… talks Sustainable Forestry Management
… assures huge investment in plantation agriculture
Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, joined participants drawn from across the globe at the Africa’s maiden top-level global forest conference recently held in Accra to call on African governments to reverse the worrying trend of deforestation on the continent.
The governor spoke at the Tropical Forests Alliance (TFA) 2020 General Assembly in Ghana, where it was revealed that between 2010 and 2015, Africa recorded the highest net annual loss of forests.
This is against the backdrop of the constitution of the 16-member forestry advisory committee to streamline the management of its forestry assets and structure the state’s forestry commission.
Obaseki said that the state was developing robust forestry management structures to ensure that the its biodiversity is conserved even as oil palm plantations expand their operations.
“We have provided the enabling environment for the expansion of oil palm plantations in the state. This was done in line with extant international regulations on plantation agriculture. This is for the benefit of the people of Edo State,” he told the global audience.
Director, Tropical Forest Alliance for 2020, Marco Albani, called on government to invest in agro-forestry, which involves the incorporation of tree cultivation in the agricultural process.
Pro forest is in collaboration with the TFA and a number of national and sub-national governments to rally support for the “reduction of rampant destruction of forests and find ways to generate better revenue from it.”
Dr Moses Ama, of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+), Nigeria, stressed “that even though a variety of landscape and jurisdictional initiatives were being developed towards protecting forests, they overlap considerably in their aims and objectives.”
He noted that the REDD+ was “developed within the UNFCCC negotiations to mitigate climate change and provide performance-based payments for the protection of forests that would otherwise be cleared.”
