Sustainability Week: Foundation expresses commitment to regreening

The Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), said it remains committed to regreening 25 percent of the country’s environment by 2047.

A representative of the Foundation, Emmanuel Owan, reiterated this in Calabar on Saturday.

The disclosure was made during a tree-planting exercise to commemorate this year’s Sustainability Week, which theme is: “Climate, Energy & Waste, Biodiversity, Water and Air”.

According to Owan, the exercise which was conducted at the Federal Government Girls College (FGGC) and the Murtala Mohammed Highway in Calabar, is aimed at making the environment better.

Owan noted that the environment has been degraded, hence the need for urgent action to mitigate the impact of climate change.

He said the NCF, having seen the need to correct this, has been working with other partners, corporate organisations, individuals and government at the national and sub-national levels.

Owan noted that the 2023 Sustainability Week tree-planting exercise was sponsored by First Bank Nigeria.

“The environment has been seriously degraded and this has affected the people.

“We are not just into community planting, we are doing community planting and planting at state and national parks and we have planted millions of trees since inception,” he stated.

Director, Climate Change and Waste Management of the state Ministry of Environment, Cross River, Njiah Iyamba, commended NCF for its effort to ensure a better environment for the people.

Iyamba said the state has now made it a policy to plant five million trees each year as part of efforts to regenerate its forests.

The director said that the importance of tree planting in the city goes beyond providing aesthetics to erosion control and climate change mitigation.

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“It also serves as a windbreaker, provides shade for the people and also serves as a carbon sink,” he stated.

The representative of First Bank Nigeria, Emmanuel Ogbeche, said that as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the organisation would always invest in anything that would promote a better and healthier society.