In a national drive to ensure that no one is left behind, a coalition of civil society organizations, earlier today, hosted the Difa Community in Yamaltu/Deba Local Government Area of Gombe State, to a workshop on mitigating carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality.
The coalition, made up of three civil society organizations including the International Climate Change Development Initiative (ICCDI), Centre for 21st Century Issues (C21ST), and Connected Advocacy (CA) have over the last few weeks been engaged in a nationwide campaign to sensitize members of rural communities on net-zero carbon emission.
Tagged ‘Raising Awareness on Net Zero in Nigeria”, the campaign, incidentally also the theme of the workshop, seeks to educate members of rural communities across Nigeria on what Net Zero is all about; as well as measures to take to mitigate against carbon emissions and climate change.
Speaking at the one-day event, the convener of the event, Mr Olumide Idowu of ICCDI, said that rural dwellers were critical stakeholders in an effort to mitigate climate change.
Mr Idowu, who is the Executive Director of ICCDI, said tackling climate change was an urgent challenge that required the collective efforts of all stakeholders.
He said if progress must be recorded towards achieving the net-zero carbon emission target, the campaign must ensure that no one was left behind, hence the reason the CSOs took the awareness to Difa which is a rural settlement.
Commending the Difa community for showing concern on issues of climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions, Olumide disclosed that the community now has a better understanding on what Net-zero entails.
“The engagement with the community has helped us to identify the environmental and climate change problems that the Difa community has been facing; especially those related to biodiversity, afforestation and impact on the society”
“And since we started this conversation, we have been able to gather lots of information and also understand that net-zero conversation is what they are doing daily in their environments.
Addressing the community members, Mr Loknan Loknap, the Enforcement Officer, the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), Gombe State appealed to the community to take the issues of emission reduction seriously.
Loknap also tasked the community to ensure proper waste management while paying more attention to tree planting.
Also speaking, Mr Dauda Umar, an Account officer of Jewel Environmental Initiative, an environmental non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Gombe State commended the Difa community for embracing the tree-planting initiative of the state government.
Umar pledged to provide more tree seedlings to the community to encourage them to plant more trees as part of his organisation’s efforts at combating desertification in the state.
Mr Musa Mohammed, the chairman of Difa Community Development Association commended the CSOs for coming to sensitise them on issues of climate change, adding that the campaign was an “eye-opener” to many of them.
Mohammed assured that the campaign would be taken down to the members of the community towards getting the support of more persons in the community.
Participants at the workshop variously appealed to the government and all stakeholders to intensify efforts towards raising awareness about emission reductions and climate change mitigation in Nigeria.
The RANTZ Nigeria Net-zero campaign was planned on a regional sensitization structure with six states pinned down for the Awareness Drive. Kaduna, Abuja, Lagos, Enugu and Edo states have been visited to raise awareness on the net-zero campaign with Gombe State as the last state.