What if the recent Tsunami in Japan had taken place in an African country like Nigeria where both the technological capability to predict, confront and overcome it as well as the popular consciousness about responding to such emergencies are zero? Would Nigeria survive such a disaster? Even as objectionable as it would be to the metaphysical citizenry and unpatriotic elements in public policy in most African countries to pose this question this way, the question as to whether Nigeria can survive such a scale of Tsunami, (that is Tsunami understood as metaphor for complex emergencies such as flooding, deforestation; desertification, water scarcity; drought, earthquakes, storms and the likes) is not out of place.

The question is not out of place even if only for the fact that, for instance, there have been no systematic, popular debates in Nigeria yet on the national, regional and continental implications of the global environmental challenge. Yet, Nigeria is supposed to show the way in Africa to which it has such an obligation, having proclaimed the defence of the dignity of the Blackman as the essence of her foreign policy.

In this context, there is an eminent sense in making the Hexagon Series on
Human, Environmental Security and Peace an object of journalistic engagement by any ‘Third World’ student of the environment as a (human) security issue. The logic must be obvious. It is in the ‘Third World’, Africa in particular, where the urgency of a more serious appreciation of the climate change crisis by political leaders, NGOs and sundry actors is most self-evident. This is for the simple reason that it is only in Africa that human existence is completely dependent on nature’s kindness, not much on technology. 

There might have been similar intellectual efforts, say in North America, Asia or Australia in terms of putting the global environmental challenge in perspective and on the agenda of public policy but the global breadth of the Hexagon Series stands it out and recommends its books to the general public for non-academic appreciation. The series has drawn attention to the key point that global climate change/environmental security is the one issue that truly affects the entire humanity in virtually the same way, sooner or later, whatever differences in regional severities and coping capability. Hexagon Series is a product of a multi-national/multi-cultural coalition trying to unravel a truly global problem. It is not a book of intellectuals of the Global South grumbling about imperialist domination OR intellectuals of the Global North talking down on the rest of the World.

But, above everything else, the series is a demonstration of the claim of science as to the knowability of the world. For, the series is simply saying that the world exists because it exists, not because of our justification of it or its consciousness of such justifications.  This straight forward message is delivered in the evidences for their claim that man’s interaction and impact on Nature since history is now producing consequences threatening us.

In their own words, “the ‘hexagon’ represents six key factors contributing to global environmental change – three nature-induced or supply factors: soil, water and air (atmosphere and climate), and three human-induced or demand factors: population (growth), urban systems (habitat, pollution) and rural systems (agriculture, food). Throughout the history of the earth and of homo sapiens these six factors have interacted. The supply factors have created the precon­ditions for life while human behaviour and economic consumption patterns have also contributed to its challenges (increase in extreme weather events) and fatal outcomes for human beings and society. The series covers the complex interactions among these six factors and their often extreme and in a few cases fatal outcomes (hazards/disasters, internal displacement and migrations, crises and conflicts)”.

In other words, the earth is not a static object which exists on the basis of our justification of it. It is, more than anything else, a product of massive migrations, the wars we fought, the bombs we tested, the technological excesses of modern industry, what radar have done to (bird) species, the threat of ocean liners to sea animals, what mining has done to lands as well as oil exploration and a whole lot of that. Today, the consequences are starring us in the face- the over two million people lost to drought and related environmental problems between 1973 and 2003; the noticeable heat waves and dehydration around Alexandria in Egypt, Bangladesh, Thailand, etc as well as the water scarcity and, by implication, food scarcity/malnutrition that hangs over South Africa. These are beside temperature rise and the associated crisis of higher evaporation and the way they affect productivity, migration and living standard.

It is on the basis of these that there is the attempt at reconceptualization of national security in the post Cold War from the protection of the nation-state to the protection of the individual in the nation-state. Against the realism that privileged military capability in inter-state relations during the Cold War, there has come the more humanistic paradigm that locates security in freedom of the individual from fear and want. Within this context, narratives different from state-centricism have crept into analysis and management of national security. One of such is the advocacy for the securitization of the impacts of human interaction or impacts on nature over the millennia and the observable consequences of that.

Looking at the contents of the several volumes that have been produced under the series so far (many more are in the works), there has been a comprehensive coverage of the substantive issues. Taken together with the caliber of the people who have participated either by writing the preface or the Foreword or the Introduction or an entire chapter, the series provide a take-off point in the discourse of the challenge across the world. Though not devoid of the privileged attention to the powerful and the language of power in the discursive and discourse politics of such a project, there is a paradigmatic freshness that we cannot but appreciate when reading the text. Politicians, public policy chiefs and members of a money chasing elite may have no patience for the intellectual orientation of the content. But beyond the intellectual veneer, it is those same issues they worry about that are the subjects of the analysis.

