Policy Analysis On Sustainable Development Of Gas Flaring

The main purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of gas flaring on the socio-economic and environmental welfare of the communities in Rivers State,Nigeria.Gas flaring has cause a big concern not only to the Nigerian government,but also to the international communities because of its contribution to climate change.This thesis adopt a quantitative(survey)method and also collect date from government agency in charge of oil and gas exploration to examine the socio-economic and environmental impacts of gas flaring on the people and to also examine the trend of gas flaring over the years(2000-2015).We also examine the mitigation strategy used by the communities and effectiveness of government policy and oil and gas companies mitigation strategy in reducing gas flaring in Nigeria.Three communities were used(Obio-Akpor,Khana and Gokana)for the purpose of the research and 402 respondents were surveyed.We use IBM SPSS 23 version and ordinal logistic regression analysis to analyze the data collected.We found that air and water pollution and land degradation negatively affect the socio-economic wellbeing and health of the community's members.These pollutions were caused by the constant gas being flared in the communities.Gas flaring significantly influence income because agriculture is the main source of living in the communities and productivity was low due to soil contamination and loss of output in the communities.Provision of housing scheme from both government and oil and gas companies to the communities is statistically significant which further improve the socio-economic wellbeing of the citizens.We found government policy to be significant and positive but at a slow rate.This is as a result of reduction in the quantity of gas being flared.The oil companies' strategies were also found to be significant in terms of provision of medical health facilities for health centers and grants of business loans to communities' members.We also found that people are willing to apply self-mitigation strategy.