By Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku
Environmentalists, journalists and stakeholders have weighed in on sustainable development option for reducing and removing carbon from the atmosphere to keep global temperature rise from exceeding 1.5 Celsius.
It was part of the consensus reached by Environmental Rights Action (ERA) and its allies at a meeting of June 8, marking the 2021 World Environment Day with the theme: Ecosystem Restoration, pathways to sustainable development.
The growing consensus is that the most pragmatic and practical way of achieving this is through Ecosystem Restoration. This report examines a crucial step ERA has taken to align with pertinent stakeholders from the University of Benin to restore the ecosystem – an excursion to the UNIBEN botanical garden to plant trees.
If there are about 100 Civil Society Organisations in Nigeria truly committed to pursuing the interest of the ecosystem, the Environmental Rights Action, ERA/Friends of the Earth tops them all.
On Tuesday, June 8, 2021 while celebrating World Environment Day 2021, ERA took just one extra step to demonstrate that commitment by taking journalists and civil society organisations on an excursion to the ecosystem restoration site in the department of Agriculture of the University of Benin.
At first, the ERA meeting started just like any other meeting. It started with a speech by ERA/FoEN executive director and founding member, Dr Godwin Uyi Ojo.
In that speech, Dr Ojo called for a State of Environmental Emergency for Ecosystem Restoration (SEEER), captured in an 8-point agenda, to include a 10-year National Ecosystem Restoration Roadmap NERR; formation of key priorities of ecosystem restoration by Federal, State and local government and a commitment to an energy transition from Nigeria’s addiction to fossil fuels.
In the following roundtable conversation to search for lasting solutions to a dislocated ecosystem, discussants – Stella Ojeme, Christopher Ojeikere, Austin Osakwe and Doris Ogbeifun – were unanimous in their call that the restoration of the ecological system goes beyond being critical of what government has failed to do with the restoration of a dislocated ecological triangle.
What were individuals, CSOs and journalists doing to restore the ecosystem? And it was Professor Gideon Emelue, a forest and wildlife management expert as guest speaker at the ERA meet who was to give a hint as to what the core of the ERA meeting was going to be.
In his lecture, he emphasized that since we all have participated in helping to dislocate the ecological system that nature initially installed, we must work together and make personal contributions to identify and work to conserve some of these degraded ecosystems.
“In that wise, we strongly advocate that a state like Edo should allow local communities to manage the restoration of some of these degraded forest reserves after an enrichment planting exercise may have been carried out by experts,” Prof Emelue said.
According to Prof Emelue, the University of Agriculture has already embarked on such an exercise. Known as an Arboretum, this botanical garden is devoted to only the cultivation of trees, and was initiated in 1992 as an example of how to restore a dislocated ecosystem.
It occupies just about a quarter of a hectare, abounding with lush vegetation comparable to the Osun Groove in Osogbo and the Ogba Zoo in Benin. Trees like Obeche, Iroko, and Cherry abound there, with a gust of air as fresh and an ambience as serene.
According to an ERA leaflet presented at the World Environment Day 2021 event, ecosystem restoration can take many forms including planting of trees, greening cities, cleaning up rivers and hydrocarbon pollution as well as improving land rights and stewardship.
And so in that spirit, journalists and civil society stakeholders partook in a tree planting exercise. Prof Emelue took the lead, followed by Dr Godwin Ojo. Others present assisted in one way or the other like watering the trees planted.
A huge part of the problem associated with ecological restoration is how to communicate ideas like this. How do you convince Nigerians that chopping off trees, for the sake of ‘development’, or using them as an energy source contributes to global warming?
Are there alternatives to firewood? Are there alternatives to fossil fuels? What strategies can be adopted to ensure that everyone could participate, to achieve the UN dream of an Ecosystem restoration from 2021 to 2030?
Working groups at the ERA meeting suggested certain strategies that could help pass the message across. A summary of what these working groups suggested include tasking that government to activate and enforce existing environmental laws, make extra-curricular clubs and societies mandatory in public and private schools in Edo state.
The working groups also suggested that Civil Society groups can undertake advocacy visits to policy makers at all levels of governance and push for environmental obsolete legislation to be reviewed.
The groups asked civil society groups to partner with ERA to build capacity of local people in such a way that reliance on firewood as an energy source can be reduced.
“We would also need to use the media to conduct a massive information, enlightenment campaign to make sure that this effort being put in by ERA on ecological restoration achieves its aim,” one of the participants from one of the working group said during a presentation.
The Environmental Rights Action, ERA/FoEN has been in the vanguard on behalf of the environment since 1993. It is currently being run by one of its founding members Dr Godwin Ojo as executive director.