The sheer breadth of the coverage of the series means that the mission of this review must be to give the average reader an idea of the outline of the issues. And this I would do through a random scoop from the table of content of selected volumes. There are five volumes already in print and these are Security and Environment in the Mediterranean – Conceptualizing Security and Environmental Conflicts; Water Resources in the Middle East: Israel-Palestinian Water Issues – from Conflict to Cooperation; Globalization and Environmental Challenges: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century; Facing Global Environmental Change: Environmental, Human, Energy, Food, Health and Water Security Concepts and finally, Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks.

If one picked volume Four titled Facing Global Environment Change, for instance, the range of topics includes “Facing Global Environment Change and Disaster Risk Reduction”, written by the Director, Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR); “Climate Change and Security: A Destabilizing Fact of Life” by Michael Zammit Cutajar, (Former Executive Secretary, UNFCCC Honorary Ambassador for Climate Change, Malta); “Facing and Coping with Globalization: How Ten Years of WTO have Created an Agrarian Crisis in India” by Vandana Shiva who is Sálvano Briceño recipient of the Right Livelihood Award (Alternate Nobel Prize) in 1993 and who is the most profound Third World voice today after Professor Samir Amin and Tarikh Ali.  

Others are “The International System, Great Powers, and Environmental Change since 1900” by J.R. McNeill; “The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Securing Interactions between Ecosystems, Ecosystem Services and Human Well-being” by Rik Leemans; “Climate Change Impacts on the Environment and Civilization in the Near East” by Arie S. Issar and Mattanyah Zohar; “Human Security, Climate Change and Small Islands” by Yannis N. Kinnas; “Desertification in Algeria: Policies and Measures for the Protection of Natural Resources” by Ghazi Ali; “Securitizing Water” by Úrsula Oswald Spring and Hans Günter Brauch; “Changing Population Size and Distribution as a Security Concern” by Wolfgang Lutz; “Life on the Edge: Urban Social Vulnerability and Decentralized, Citizen-Based Disaster Risk Reduction in Four Large Cities of the Pacific Rim” by Ben Wisner and Juha Uitto; “Linkages Between Sub-national and International Water Conflicts: The Eastern Nile Basin” by Simon A Mason, Tobias Hagmann, Christine Bichsel, Eva Ludi and Yacob Arsano; “Energy Security: Conceptualization of the International Energy Agency (IEA)” by Klaus-Dietmar Jacoby: “Scenarios of Energy Demand and Supply until 2100: Implications for Energy Security” by Leo Schrattenholzer; “Projections of Fossil Energy Reserves and Supply until 2050 (2100): Implications for Longer-term Energy Supply Security” by Werner Zittel and Joerg Schindler; “Technical and Economic Potentials of Biomass until 2050: Regional Relevance for Energy Security” by André P.C. Faaij; “Solar Energy on a Global Scale: Its Impact on Security” by David Faiman; “Solar Energy as a Key for Power and Water in the Middle East and North Africa” by Franz Trieb, Wolfram Krewitt and Nadine May; “Energy Security in the Arab World” by Mohammad Selim and Abdullah Sahar; “Towards a Sustainable Energy System for Africa: An African Perspective on Energy Security” by Nogoye Thiam;

There are equally interesting titles such as “Energy Security: Economic, Environmental, and Societal Opportunity for the North – Potential of Renewables to Avoid Conflicts” By Rolf Linkohr; “Food as a New Human and Livelihood Security Challenge” by Úrsula Oswald Spring; “Governance of Food Security in the 21^st Century” by M. A. Mohamed Salih; “A Research Strategy to Secure Energy, Water, and Food via Developing Sustainable Land and Water Management in Turkey” by Selim Kapur, Burcak Kapur, Erhan Akca, Hari Eswaran and Mustafa Aydin; “Water Resources in the Arab World: A Case Study on Jordan” by Bassam Ossama Hayek; “Water and Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: Emerging Concepts and their Implications for Effective Water Resource Management in the Southern African Region” by Peter Ashton and Anthony Turton; “Water Security in the Senegal River Basin: Water Cooperation and Water Conflicts” by Martin Kipping; “The Centrality of Water Regime Formation for Water Security in West Africa: An Analysis of the Volta Basin” by Maëlis Borghese; “Success and Failure in International River Basin Management –The Case of Southern Africa” by Stefan Lindemann; “Water Security in Times of Armed Conflicts” by Mara Tignino; “Environmental Security: Academic and Policy Debates in North America” by Richard A. Matthew and Bryan McDonald; “Environmental Security in the Arab World” by Mohammad El-Sayed Selim; “Environmental Scarcity, Insecurity and Conflict: The Cases of Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Burundi” by Mersie Ejigu; “Environmental Security in Sub-Sahara Africa: Global and Regional Environmental Security Concepts and Debates Revisited” by Sam Moyo; “Human Security in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Nana K. Poku and Bjorg Sandkjaer; “Human Security: International Discourses and Local Reality – Case of Mali” by Max Schott; “Natural Disasters, Vulnerability and Human Security” by Fabien Nathan; “Relevance of Human and Environmental Security Concepts for the Military Services: A Perspective of a Former Chief of Staff” by Joseph G. Singh; “Water and Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: Emerging Concepts and their Implications for Effective Water Resource Management in the Southern African Region” by Peter Ashton and Anthony Turton;  “Water Security in the Senegal River Basin: Water Cooperation and Water Conflicts” by Martin Kipping; “The Human Security Network: A Global North-South Coalition” by Claudia F. Fuentes Julio and Hans Günter Brauch; “Human Security in Sub-Saharan Africa” by Nana K. Poku and Bjorg Sandkjaer; “Human Security: International Discourses and Local Reality –Case of Mali by Max Schott; “Natural Disasters, Vulnerability and Human Security” by Fabien Nathan; “Environment as an Element of Human Security in Southeast Asia: Case Study on the Thai Tsunami” by Surichai Wun’Gaeo; “Towards a Human Security-Based Early Warning and Response System” by Albrecht Schnabel and Heinz Krummenacher.

