By 2023, Nigeria will have planted over seven million trees in total nationwide in four years. This is in fulfilment of the Federal Ministry of Environment’s set targets for tree planting.
The Minister of Environment, Dr Mohammad Abubakar, stated this during his visit to the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), Ibadan on the World Environment Day (WED) celebrated June 5, annually.
The minister was accompanied by Senator Hassan Nasiha, the chairman, Senate Committee on Climate Change and Ecology.
The visit saw the minister inaugurate a number of projects completed by the Director-General of FRIN, Professor Shola Adepoju.
The minister while presenting the achievements of the ministry so far said that: “The ministry through the combined effort of Federal Department of Forestry (FDF) and FRIN has seen the total number of trees planted to have jumped from a baseline of 292,140 in 2019 to 473,190 at the end of 2020. A further 161,143 trees are expected to be planted by the end of 2021.”
He added that 2,872,000 and 3,581,371 trees will be planted by 2022 and 2023 respectively, amounting to an estimated 7,087,707 trees planted nationwide.
He also noted that “the Ogoni Clean-Up Project has continued to achieve considerable progress since inception till date in three core areas of remediation, livelihood programme and water supply.”
Dr Abubakar said the ministry is working closely with the National Assembly to promote the passage of relevant legislation on recycling waste and restrictions on the use of plastic and wood fuel; a process he said has reached advanced stages.
Earlier in his address, the minister noted that there was a connection between biodiversity loss and large scale global infection witnessed in the coronavirus pandemic. Therefore, the theme of the 2021 World Environment Day “Restoring Ecosystems” was both timely and accurate.
Before the minister’s arrival, FRIN hosted researchers and students at a seminar to commemorate the World Environment Day.
Dr Oladapo Akinyemi of the Ecology Section, Forest Conservation and Protection Department at FRIN, presented the first paper titled: “Ecosystem restoration and focus on resetting our relationship with nature.”
Dr Akinyemi noted that the aim of ecology restoration was to achieve full recovery relative to an appropriate local indigenous reference ecosystem regardless of the period of time required to achieve that state.
He concluded that “everyone in the world depends completely on earth’s ecosystem and services they provide.”
Therefore, “care for ecosystem should be taken as one of the major responsibility of every individual for sustainable living of future generations as well.”
The second paper also focusing on the theme of the World Environment Day was presented by Adewale Agbo-Adediran of Federal College of Forestry, Jericho, Ibadan.
He reminded his audience that in 2019, the United Nations General Assembly agreed that the ecosystem was being drastically depleted and needed protection.
This spurred the Assembly to declare a whole decade to combat this situation starting from 2021 and ending in 2030, called the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
He said that over 4.7 million hectares of forests, an area larger than Denmark, are lost every year.
“Ecosystem restoration is a global undertaking at massive scale. It means repairing billions of hectares of land, an area greater than China or the USA, so that people have access to food, clean water and jobs.
“It means bringing back plants and animals from the brink of extinction, from the peaks of mountains to the depths of the sea.
“But it also includes the many small actions everyone can take, every day: growing trees, greening our cities, our gardens or cleaning up trash alongside rivers and coasts,” Agbo-Adediran stated.
Quoting the UN, he said that “for every dollar invested in restoration, at least seven to 30 dollars in returns for society can be expected. Restoration also creates jobs in rural areas where they are most needed.”
The projects inaugurated by the minister are: a fire-fighting truck, Accounts and Audit building; Elizabeth Ehi-Ebewele Biodiversity Linkage Centre; Dr Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar Bio-Medicinal Development Laboratory Building; the Amina J. Mohammed Wildlife & Ecotourism Building and a Computer Lab Building.
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