Climate change - Harnessing Nigeria's forestry potentials to tackle climate change. Severe weather conditions are manifesting in various facet of our national life and scientists have classified most of them as impacts of climate change. These conditions include flooding in both southern and northern part of the country, desertification and sand dunes in the north, spread of infectious and communication diseases in the country as well as acute water scarcity in some part of the country.

The Minister of Environment, Mrs Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia recently acknowledged the damaging impact of climate change on various sectors of the Nigerian economy and concluded that urgent steps were needed to enable the country overcome the threat.

Globally, measures adopted to tackle the impact of climate change placed a lot of emphasis on the cultivation of forest where there are not available and conservation of forest where there are present.

Forest according to scientists serves as a carbon sink, meaning it has the potentials of collecting from the atmosphere carbon dioxide, one of the lead gases driving climate change.

This knowledge was behind various initiatives across the global that seek to increase the world's forest stock through the planting of more trees. Late Professor Wangari Mataai, a Nobel laureate led the United Nation backed plant a billion tree campaign launched at the 2006 climate change conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

The campaign achieved tremendous success as it also brought to the fore the need to involve forest based communities in the management and protection of the forest reserves.

In Nigeria, efforts to restock the forests or plant new trees had come a long way. The federal government had in the last decade set aside a day each year as tree planting day and considering the huge investment of government in the exercise in the last decade it would be expected that the nation's forest coverage would have increased significantly.

But the reserve is the case as statistics from the ministry of environment shows that Nigeria was losing much of its forest reserve as compared to the 1960 levels.

Documents from the federal ministry of environment showed that Nigeria's total forest coverage which was 10 per cent at the end of the British colonial rule in 1960 had reduced drastically to about 6 per cent by 2010.

Internationally, the United Nations through the Food and Agriculture Organisation said that having 10 per cent was not good enough for any country, thereby setting 25 percent as the minimum acceptable forest coverage for any country.

Ghana currently has 32 percent forest coverage and Liberia has over 60 percent coverage.

Recently the federal government started the Presidential Imitative on Afforestation to raise over 37 million tree seedlings for free distribution to Nigerians.

The initiative which is funded from the ecological fund office is on course with some states raising more than the targeted one million seedlings per state.

The Minister of Environment, Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia said recently that government was determined to increase the forest coverage from the current 6 per cent to 10 per cent by 2015. Her optimism was based on the fact the seedlings from the Presidential Initiatives on Afforestation which already had over 37 million seedlings would form bulk of the renewed efforts to boost the forest coverage.

Already, the Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria was awarded the Sultan Quaboos Prize for Environmental Preservation 2011, administered through UNESCO, at a just concluded World Science Forum in Budapest.

The award recognises contribution to the preservation of the environment, especially though scientific research, education, training and awareness-raising; as well as through establishing and managing protected nature areas.

The prize jury recommended the institute for its contributions to forest and environmental management, biodiversity conservation, sustainable food production for food security and provision of industrial raw materials and employment opportunities.

The institute, located in Ibadan, is the only forestry research institute in the country. It has ten stations and four training colleges.

Through its research it has helped with the adoption of various indigenous and exotic tree species for planting them, for a variety of purposes, throughout the country, and it has helped discover how to regenerate exploited forests. Its research also helped develop processes for turning wood waste into useful products; jatropha seeds for biofuels; and technologies against desertification and soil erosion.

Also, the United Nations Reducing Emission for Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) recognised Nigeria's impressive commitment to protect and conserve its forest stock by awarding Nigeria a $4 million grant to execute the REDD+ programme in Nigeria.

The Minister of Environment, Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia said recently that Nigeria was working hard to reduce its emission as well as take advantages of various opportunities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Investing in forestry is one area the minister's aspiration can be achieved.

A well cultivated, conserve and protected forest is an asset according to the United Nations, already the potentials for Nigeria in forestry look rosy so therefore the need for government to strengthen its policy implementation and monitoring strategies as it relates to forestry cannot be over emphasised.

Alex Abutu

Daily Trust/29/12/2011