Environmental Culture: Group advocates tree planting to halt climate change

In its bid to address the adverse effect of climate change in the country, a civil society group under the aegis of Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation, GIFSEP, has called for tree planting in schools in the Federal Capital Territory.

According to environmentalists, one of the practical ways to combat climate change is to plant more trees in order to take more carbon out of the atmosphere, especially, when the trees are planted in the right places.

A representative from the Federal Ministry of Environment Mr. Adelusi Kayode, who supervised the planting of some of the trees in Government Science Technical College, Area 3 Garki Abuja‎, said he was optimistic that the launch of the project will help in the campaign for tree planting culture.

“Trees for Schools” would help to create in the minds of the students the need for environmental protection.

He said that the Minister of Environment, Mr. Ibrahim Jibrin, whom he represented at the event was in support of the project as part of his efforts to discourage deforestation.

“The minister of environment has taken this as a project to discourage deforestation. There is a task force he established currently on ground to see that as much as tress are been cut, they are planted back.

That is why I am here to represent him because to be successful with this project, we must start with the youths.

“This is one of the areas we are serious with, getting the children aware of the disadvantages of deforestation. We are already in partnership with the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, we are also partnering with the students who are the leaders of tomorrow” Kayode added.

On her part, a representative of the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme, Mrs. Ibironke Olubamise noted that the act of planting trees was a way of catching them young in the fight against negative impact of climate change.

She said that the programme will go a long way in passing the message across to the coming generation. “We see that it is important to bring this project to the youths who we know have energetic brain to think very fast.

We started this ecoclub project with just ten schools but now we have recorded 15 schools. We are not just stopping here, we intend to spread it across other schools” she added.

Also, the initiator of the project Mr. David Mike Terungwa who blamed the adults for not doing enough, stressed that hence the youths are the major stakeholders, there was need to go back to the schools to engage as well as enlighten them on the importance of environment and environmental protection.

“We feel that the youths have a major stake and we need to catch them young.

That is why we are doing this program, creating awareness establishing environmental clubs in schools where the message can be sent back home and to the society and they can grow up with the knowledge of a better environment unlike we the adults”.