By Leonard Okachie
The Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprise for Niger Delta (LIFE-ND) says it has planted over 3000 stands of economic trees across communities in Abia.
The State Project Coordinator, LIFE-ND, Dr. Uchenna Onyeizu, spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Umuahia on Thursday in commemoration of World Forestry Day, also known as the International Day of Forests.
World Forestry Day is marked every March 21 to raise public awareness about the values, significance, and contributions of forests to balance the life cycle on earth.
He explained that LIFE-ND, as an agribusiness project, had been involved in a lot of activities to mitigate the impact of climate change on the environment.
Onyeizu, who is also the State Chairman of the Nigerian Environmental Society, argued that agriculture was the first human profession to have serious damage to the environment.
According to him, part of the wisdom of the project is to mainstream climate change and the environment.
“And in doing that, we have been able to ensure that most of the things we do have a reduced impact on the environment.
“We have planted over 3000 stands of economic trees across our communities, and in the next two or three weeks we will also push for another 3000.
“We make efforts to ensure that we identify a community member who will help us look after those trees for the next six months, when they must have stabilised,’’ he said.
Onyeizu said the project had also gone towards sensitising the community members on the need for them to engage in selective cutting down of trees.
He said that the project had always encouraged the people to always plant at least two or three trees for every tree they cut.
Also, the Environment and Climate Change Specialist for LIFE-ND, Abia, Mr. Chidozie Kanu, urged individuals to plant a minimum of two trees within the space they found themselves.
He said that LIFE-ND had been involved in tree planting activities and sensitisation in order “to save our environment.”
Kanu said that the core emphasis was to make the beneficiaries and the community stakeholders see the exercise as a way of life.
“Trees purify the air we breathe, control erosion, provide us fruits, add aesthetic value, and give us that ambient climate environment,” he said.
NAN reports that LIFE-ND is a project of the Federal Government in collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The project, which targets youths aged 18 to 35 as well as women-headed households, is designed to solve food insecurity in the nine Niger Delta states.(NAN)
