Mainstream Media Blames Climate Change for Nigeria’s Floods, Ignores Urban Planning Failures

From ClimateREALISM

Screen capture of the region surrounding Mokwa, Niger State, Nigeria, on Google Earth.By Linnea Lueken

A recent article, written by the Associated Press (AP) and carried by NBC, titled “Floods kill at least 111 as northern Nigeria battles climate change, dry spells and heavy rainfall,” tries to connect climate change for deadly weather disasters in Nigeria. There is little or no such connection. Torrential rainfall following a hard drought can result in flooding, but its unclear whether climate change had any connection to the rainfall or the preceding drought. More importantly, the media reports ignore known urban planning issues that contributed to flooding and greatly worsen flooding when it occurs.

A heavy rain storm in Nigeria caused flooding which reportedly killed at least 111 people in and around the town of Mokwa. AP reports that the “Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency did not immediately say how much rain fell after midnight Thursday in the town of Mokwa in the state of Niger more than 180 miles west of Abuja, the capital of Africa’s most populous nation.”

AP goes on to claim that this part of Nigeria has “been experiencing prolonged dry spells worsened by climate change and excessive rainfall that leads to severe flooding during the brief wet season.”

While the AP insists that climate change is primarily responsible for the tragedy, history and data undermine any such connection. Damaging floods have been common throughout Nigeria’s history. Nigeria has a dry season, during which drought is common, and a wet or rainy season complete, with monsoons and flooding in low lying areas and villages and towns alongside rivers and streams.

In a 2018  BBC article, titled “Why does Nigeria keep flooding?” the authors point in part to a rising trend in average annual rainfall as part of the reason, true. But rising average rainfall doesn’t necessarily mean that individual rain events are more extreme. Hard data on severe rainfall and flooding in Nigeria is sparse. However, plenty of places experiencing increased average annual rainfall have not experienced increased flooding, so what gives in Nigeria?

The BBC explains that Nigeria’s three main hydroelectric dams are partially to blame for downstream flooding, but also that the “uncompleted Zungeru dam, in Niger state, which is part-funded by the Chinese government, is also believed to be affecting areas once free from flooding.”

They go on to quote local experts who said that Nigeria’s population is rapidly expanding, and that with it, urbanization and everything that comes with it is increasing as well, “and the lack of proper town planning can make flooding worse in urban areas.” The BBC quotes one expert as saying that town planning “is very weak.” The BBC continues by saying that rapid development is “almost always unregulated, with people building on floodplains, reducing the surface areas for water to travel, and without constructing drainage systems.”

The BBC reports that people often rebuild in areas that already had disastrous floods, with the same lack of care for water handling.

Flooding is not unprecedented for the area covered by the AP/NBC story, nor should it come as a surprise to anyone. Mokwa, the town devastated by the recent floods, sits a few miles north of the Niger river. Surrounding the bend of the river in that region are interesting features that identify the area as a major floodplain. First, a wide greenbelt along the river hints at the frequent deposit of river sediment well inland in multiple areas. But one will notice something else as well – tendrils of hard greenery which reach north from the belt, one of which appears to terminate in . . . Mokwa.

These are most likely seasonal creek beds that lay at lower elevations in the landscape, which can both be drainage features from the land surrounding them, feeding to the river, but can also become swollen when the river itself overflows. Water from upland, where much of the town infrastructure is, is going to want to flow into that low area. Increased development in and around Mokwa has resulted in more non-permeable ground and surfaces—that is, ground that has been covered in foundations and asphalt or packed earth that water cannot soak into, so it flows on top instead.

It is notable, too, that in another BBC article covering the recent disastrous flood, the locals interviewed did not blame the flooding on climate change or the recent rainfall. BBC says that residents “told BBC News they believed the floodwater was not caused by the heavy rainfall they had experienced,” and that the Mokwa District Head said that the rain could not have been the primary cause of the flooding, because the rain had “subsided” already when the flooding started. Instead, he blames a local reservoir. If water had indeed been released from a local reservoir, the geography indicates the water would flow right through the town to get to the creeks which feed the river.

There is no way to tie this particular flood event to climate change, only a sustained long-term trend would suggest such a connection.

Nigeria has a long history of floods and, as explained in the Queen’s Gazette, “Nigeria’s flooding is mainly human induced with poor urban planning practices and inadequate environmental infrastructure being contributing factors.” Whether or not rainfall is increasing in Nigeria, the easiest and most effective way prevent disastrous flooding from happening again would be to invest in water handling infrastructure, where possible.

“Unlike some natural disasters, rainfall flooding can be controlled with proper planning and provision of necessary infrastructure,” reinforces the Queen’s Gazette. Where improving infrastructure is impossible for one reason or another possible, people should, at a minimum, avoid living in known flood plains, naturally prone to such events, and especially not be rebuilding there in the aftermath of experiencing a flood.

In order to emphasize a speculative climate connection, the AP and NBC completely ignored glaring urban infrastructure issues that other outlets have rightly recognized as being the main factors in Nigeria’s recent floods. Based on the limited data that exists on flooding and drought in the country and across the region, the recent drought and flood were not historically unusual, in fact both conditions are endemic to the country during its dry and wet seasons, meaning there is no climate change “fingerprint” in evidence.