Land Degradation

Indonesian forest fire Indonesia has engaged aircraft, troops and volunteers to curb the fire that has razed forest and plantation areas in several regencies in Sumatra’s Riau province, a local official said on Tuesday, February 26, 2019. Head of Provincial Disaster Mitigation Office, Edwar Sanger, said areas gutted by fire since January has reached 1,136 hectares. Sanger said most of ...

The Indonesian military deployed an aircraft to create artificial rain on Monday, February 25, 2019 as thick smog, caused by forest fires, forced schools to close on Sumatra Island, officials said. Indonesian forest fire “The plane can carry tons of salt to be used in cloud-seeding,’’ said Edwar Sanger, the Head of the Civil Protection Agency in Riau province on ...

Gov. Godwin Obaseki of Edo State has urged communities in the state to always raise alarm when erosion and other forms of natural disasters threaten their environment. Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State The governor said this during the official inauguration and inspection of remediation work on Ewu and Ibore gully erosion sites in Esan Central Local Government Area of ...

Minister of Environment, Alhaji Suleiman Zarma, says there is an urgent need to recover and conserve the country’s land as 924,000 square metres is lost to degradation daily, while the population keeps growing. Alhaji Suleiman Hassan Zarma, Minister of Environment Zarma said this in a statement issued by Mrs Pauline Sule, the Head of the Press and Public Relations Unit, National Agency for ...

To complement the Ogoni clean-up process, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) and its allies at the local, national and international levels, on Wednesday, February 6, 2019 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State launched some 100 Community Independent Monitors (CIM) to provide qualitative and scientific progress reports on the state of the clean-up process. Inauguration of the Community ...

The UN Refugee Agency in Uganda says it plans to plant 20 million trees in 2019 to plug the deforestation by Refugees in the East African Country. Tree planting Joel Boutroue, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Uganda, on Wednesday, February 6, 2019 told reporters that the refugees hosted by Uganda have caused massive deforestation, ...

The world has been trying for decades to curb deforestation but continues to fail. Forests are still being cleared at high rates despite efforts by forested and supportive countries alike. A new study by researchers has found that there is no “one size fits all” solution: every agent of deforestation is different and requires specialised efforts to reduce their impact. Deforestation in ...

Reviving damaged lands and the livelihoods of people affected by desertification, land degradation and drought can be possible by 2030, according to participants who attended the intergovernmental committee that reviews the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary, UNCCD. Her term as head of the Convention ends February 2019 Participants at the 17th Committee to ...

Some stakeholders have called for holistic approach that will hasten the clean-up of Ogoni land and the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Dr Marvin Dekil, National Project Coordinator, Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) They made the call in a communique issued on Wednesday, January 30, 2019 in Abuja at the end of a “High Level Advocacy Workshop on the Clean-up of ...

An environmentalist, Chief Philip Asiodu, has decried the continuous declining of the Nigeria’s forest cover. NCF President, Izoma Philip Asiodu Asiodu told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Thursday, January 31, 2019 that the country’s forest cover was declining rapidly to at least less than four per cent. According to him, some things need to be done ...