By Charles Abere
Prof. Oladapo Akinyemi, the Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), says afforestation is a viable solution to the looming disaster of climate change.
Akinyemi stated this while addressing a team of journalists in his office in Ibadan.
The Professor noted that human activity had caused great earth degradations and other environmental challenges. Adding that the long warnings through climate change, erosion and depletion of the protective ozone layer leading to disasters and human tragedies have been coming close to reality.
“Global warming and its consequences, climate change, must be checked. Degradation of the land, pollution of oceans and inland water bodies, and the air, are now taking their toll.
“Protecting the world’s forests should therefore be a priority because they absorb carbon dioxide, help generate rainfall and purify water sources. So, the day trees cease to exist will mark the end of human existence,” the director said.
The don disclosed that FRIN has been working assiduously to ensure availability of vigorous tree species that could be used to check desertification, erosion and other climate challenges.
“Our Department of Sustainable Forest Management has been saddled with the responsibility of ensuring an abundance of both indigenous and exotic tree species which can be used for afforestation programmes in the country.
“Forestry has linkage with climate change and, to address this, FRIN has been involving itself in tree-planting across the country, raising seedlings for governments and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), as well as the promotion of sensitisation programmes on afforestation in Nigeria,” he said.