Group tasks governments on environmental sustainability

The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has charged governments at all levels to embrace proactive measures towards the protection and revival of ecosystems for the benefit of man and nature.

Its Executive Director, Dr. Godwin Uyi Ojo, who spoke in Benin City at an event on the sidelines of the World Environmental Day, urged urgent development of a national 10-year Ecosystem Restoration Roadmap, set targets and timelines in consonance with the United Nations’ (UN) plans.

Speaking on the theme: A State of Environmental Emergency For Ecosystem Restoration, Ojo said the topic captured in the acronym of SEER, was informed by the need for national environmental emergency to raise awareness and restore living in harmony with nature.

While stressing the need to embark on some radical and deep transformation in global production and consumption patterns, he said: “It requires concerted actions at local, national and international levels focused on a pragmatic system change towards a sustainable development pathway before it is too late.”

“For decades, scientific evidence shows that the impacts and pressures of our productive activities related to our addictive dependence on mining and fossil fuels extraction, extensive livestock farming, industrial agriculture, gigantic infrastructure, fisheries, forestry hence these harmful activities require a roll back.”

Enumerating the benefits of ecosystem restoration, he added that restoring the ecosystem would protect and improve the livelihoods of millions of people and maintain the earth’s biological diversity.

“Healthier ecosystems enhance richer biodiversity, yielding greater benefits such as more fertile soils, bigger yields of timber and fish. Man depend on biodiversity for food, water, energy, medicine, clothes, building and construction materials and enhanced capacity to store greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,” he said.

Ojo pointed out that a roadmap toward identifying and setting targets and indicators to measuring Nigeria’s commitment to the UN’s Decades of Ecosystem Restoration was urgently required.

He added that government, corporations and relevant agencies should show their SEER goals and how they intend to slow down deforestation in the next decade.