FG beats 2030 target on land restoration

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2 years ago

Nigeria has surpassed her target to restore four million hectares of land from forest degradation, ahead of her 2023 target, Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi Adamu has said.

According to him, Nigeria’s re-afforestation programme for which it has distributed over 6 million seedings to the 11 frontline states of desert encroachment has yielded some positive results.

Abdullahi said this while announcing the gains of President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration on the Nigerian environment space.

He pointed out that the National Action Plan (NAP) designed to combat desertification and mitigate the effect of drought was reviewed and aligned to 2015 – 2025 to enhance the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Abdullahi said Nigeria’s commitment to restore degraded land to the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative 100 million was a target of 4 million hectares and that has been surpassed by over 2 million hectares so far covered.

His words: ” The AFR100 is a collective pledge by African countries to restore 100 million hectares of degraded landscapes as a contribution to the Bonn Challenge.

“The Bonn Challenge is a global resolve to restore 150 million hectares of degraded forest landscape by 2020 and 350 million by 2030.

“Each country is given the opportunity to make its own commitment.

“Last year, Nigeria made a commitment to restore 4 Million hectares by 2030 through various afforestation initiatives.

The Ministry has so far restored over 6,191,363 hectares of degraded forest land in Borno, Yobe, Adamawa, Jigawa, Katsina, Bauchi, Gombe, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kebbi and Kano.

The minister stated that “A total of 6,550,056 seedlings were raised and distributed to various state governments and institutions under the Forestry Trust Fund Initiative.”

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