Municipal Solid Waste and Floods in Lagos Metropolis, Nigeria: Deconstructing the Evil Nexus (PAP014990)

Código

PAP014990

Autores

BOLANLE WAHAB, Dr Ibidun Adelekan, Saeed Ojolowo, FASONA, MAYOWA JOHNSON

Tema

Urban Floods

Resumo

This paper employs the Local Peculiarity Factor (LPF) model to analyze the missing links in literature in attempts to address the problems of flooding in the coastal city of Lagos. The literature has established the existence of strong relationships between municipal solid waste management and incidence of floods in Lagos metropolis. As population of Lagos increased from 17.5 million in 2006 to over 21 Million in 2013, so has the volume of waste generation increased at the rate of 9,000 to 10,000 metric tons per day. Waste collection is unable to keep pace with generation and large volumes end up in drains and canals resulting in flooding. The pair of municipal solid waste management and floods has become intractable challenges particularly in Lagos and many other cities in Nigeria. Meanwhile, waste generation and flood are inevitable phenomena within natural cycles. As floods offer water balance between areas of excess and shortage; wastes convey nutrients from one part of the environment to another. However, human interference engenders negativities that have been recorded between the pair. One of the reasons in paradigm shift from conventional uncontrolled generation, storage, transportation and dumping to reduction, recycle, reuse and recovery is to mitigate the impacts of municipal solid waste on flood, by ensuring 100% collection and subsequently curb indiscriminate waste deposition in drainage channels. This paper presents existing municipal solid waste management activities in Lagos State with a view to establishing its impacts on flood. Both secondary and primary data were collected to generate information on the past and current systems of waste management in Lagos Metropolis. The paper, not only recommends measures to enhance the strength and address the weaknesses of the current approaches towards the attainment of global best practices in solid waste and flood management in Lagos metropolis, it also presents a model of Integrated Sustainable Waste and Flood Management to solve the two environmental challenges.