If one picked volume Three of the series, for example, which, by the way, should have been the volume One, the following chapters must have both titular and subject-matter attraction anywhere today: Reconceptualizing Security in the 21st Century by Hans Günter Brauch; Globalization from Below: Eco-feminist Alternatives to Corporate Globalization by Vandana Shiva,;  Emergent Sustainability: The Concept of Sustainable Development in a Complex World by Casey Brown; Development and Security: Genealogy and Typology of an Evolving International Policy Area by Peter Uvin.

When it comes to Philosophical, Ethical and Religious Contexts for Conceptualizations of Security, there is a sprawling, comparative spread in Oriental, European, and Indigenous Thinking on Peace in Latin America by Úrsula Oswald Spring; Security in Hinduism and Buddhism by Michael von Brück; Security in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Philosophy and Ethics by Kurt W. Radtke; Security in Confucian Thought: Case of Korea by Eun-Jeung Lee; Security in Japanese History, Philosophy and Ethics: Impact on Contemporary Security Policy by Mitsuo and Tamayo Okamoto; Thinking on Security in Hinduism: Contemporary Political Philosophy and Ethics in India by Naresh Dadhich; Human Security in Jewish Philosophy and Ethics by Robert Eisen; From Homer to Hobbes and Beyond – Aspects of ‘Security’ in the European Tradition by J. Frederik M. Arends; Security Conceptualization in Arab Philosophy and Ethics and Muslim Perspectives by Hassan Hanafi; Security in African Philosophy and Historical Ideas by Jacob Emmanuel Mabe; Security in Latin American Philosophy, Ethics, and History of Ideas by Georgina Sánchez; The Brazilian View on the Conceptualization of Security: Philosophical, Ethical and Cultural Contexts and Issues by Domício Proença Júnior; Eugenio Diniz.

The question that logically follows this parade of discourses and issue areas is what they have got to do with a Nigerian perspective on the Global Environmental/Climate Change Challenge. Simply, they provide a rich repertoire of what is going on out there already on the challenge and how a key player such as Nigeria might buy into or problematise them.  Second is the fact about a significant existing Nigerian/African in put into the Hexagon series and this can be seen from Professor Joy Ogwu being one of the four who wrote the Forewords to Volume Four of the series. Last November at the European Peace University in Stadtschlaining, Austria, a mastermind of the series, Professor Hans Gunter Braunch, asked me relentlessly about Professor Ogwu in a way that suggested that the former Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister might have made a positive impact on the scholar. The Forewords writers in the said volume are Rajendra K. Pachauri,(Director-General of TERI, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); Achim Steiner,(Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations); Joy Ogwu, (Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the United Nations in New York) and Stavros Dimas,(European Commissioner for the Environment).

In case the issues as treated in the above outline are still not clear, we can bring it further to the earth by looking at certain basic data. According to the report of an environmental expert group commissioned by the Jigawa State Government in 2008, Nigeria is estimated to be losing about 350,000 hectares of its land to desertification annually. The most affected states called desertified frontline states include; Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Zamfara, Yobe, Borno, Bauchi, Gombe, Kebbi and Adamawa. These States have a total population of about 42 million people occupying about 43% of the country’s total land mass area. Furthermore, desertification process is gradually pushing its limits southwards at an estimated rate of 0.6 kilometer per annum. This implies that States like Kaduna, Plateau, Niger, Nassarawa, Benue, Taraba, Kogi, Kwara and the Federal capital Territory are being threatened by this phenomenon. This is aside from progressive decadal mean rainfall decline between 1941 and 2000 in the Sahel and Sudan zones of Nigeria. 

