By Leonard Okachie
The Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises for the Niger-Delta(LIFE-ND), has distributed 450 stands of different varieties of improved tree species to Abayi Ohanze Community of Abia.
The economic trees were distributed to about eight kindreds that make up the community, in Obingwa Local Government Area, to mitigate the impact of climate change.
Some of the varieties included coconut, mango, cashew, sweet orange, bitter kola, avagado pea, native pea, guava as well as non-fruit trees such as iroko, neem, flame of the forest and others.
Abia Coordinator, LIFE-ND, Dr Uchenna Onyeizu, said that initiative was in celebration of World Environment Day, marked on June 5.
He said that the project was very sensitive to its environment because its activity had to do with agricultural development.
According to him, agriculture happens to be one of the highest contributions to climate change.
He explained that the project had mainstreamed environment and climate change as a component of its intervention activities.
“We have decided that we are going to distribute not less than 5000 economic trees across the 100 communities in the state that we work on.
“The global community also recognises that we are actually tending towards having a high temperature being experienced globally.
“Of course, the target of having an average temperature of 1.5 Celsius across the world is what we want to achieve,” he said.
Mr Chidozie Kanu, Abia LIFE-ND Climate Change Specialist, said that it was a community-based tree planting campaign to support the mitigation of climate change.
He explained that members of the community at different levels were engaged and the trees handed over to them.
“We have over 40 stands of each of the trees supplied and the choice of the species was made by the community after our engagements and consultations with them,” he said.
Mr Amadi Iwuala, the immediate past Chairman, Abayi Ohanze Community Development Union, expressed gratitude to the project for the tree donation.
He said that the project used the opportunity to sensitise the large number of community members present, on the benefit of planting trees within their immediate environments.
“We will make sure that these economic trees given to us are nurtured and we will plant more from these once they start producing fruits,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that LIFE-ND is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) with support from the Federal Government and the participating states, including Abia, to boost food production in Niger-Delta. (NAN)
