastal region, Climate change, Ilaje, Nigeria

Human rights and the environment in the Middle East and North African region: trends, limitations and opportunities

 Damilola Olawuyi

Abstract

This chapter develops a profile of law and governance arrangements across the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, designed to respect, protect and fulfil the fundamental human right to environment and sustainable development. It examines the potentials and limitations of constitutional and legislative approaches to environmental human rights enforcement in the region. It then discusses the need for procedural reforms to address institutional barriers to stakeholder engagement and participation that limit the committed and coordinated delivery of environmental justice in the region. By ensuring that the design, approval, finance and implementation of development projects occur with the participation and approval of all stakeholders, including women, young people and vulnerable communities, environmental pollution and human rights infringements due to development projects, may be better anticipated and avoided.

The achievement of regulatory excellence in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria: the 2017 National Oil and Gas Policy

 Chilenye Nwapi

Abstract

This article critically assesses the regulatory landscape for oil and gas development proposed under the 2017 Nigeria gas and petroleum policies, which are together referred to as the Nigeria Oil and Gas Policy (NOGP) 2017, to highlight its capacity to lead to the achievement of regulatory excellence in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. The assessment is based on a conceptual framework developed by the Penn Program on Regulation (PPR) at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2015 to assist the Alberta Energy Regulator – the body responsible for regulating energy development in Alberta, Canada – to identify the best regulatory approach to overcome the challenges of regulating energy development in the province. The PPR framework is selected not only because it is based on a detailed and systematic review of earlier frameworks but also because it is the only framework prepared primarily for the energy sector, though its elements can be easily adapted to other sectors as well. The article’s central argument is that while the NOGP 2017 represents an important step forward in the efforts to effectively regulate the oil and gas industry, there are significant gaps in the regulatory landscape proposed in the policy for the achievement of regulatory excellence. The article identifies those gaps and notes, however,that the achievement of regulatory excellence depends considerably on the implementation framework adopted by the new yet-to-be-established regulator when it comes into operation.

Keywords: regulatory excellence, petroleum policy, gas policy, Nigeria, Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, utmost integrity, empathic engagement, stellar competence