The federal government in collaboration with the Private sector and development partners at the just concluded fifteenth session of Conference of Parties of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) have begun strategising suitable financing mechanism to revitalize degraded land in the country.
The Federal Ministry of Environment in partnership with Fundactón Agreste and with the support of Prométhée and the “Kollektiv” consortium held a side event at CoP 15 with the theme “Scaling up degraded lands revitalization through large-scale Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) bankable investments and tracking progress on the ground from space”
The meeting which has in attendance officials from Federal Ministry of Environment UNCCD, FAD, Private sector players, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) Civil Society, among others.
The Minister of state for environment Sharon Ikeazor noted that Nigeria is among the Great Green Wall countries (GGW) working towards building a wall of trees to stop the advancement of Sahara desert Southward adding that to achieve this the country pledged to restoring 4million hectares of landscape before 2030, and several regeneration project are ongoing both at the national and subnational level.
She stressed that to achieve objectives of the GGW, investment by the government and the private sector in large scale bankable project is critical saying that is why government is partnering with the private sector, NGOs to facilitate the restoration effort in the country.
Ikeazor said “To achieve LDM and meet Nigeria’s commitment to GGW objectives investment in large scale bankable project by government and the private sector is critical. Which is why the government is involving the private sector and NGOs to facilities the restoration efforts. The funds required ifor the restoration is huge hence we need to exploit different funding sources, government cannot do it alone.”
She however, acknowledged Green Sahara Farms and other private companies for their participation in ensuring government mobilize funds for the large scale restoration activities and effort to raise awareness on available digital tools for monitoring of progress on the restoration program on ground from space .
The Managing Director of GSF Suleiman Dikwa during the first panel discussion on “MEANS to achieve the GGW Acceleration” stressed the need for more awareness on the GGW in the Sahel region and the need to bring in business models that are suitable for the rural dwellers.