The Director of Forestry at the Federal Ministry of Environment, Osakuade Tolu, has disclosed that the Federal Government has approved the creation of a National Forestry Trust Fund which is expected to improve the afforestation programmes in the country.
Mr Tolu, who disclosed this to Daily Trust in an interview, said with the take off of the fund hopefully before the end of 2018, they would be able to step up on afforestation programme.
According to him, forestry matter in Nigeria, was highly democratic because all the forest reserves belonged to state governments and they were under the purview of the state government except for national parks which are mainly for protective and eco-forest and development purposes.
Speaking on the state of Nigeria’s forest, he said from the inception of the country, it was only able to preserve about 10 per cent of the landmark under forest.
“However, with all development over the years, and with all the investment we are making, instead of going up it is going down because the level of destruction and industrialization outpace our planting regime,” Tolu said.
He said as at 1998 the forest landmark was just five per cent.
He however said they were still waiting for result of an ongoing remote sensing analysis to ascertain the current state of the forest and to know if it has gone beyond five.
“We are hoping that with the coming of the Great Green Wall project and the various activities put in place, we should be able to retain what we have before,” he said.
Speaking on this year’s International Forest Day tagged ‘Forest and Sustainable Cities’, Tolu said it was aimed at creating awareness among people of the importance of forest, trees, landscape and parks to mankind.
He explained that cities where there are long corridors of trees, aside from aesthetics improved the value of properties, saying that they “create micro climate environment in which case you feel the coolness.”
“Statistics also shows that in an environment like that, buildings or houses close to them save 30 per cent of energy need of airconditioning; that means if you need to spend N10,000 on electricity to do your air conditioning, if there are no trees, you will spend less than that because the trees have already cooled the system,” Tolu said.
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