By Mashe Umaru Gwamna
President Muhammadu Buhari said Nigeria is focusing on sustainable land management actions that emphasizes on ecosystem restoration, recovery and conservation of land and biodiversity, socio-economic development activities, adaptation and resilience to climate change.
Buhari made the disclosure at the flag -off National Tree Planting Campaign on the margin of the 8th Ordinary session of the Council of Minister of Pan African Agency of the Great Green Wall(PANGGW),meeting in Abuja, recently.
He said the commitment of every nation is indeed required to meet up the deadline of UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Agenda 2021 – 2030.
He said “Nigeria believes that protecting our planet and its biodiversity and climate are essential to our collective survival.
“ For this purpose, we are working on a transition to low carbon emission economy, consistent with achieving the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
“The impact of climate change is already with us in Nigeria and indeed in Africa, manifesting in various ways: conflicts trigger; food insecurity, drying up of lakes, loss of livelihood and youth migration among others. The trend is the same in many other countries that are threatened by forest fires, rising sea levels, drought and desertification,”he said.
He revealed that,”We are especially facing a receding Lake Chad with all its attendant benefits-fisheries, dry season farming and all other associated value chain etc all receding due to climate change and conflict factors.
“In these circumstances, we intend to build a climate-resilient economy that effectively aligns with the SDGs and that has great potentials to unlocking the full opportunities in different sectors of the economy, while protecting the resources for present and future generations.
“I know, in several ways, this is also a familiar story in many countries.”
The president commended the current initiatives by the international technical and financial partners/institutions for pledging financial resources to support the implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative.
He explained that, the early disbursement of the pledged resources without stringent conditionalities would indeed see the transformation of our degraded ecosystems.
“I therefore, in my capacity as the President of the Conference of Heads of States and Government of Member States, direct the Honourable Minister of Finance of Nigeria to lead the Initiative to access the funds pledged by our Partners under the Great Green Wall Accelerator. “TheMinister should take appropriate States in line with the understanding we had at the Abidjan side meeting held on 9th May, 2022”, Buhari said.
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