On Wednesday, Nigeria joined the rest of the global community to mark this year’s World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (WDCD), being the 26th anniversary of the celebration. The Day is observed annually to promote public awareness of international efforts to combat desertification and drought. It also provides a unique moment to remind everyone that land degradation neutrality is achievable through problem-solving, strong community involvement and synergy at all levels.
The theme for the 2020 commemoration is “Food. Feed. Fibre”. The triple F is intended to bring into focus the link between consumption and land especially as the negative activities and the punishing phenomenon combine to put human survival and the environment under severe pressure.
In 1994, the United Nations General Assembly set aside June 17 every year as the Day to remind the nations of the world on the imperative of putting the twin evils of desertification and drought in check in countries experiencing the scourge particularly in Africa.
According to available statistics, about 250m people are directly affected by desertification, while about one billion others are at risk in as many as 100 countries. By 2045, about 1.8bn people will also experience absolute water scarcity and two-thirds of the world will be living under water-stressed condition as a result of desertification and drought rampage.
Nigeria has its own fair share of the scourge with the grave consequences of famine, forced migration, famine, poverty, unemployment and criminality.
Many concerned Nigerians and environmentalists have lamented over the disturbing state of affairs intended to serve reminders to the relevant authorities of the nagging problem that has been plaguing about 11 states in northern Nigeria which fall within the Sudano-Sahelian zone creeping southwards at a speed of 48 kilometres per annum. The problem of desertification is very severe and threatening, impacting negatively on the lives and social-economic activities of the people of the affected areas.
The causes of desertification in the north, particularly North-east and North-west, can be traced to two main factors which are natural and anthropogenic. In the natural factor, their geographic location at a point above latitude 120 north parallel helped in no small way to expose the zones to the menace of desertification and other agents of land degradation. This problem is further exacerbated by climatic vagaries brought about by the global climate change phenomenon which results in continuous rainfall deficit to the areas, thereby prolonging the dry season which, in many cases, culminates in severe drought.
Activities such as poor land use practice, deforestation, bush burning overgrazing and over-exploitation of the zones’ scanty forest resources has led to the rapid depletion of the scanty vegetation cover, thereby predisposing the soil to degradation by water or wind.
Government at all levels must evolve measures such as afforestation and re-afforestation activities in order to restore the forests and vegetation cover of the affected states which had been depleted via massive tree-felling activities. This can be achieved through production and distribution of seedlings to individuals, communities, schools and colleges, NGOs and other organisations for planting activities to encourage tree-planting culture among the people.
Also, lots of shelter-belt plantations, farm forestry models, natural vegetation regeneration, oases rehabilitation programmes, establishment of gum Arabic plantations, establishment of orchards and homestead gardens at various levels and communities affected by desertification could serve as methods of checking the menace.
In 2012, the immediate past administration approved the immediate implementation of the Great Green Wall Programme as a deliberate policy to combat desert encroachment in Nigeria, particularly in the northern part of the country.
The programme aims at planting more than 1,500 new trees from Maiduguri in Borno state to Birnin-Kebbi in Kebbi state, a distance of more than 1, 000 kilometres. Observers noted that the initiative would boost efforts at tackling the growing menace of deforestation and desertification in the country.
To guarantee its effective implementation, it was expected that the programme would be jointly funded by the three tiers of government, stakeholders, development partners, the private sector and civil society organisations on mutually agreed terms under the supervision of the National Council on Shelterbelt and Afforestation, with an implementation unit set up within the Federal Ministry of Environment to coordinate the project’s execution.
It is, however, worrisome that about seven or so years down the road, the Great Green Wall has remained pregnable by what some experts have described as the earth’s malignant cancer which is steadily consuming more than 350,000 sq. km of its forest landmass each year.
Environmentalists, however, insist that for the Great Green Wall programme to be more meaningful, the citizens ought to be actively mobilised to imbibe the culture of tree-planting and tree-nurturing, stressing that concerted efforts should also be geared towards the conservation of the ecosystem.
Nonetheless, the annual World Day rituals would only make meaning if our governments take the bull by the horns and confront this menace with all the seriousness required. It is the only way to add action to the commemoration if, indeed, we are truly committed to reverse the march to hunger and away from degradation of nature’s greatest asset to mankind – land.
