By Chuks Oyema-Aziken
Environmentalists have raised alarm that climate change could lead to severe famine in the country.
The call was made at the 1st Edition of the Nigeria Socio-Ecological Alternatives Convergence in Abuja on Thursday.
The event hosted by Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) brought together frontline communities, civil society, development actors, and governments.
In his welcome address, Director, HOMEF, Dr. Nnimmo Bassey, said the country’s natural habitat faces a turning point due to the worsening effects of human-caused climate change and biodiversity loss occasioned by destructive extraction of natural resources.
Bassey said “Nigeria’s forest cover has drastically reduced from about 40% in the 1960s to less than 10%. With the increasing spate of deforestation, the scenario is much worse today.
“Deforestation threatens biodiversity, disrupt community livelihoods, threaten wildlife and contributes to climate change.
“Similar ecological threats are manifest everywhere in the country; from the ecological catastrophe of oil and gas extraction in the Niger Delta that has reduced the region to the one of the most polluted places in the world, to the rising impacts of solid mineral extraction that is polluting lands and water at an unbelievable rate, Nigeria is one huge ecological time bomb.
“It is imperative that we address these pressing ecological crises that Nigeria faces. We must take deliberate, fundamental, and radical action to mitigate the evident and growing consequences of the crises.
“The Nigeria Socio Ecological Alternatives Convergence has been co-created with civil society organizations, frontline communities, activists and academics as a space for thinking, planning and acting to drive an alternative ecological blueprint for Nigeria- an alternative ecological approach that respects the right of mother earth, and protects the planet and its people.”
Also, Chairman, Board of Nigerian Environmental Sudden Action Team, Prof Chinedum Nwajiuba, complained that farmers have lost trillions of naira, as a result of unpredictability of the rains, caused by climate change.
He said “The challenges are real. We all feel it. One of the effects of climate change is that farmers now have become confused as result of no-pattern.
“You cannot really come out and say rain is going to fall now or later. Sometimes, the rain does not start when it should fall. What happened last year is not what is happening today.
“One of our weakest parts as a country is the lack of data. So, what we do as a country is estimate where we can aggregate our findings. So, there are losses of agricultural produce as a result of climate change and it is in trillions, factoring current exchange rate,” he said.
