Agroforestry, land use policy to address land degradation, environmental sustainability ― Minister

The Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi, on Thursday, said the inclusion of agroforestry and land use into national policy would help address issues of land degradation and ensures environmental sustainability.

The Minister made this known at a two-day National Stakeholders Consultative Workshop on the inclusion of agroforestry and land use into National policy on the Environment in Keffi Nasarawa State.

Abdullahi was represented by Mr Daniel Aleriwon, Assistant Director of Policy Analysis and Desk Officer United Nations Development Program Global Environment Facility (UNDP-GEF).

He said the ministry of environment was ready to take the project from the surface level and ensure it comes to a national policy because of the relevance of the environment in food security.

According to him, the essence of the project is to integrate all agricultural products to enhance food availability for Nigerian citizens and also help in improving the environment rather than degrading it.

He said part of efforts in upscaling the project was to institutionalise it and make it a major part of the policy trust of the ministry so that other governments that come in can have something to work with.

“We are here today to advance a course towards making the effect of the project to be an everlasting one, we want to institutionalise the project we want to make it a policy.

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“We want to work on the national policy to promote agroforestry and land use in the agriculture system towards making food available for all in a sustainable way for generations to come,” he said

Mrs Rhoda Dia, Project Manager UNDP-GEF Integrated Approach Programme for Food Security(IAP-FS) in her presentation said the project has done a lot with the communities who have embraced the climate-smart agricultural practices in ensuring environmental sustainability.

Dia said ” We convert this national stakeholders meeting where we brought in experts, relevant stakeholders from agric and environment, from other agencies of the environment to rub minds together so that we can put up this policy document for inclusion in our national policy for the environment.

“We have done so many programs with the ministry of agriculture but this one is specifically with the Ministry of Environment, there is the need to include agroforestry and land use in our their national policy.

She said after the discussion” we hope the ministry will go and work on the document and present it at the National Council meeting for the environment and when adopted it will become part and parcel of the document that will be used and in the country.

The UNDP-GEF projects on fostering sustainability and resilience for food security is a implemented in seven states Kano, Katsina, Benue, Nasarawa, Gombe, Jigawa and Adamawa.

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Agroforestry, land use policy to address land degradation, environmental sustainability ― Minister