The Honourable Minister of Environment and Chairman of the HYPREP Governing Council, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, delivered the prestigious Brian Robinson Lecture today, 14th September, to open the International Cleanup Conference 2026 in Adelaide, Australia. Held every two years, the Cleanup Conference brings together remediation experts, researchers, students, policymakers, and industry leaders from around the world. The minister’s lecture, titled “Protecting People and Planet: Shared Responsibilities and Policy Lessons from Large Scale Remediation in Ogoniland”, provided the international community with valuable insight into the scale, complexity, and policy dimensions of one of the world’s most significant environmental remediation programmes.
The minister was accompanied by the Project Coordinator of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), Prof Nenibarini Zabbey, and three members of HYPREP’s technical team. The HYPREP PC will deliver the opening lecture for the Africa Session of the Cleanup Conference this Wednesday.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines of the conference, the Minister and the HYPREP PC held bilateral meetings with the Australian Environmental Protection Agency, as well as with global scientific and technology leaders, Shimadzu Corporation and Agilent Technologies. These discussions centred on forging valuable partnerships to advance the technical and analytical capacity supporting HYPREP’s remediation work.
Earlier, on Thursday 10 September, after a brief courtesy meeting with the Nigerian High Commissioner to Australia, Amb. Dr Olufemi Pedro, the Minister of Environment, accompanied by the HYPREP PC, held strategic partnership meetings with three Australian Ministers, focusing on environmental management and sustainability. The meetings with the Australian Minister for Environment and Water, Senator the Hon. Murray Watt; the Minister for Trade and Tourism, Senator the Hon. Don Farrel; and the Minister for International Development, Dr Anne Aly, took place in the ministers’ offices at Parliament House in Canberra.
These engagements reflect HYPREP’s ongoing commitment to partnership for development and learning, and contributions to global best practice, while positioning Ogoniland’s remediation as a model for large-scale environmental restoration worldwide.