In Jigawa State, for instance, according to the same report, the rate of desertification has been computed at 160% over thirty years, or 4% per year. In terms of land mass, it is 160 km² per year. No wonder such degraded (bare surface) terrain occupies 30.5% of the surface area of the state currently. Indeed, when the areas of rocky surfaces are added, according to the experts, the land surface affected increased from 4100 km² in 1986 to 13,200 km² in 2006 an increase of 9,100 km² or 222% over the last 30 years (125.0 km² or 5.5% per year).

The associated stresses have been listed to include, among others, relative dryness; desiccated land; lateralized landscape; treeless terrain through deforestation; Land non-productivity; Dune remobilization; Very low/deep groundwater tables. These are beside low rainfall amounts (and also rainfall runoff and river flows) partly due to climate change.

It was established in the report too that desertification in Jigawa State has adversely affected the socio-economic environment of the areas in question, from agricultural production, rising incidence of food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition, increasing level of poverty and migration of people to urban centers. Desertification further triggers and aggravates conflicts over land resources, especially in areas of high productivity like the Hadejia/Nguru wetlands that provide means of livelihood to various rural land users, notably farmers, herders, fishermen and hunters.

And that in addition to the socio-economic impacts, desertification leads to the unfortunate loss of biodiversity. It encourages the destruction of fauna and flora of the state. Various fauna and flora species have become extinct or endangered as result of climatic variation and human mismanagement. Furthermore, villages, farmlands, access roads and other infrastructures have been buried by moving sand dunes in around Jahun, Kaugama and Kafin Hausa LGAs.

The impact of desertification in the dry land of the state can best be illustrated by examining, the hydrological changes in the Hadejia-Jama’are Basin. This is the Basin that serves Jigawa State and other states in northeastern Nigeria. The main rivers in the Basin supply over 75% water to the Lake Chad. From 1973 with the exception of some occasional overflows of short duration towards the northern pool, the Lake Chad has reduced and is confined only to the southern pool. The cumulative effect of these drought years resulted in the virtual drying up of the Lake in early 1988.

Based on satellite image assessment, the changing size of the lake from 1963 to the year 2000 has been computed as follows;

1963     ─ 22,902 km²

1972    ─ 16,884 km²

1987   ─ 1,746 km²

2000   ─ 304 km²

In the view of the experts, these developments have eroded the socio-economic activities of the people thereby escalating rural poverty, unemployment and displacement of families. It is important that appropriate interventions, are introduced to uplift the living standard of the people and provide employment.

The report under reference demonstrates that the challenge of global environmental/climate Change is not an esoteric discussion. It may be earthquake instigated Tsunami in Japan but desertification or rising temperature in and around Nigeria. All these must suggest to reasonable people that taking note of the environment as a key factor in human security in the 21^st Century is the next most urgent issue in national security now.

I have already argued that Volume Three should have been Volume One unless the editors are not bothered about some order in the sequence of the argumentation. The second point about the Series if seen from a Third Worldist point is the issue of availability. The books can neither be downloaded free nor are they cheaply available. No concessions in price terms have been considered at all for potential readers of the Series especially in African countries where book capacity in both mental and material realms are dead almost.

What the editors are saying on this for now is that the book series is presented in detail at: www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon.htm and that a total of 150 free gift copies of the volumes: Globalization and Environmental Challenges and Facing Global Environmental Change were sent in July 2011 to 110 libraries in 69 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America as a scientific confidence building measure sponsored by the German Federal Ministry on Science and Education. All recipients of this book-aid project can be found at: www.afes-press-books.de/html/book_aid_project_hex3.htm. The most recent volume on: Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security is presented at: www.afes-press-books.de/html/hexagon_05.htm and the book aid project for this book was launched on April 14^th at the United Nations with the President of the UN General Assembly. But are these enough?

Finally, would it be too much to expect the editors and authors of the Series to go beyond research to advocacy on the key issues in context? The assumption here is that their mastery of the interconnectedness of the issues place them in a better position to direct the advocacy on them instead of leaving that to governments, NGOs and the UN system which are all bugged down by constraints of power politics. How can the UN which is barely keeping its head above super power intrigues make a success of conscientizing the Africans on global climate change and its challenges to livelihood and survival? If knowledge must serve man, then the men and women who have the knowledge must lead the pack.

Mr Onoja is of Government House, Dutse, Jigawa State of Nigeria, (adagboonoja@gmail.com)