By Mohammed Mohammed
The Minister of Environment, Dr. Mohammed Abubakar on Thursday advocated for the restoration, conservatism and protection of the ecosystem
biodiversity to address COVID-19 and other future pandemics.
The Minister who spoke in Abuja on Thursday at the World Environment Day (WED), said it is unfortunate that the world is celebrating the WED amidst the ravaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said it is for this reason that the United Nations deem it fit to address biodiversity with the theme:
Time for Nature, with a focus on its role in providing the essential infrastructure that supports life on earth and human development.
According to him, over one million plant and animal species risk extinction due to human activities, explaining that this is a call to action to combat the accelerating species loss and degradation of nature.
He said the theme is very appropriate, considering the fact that researchers and scientist have established COVID-19 to be zoonotic.
He added that it is also an opportunity to more fully incorporate nature-based solutions into global climate action, especially as commemorating the day has become a powerful platform to accelerate, amplify and engage people, communities and governments around the world to take action on critical environmental challenges facing the planet.
Unfortunately, he said the pandemic has impacted the traditional activities such as tree-planting and public workshops which were undertaken to celebrate the day in the past and has necessitated new approaches in advocacy and communication.
In this regard, the ministry is using an alternative online platform for delivering the advocacy for this years WED, he added.
According to the Minister, biodiversity is the foundation for life and there are myriads of benefits amongst which are: livelihoods and sustainable development, improvement and delivery of food security, growth, increase in job opportunity, strengthening of global healthcare support systems.
He aded that the ecosystem is the baseline that holds all of these together, adding that human interaction with the ecosystem must therefore remain balanced, otherwise we risk disrupting nature with their consequence as we are seeing with the COVID 19 pandemic.
He said: “Our climate, physical environment and vegetation zones in Nigeria endow our country with a very diverse ecosystem, species of fauna and flora.
“Our forests in Nigeria is currently estimated to extend to around 9.6 million hectares, this we are expanding with added efforts of the Great Green Wall, REDD+ and the Green Bonds supported afforestation Projects amongst several others.
From all this, we must ensure that Post COVID recovery is tied in with our Climate actions and Sustainable Development Goals.
He said government is fully committed to the global biodiversity framework under the convention on biological diversity, and Nigeria is leading the ECOWAS Member-States on post 2020 biodiversity frame work.
It is as a result of this commitment that at the 74th UN General Assembly in New York, President Mohammad Buhari made a commitment to plant 25 million trees to mitigate the effects of Climate Change in Nigeria.
This process is being driven by the Ministry of Environment and the agencies under the ministry like the National Great Green Wall Agency.
As part of on-going efforts to meet the Presidents directives on planting of 25 million trees and as a symbolic gesture to commemorate the 2020 WED, I will be in Kaduna tomorrow Friday, where I will hand over 1 million seedlings to the Kaduna State Government.
It is our ardent prayer and hope that the seedlings would be properly utilized to mitigate the effect of biodiversity, climate change and improve on our natural habitats.