News

November 9, 2023

NCCC warns against Southeast deforestation, provides alternative to firewood

NCCC warns against Southeast deforestation, provides alternative to firewood

By Dennis Agbo

The National Council on Climate Change, NCCC, has warned against the dangers of deforestation of the environment for the purposes of firewood and timber, cautioning against such dangers in the south east region with peculiar porous soil texture.

The council disclosed that it was the practice of tree failings that was majorly responsible for the degradation of the environment in the south east, escalating to erosions and deep gullies that make substantial parts of the region uninhabitable.

Director General of NCCC, Salisus Dahiru made the disclosure during a sensitization programme on the Atmosfair Save80 clean Cookstoves, in Enugu, on Wednesday.

Dahiru stated that the eco-friendly Save80 stove was one of the means of saving the trees from deforestation and warding off climate change from the environment.

According to Dahiru, “Climate change is a situation whereby today the weather is no longer predictable. What we used to know about rainfall, time for planting, time for harvesting are no longer the same. You can have too much rainfall at the wrong time or too little rainfall at a time you are expecting rainfall to be plenty.

“We are aware that one of the major problems associated with too much rainfall in Enugu and indeed in the south east is the issue of gully erosion, and this gully erosion is as a result of the failing down of trees, clearing of bushes which makes the type of fragile soil in Enugu to be easily washed away with rainfall.

“Trees and grasses help to prevent the soil from being washed away and so once we clear the trees, we expose the soil for it to be easily washed away. Why do we clear the trees? It’s either we want to clear for farm land, but more importantly, what we’re using this forest for is clearing them to get firewood for cooking.

“So this stove is here to help conserve the forest by reducing the amount of firewood we’re using for cooking, reducing it by nothing less than 80 percent. You know that in examinations 50 percent is a pass mark and this stove has 80 percent effectiveness and you know that 80 percent already A, that’s excellent!”

The NCCC DG emphasized that one of the means of reducing the rate of degradation and the negative impact of issues such as gully erosion, flooding, draught, crop failure was to reduce the amount of deforestation that the citizens embark upon and embrace alternative sources of energy such as the new product stove.