By Hauwa Ali
The Federal Government has begun Environmental Impact Assessments; community mobilisation, and awareness campaign; afforestation and land management in order to promote alternative livelihood by rehabilitating degraded lands and rural infrastructure to generate employment by 2030.
The Minister of Environment, Alhaji Mohammed Abdullahi, represented by the Director, Planning, Research and Statistics of the ministry, Mr Stanley Jonah, announced this on Monday, in Abuja at a Capacity Training Workshop on Opportunity Mapping for Improved Decision Making and Monitoring of Great Green Wall (GGW) Projects.
According to the minister, the programme targets to rehabilitate about 22,000 km square of degraded land and improve livelihood of over 20 million Nigerians by 2030.
“The NAGGW (National Agency for the Great Green Wall) has already engaged in baseline studies and Environmental Impact Assessments; community mobilisation, and awareness campaign; afforestation and land management; promotion of alternative livelihood, rural infrastructure, and employment generation.
“The ongoing programme includes ecological restoration and rehabilitation to enhance the livelihoods of the affected communities and strengthen their resilience to climate change.
“The programme also involves, promotion of climate smart agricultural practices to enhance food security and climate change adaptation; improvement of critical rural infrastructure for enhanced socioeconomic development, among others,’’ he said.
The minister said that the Federal Government was taking positive steps to mitigate the risks on climate emergency, food security, biodiversity and pollution as much as possible within the resources available.
The Director-General of the agency, Dr Yusuf Maina-Bukar, said that the agency had restored degraded lands by establishing 389.46 kilometers of shelterbelt.
“The agency targets to rehabilitate degraded land by establishing 13,000km of shelterbelt, 250,000 hectares of woodlots, and 250,000 hectares of community orchards among the affected states.
“This is to boost agricultural production and to improve the livelihoods of about 20 million people by 2030.
“The agency has restored degraded lands by establishing 389.46 km of shelterbelt, 264.7 hectares of woodlots and 250.5 hectares of community orchards.
“The NAGGW has also trained about 500 farmers on farm natural regeneration projects and many more activities that impact the lives of those communities,’’ he said.
He also mentioned some of the challenges faced by the agency as insecurity, vandalism of field investments, poor community participation, lack of financial support from states and weak institutional capacity at all levels.
The Senior Advisor, Disaster Risk Reduction, UNEP Country Representative, Dr Karen Sud-Rieux said that the UNEP would continue to support the agency by providing technical assistance.
“The UNEP will continue to support the agency to ensure that degraded lands are restored, by setting up various programmes to improve the agency in the capacity building,” Sud-Rieux said.
Also, Dr Oluseyi Fabiyi, from Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), raised concerns by highlighting some challenges.
“Some of the challenges faced in the restoration of degraded lands is that some areas are sandy and rocky, and such areas cannot be restored because the nature of the areas,’’ he said.
The programme was organised by the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW) in collaboration with the UN Environment Programme.
