>
Akinwande Soji-Ojo
Lead City University is participating in a research collaboration with a grant of CAD325,876, which was successfully secured by Prof. Grace Oloukoi, a Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Management and the Dean of the Faculty of Environmental Design and Management of the institution.
The grant is a sub-contract of a project, titled: ‘A Pan-African and Transdisciplinary Lens on the Margins: Tackling the Risks of Extreme Events (PALM-TREEs).’
Palm-Trees, a project worth CAD5,370,300 is one of the Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CLARE), a UK-Canada framework research programme mainly funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (UK-FCDO) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
Palm-Trees is being implemented in six countries–Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya and DR Congo, and 16 institutions across Africa and the United Kingdom with the University of Cape Town as the lead organisation where the Project Consortium Office domiciles under the leadership of Prof. Abiodun Babatunde.
Other partners include the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Lead City University, University of Lagos, University of Oxford, UK Met Office, University of Nairobi, Kwame University of Science and Technology, Nigerian Institute for Social Economic Research (NISER) and University of Yaoundé.
The project emphasises lived experiences methodology and the dynamics of indigenous knowledge to understand the dimensions of climate risks based on the complex social identities of the margins in local communities and to ensure inclusive adaptation policies in Africa.
In Nigeria, Prof. Grace Oloukoi is working with her colleagues, Prof. Mayowa Fasona from the University of Lagos, and Prof. Andrew Onwuemele from NISER. The project is focusing on Lagos as a city-scale study on flooding and heat waves and the Middle Belt as a regional scale study on agricultural drought and flooding.
The project will deconstruct the dimensions of impacts of these extremes on liveability, livelihoods and well-being of the margins. The margins are the vulnerable; the population groups that lack representation or voice in climate adaptation discourse. These include the homeless, the aged, the children, the women, the immigrants and the physically challenged. The project also provides opportunities for Early Career Scientists (ECS) who are being supported for their doctoral and postdoctoral research.
Oloukoi is serving as the Focal Lead for Gender and Social Inclusion for the Palm-Trees project across Africa.
The inter-connected work packages for the Palm-Trees project are:
- Social impacts of climate extremes
- Physical impacts of extreme events
- Climate resilient solution
- Capacity strengthening
Specific outputs include:
- Reduced barriers to sustainable knowledge networks
- More equitable relationships between communities, practitioners, policy makers and researchers
- Transferable methodology to deal with multidimensional compound of extreme events
- Sustainable change based on nature-based adaptation strategies
The project implementation has commenced and this will run for 42 months, till January, 2027. Inception meetings were already held at Lagos and Ilorin as parts of Stakeholders’ Engagement and Community Entry strategies during which the media, the communities, government agencies, non-state actors, knowledge brokers and scientists brainstormed to harvest ideas for the actualization of Palm-Trees project in Nigeria.
Lead City University is providing institutional support for the implementation of the project. This scholarship milestone will foster the global visibility of faculty members of Lead City University, Nigeria.
Palm-Trees is available at:
- https://clareprogramme.org/project/pan-african-and-transdisciplinary-lens-on-the-margins-tackling-the-risks-of-extreme-events-palm-trees/
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedIn.com/in/clare-palm-trees