Deforestation

The government of Cross River state has resumed clearing precious rainforest land as part of the construction of the superhighway. While some community members are losing their forest and properties, others are advocating for their right to their land. Individuals and members of civil society stand in solidarity with communities in the face of the continued works.

Jigawa State is losing over 300 trees a day for bakery activities alone: 1 tree is fired per bakery per day to bake the ubiquitous bread, which has become the staple food for many Nigerians on low incomes. With more efficient bakery ovens, this loss could be reduced by 80 per cent, and the bakers would save money on their fire wood as well. Renewable Energy entrepreneurs Hannah Kabir and Happy Amos have installed 3 such ovens in Jigawa State, as pilot cases.

Millions of trees are fired and wasted under Nigerian cooking pots as many women still cook on three-stone fires. Cooking with fire wood has destroyed large sways of Nigerian forest cover, which is under threat of extinction today. Mallam Adamu Mbar Yelwa is a 78 year old citizen of Taraba state. He remembers the days when clouds were hanging low over Yelwa forests, providing the people of the area with fresh air and lots of animals. Watch Video

It’s what people say when they invite someone to share their meal: in Nigeria, you ‘chop’ food as you dig your fingers into some delicious pounded yam with egusi stew. Alas, most Nigerians are not aware that by eating food, they usually chop down trees, too. As most Nigerian meals are still prepared on the traditional three-stone fire, the nation’s forest cover has been reduced to 5 per cent of its original size. Environmental journalist Ugochi Anyaka on Nigeria’s deforestation crisis..

Nigeria’s food security situation is characterised by the threat of hunger and poverty, which confronts the 69 percent of the population that lives on less than Naira 100 (US$ 0.7) per day.Smallholder farmers account for 80 percent of all farm holdings, but crop yields are far below potentials. This is due to inadequate access to and low uptake of high quality seeds and inefficient production systems, leading to regular shortfalls in production.

As women and men have different adaptive and mitigative capabilities, the financing instruments and mechanisms committed to climate change activities in mitigation and adaption need to take these gender-differentiated impacts into account in funds design and operationalization as well as concrete project financing.

Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time with widespread implications for the earth’s ecosystems and human development across sectors. Although gender equality and women’s empowerment are acknowledged pre-requisites for sustainable development, climate change policies neglect these important issues. The Heinrich Böll Foundation commissioned this study to assess the impact of climate change on local communities from a gender perspective as well as make recommendation on how to combat the local consequences (adaptation measures) using the relevant local institutions/agents which also needed to be identified. Download publication (PDF, 71 pages, 2.9 MB)