Strategies for Managing the Effects of Climate Change on Infrastructural Development in Public Tertiary Institutions in Rivers State

Abstract

The study examined the strategies for managing the effects of climate change on infrastructural development in public tertiary institutions in Rivers State. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. Three research questions and three hypotheses were formulated and tested at a 0.05 level of significance. The population of the study comprises 4532 respondents, 1250 lecturers, and 3282 final-year students from the five (5) selected public tertiary institutions affected by climate change. Purposive sampling technique was used for the study while simple random sampling technique was used to select 303 lecturers and 357 final year students of the selected federal tertiary institutions as determined by Taro Yamen making a total sample size of 660. The instrument for data collection was a self-structured questionnaire titled “Strategies for Managing the Effects of Climate Change on Infrastructural Development Questionnaire (SMTECCIDQ)”. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha method and a reliability index of 0.89 was obtained and was used for the study. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation for research questions while the hypotheses were tested using z-test. The findings of this study revealed that increasing public awareness positive incentives to encourage choices that lower emissions, adding a price to greenhouse gas emissions which creates incentives to reduce emissions broadly risk reduction management of the effect of climate change on infrastructural development in public tertiary institutions. The findings revealed that allowing tertiary institutions to ‘self-insure’ itself against climatic stressors, building the resilience of populations through social protection and related measures risk retention management of the effect of climate change on infrastructural development in public tertiary institutions. The findings also revealed that encouraging sustainable land management measures and institutions led initiatives to cope with climate change, using disaster risk transfer mechanisms such explicit links between risk financing and disaster risk management, using catastrophe bonds to provide coverage against exposure to extreme weather events kelp in the risk transfer management of the effect of climate change on infrastructural development in public tertiary institutions. Result from hypothesis revealed that there is no significance difference in the mean responses of students and lecturers on the risk reduction, risk retention and risk transfer management of the effect of climate change on infrastructural development in public tertiary institutions in Rivers State. Based on the findings of the study, it was recommended among others that Federal and State government should provide a good management and preventive measures such as risk reduction management to control heavy rain and flood for improvement of infrastructural development in tertiary institutions