By Onuwa Lucky Joseph
Despite the hue and cry globally concerning climate change and most Nigerians directly experiencing the at-the-moment horrendous heat situation that threatens to skewer folks alive, there aren’t many people in the country’s rural areas who are heeding the call to convert to clean energy for their cooking needs.
For those who do, it’s usually a hybrid experience, preferring to go with gas sometimes but with firewood and coal most of the time. And these, for reasons not difficult to glean. The older and more traditional individuals prefer to stick with how and what they know to cook with. For others, usually the not so old, it’s the unextinguishable stories about ‘unavoidable’ gas explosions which keep them tethered to their tried and tested firewood.
In the Southern part of Nigeria, the trees tend to wildly reproduce almost as quickly as they’re cut down. And but for the antics of bandit herdsmen who use the trees as cover for their kidnapping and other unwholesome activities, the hard work of mowing down trees from lands that had been left fallow is considered a critical part of the farming season. For the most past, that chore is now considered too dangerous to undertake in many places as many farmers refuse to venture to far from their homesteads to farm.
The tree felling ravage is more evident in the core north and middle belt of the country where the flatland savannahs is easier to see over wide expanses. The trees are being cut down in record numbers and more and more, people, especially women and children, now have to go further and further away from human settlements to get the family supply of firewood. In this mission, they sometimes fall victim to kidnappers who add trauma to the misery of already impoverished people.
It is worse in places where there are individuals and organizations established in the business of selling firewood. The environment stands no chance against their pecuniary onslaught. They defend, stoutly, their right to their legitimate business as long as they do not venture into protected forest areas.
But why people would fell trees rather than use cooking gas? The poverty level is a big reason. At N1,200 base price for a kg of cooking gas, (and with wild price swings from time to time), it’s understandable why rural dwellers, in the main, would opt for a free natural resource which only requires trekking to access rather than the much-hyped alternative, (cooking gas) which costs the kind of good money that’s better deployed elsewhere.
Immediate survival will always take precedence over matters of ‘remote’ future considerations. Despite government and private NGO advocacy on the matter, would be customers will not patronize what they cannot afford. So, some of the things one expects government to do would include:
- Ramp up awareness creation for tree planting and to sustain it on a year-on-year basis as against the annual ceremonial tree planting campaigns that gulp humongous amounts of money whereafter all the trees planted are left to be roasted by the harsh elements before the next year’s tree planting activities.
- Trees planted in certain places can be deemed off limits and with sanctions applicable should loggers venture there.
- Stakeholders at the community level should be tasked the additional remit of policing their environment, not only against indiscriminate tree fellers but also sand dredgers whose activities complement that of free cutters to trigger soil erosion and other depredations on communities.
- Education is a crucial part of any campaign that would sway people from their traditional ways to new ways of doing things, so advocacy should be on an ongoing basis. However, carefully thought-out incentives should be on the table as carrots for those who make the switch.
As is usually the case with matters of this nature, hard work is what it is. Well-coordinated hard work. But it is better done, and in strategic segments than left undone, its place replaced with wishy-washy statements proclaimed ever so often in praise of government’s nonexistent efforts. Nigeria needs its trees, but it is more the work of government to keep them standing than it is that of citizens who see no other way if they must survive.
Fortunately, tree felling for cooking purposes is not considered a significant factor in Nigeria’s struggle with deforestation. Much higher on the list are Shifting Agriculture better known in these parts as Shifting Cultivation and referenced earlier in this article. Urbanization is a big problem as well. Large tracts of virgin land being ‘ravaged’ by real estate developers who see the business potential in Nigeria’s burgeoning population that cannot but be housed as they come of age. Even in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital, many places hitherto designated green areas are seeing their trees mowed down and replaced with structures of steel and bricks.
And according to Alwaleed Philanthropies, whose AI powered reports track climate change issues, wildfire incidents are another big factor messing with Nigeria’s tree cover.
There will be a second part to this write up where we discuss the country’s travail with its forests vis a vis our climate change travails and the efforts the country ought to put in place to stave off what seems an imminent apocalyptic drift.
For now, suffice it to say that government must sufficiently incentivize the people to the dangers of further plunder of their trees because as the trees come down so does the exacerbation of climate reverses that make life tougher for all.
