UK high commissioner: Nigeria must prioritise tackling deforestation to curb climate emission

Catriona Laing, the British high commissioner to Nigeria, has asked the federal government to prioritise tackling deforestation to curb climate emission.

At the climate change conference in Glasgow, President Muhammadu Buhari announced that Nigeria aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060.

Buhari also acknowledged that climate change is ravaging all regions of Nigeria, promising that the country is committed to tackling its impacts.

Speaking with Arise TV on Friday, Liang pointed at issues around land use and tree-felling as “the single most important thing for Nigeria to tackle” if the country wants to achieve the zero-emission goal it has set for itself.

She added that the poor are the most affected by deforestation, and the government needs to view the issue from their perspective and make curbing the act its top priority.

“We’ve got to start from the perspective of the poorest people — put ourselves in their shoes and their eyes and build from there. And that takes us to the real priority around land use and deforestation. I think that’s the single most important thing for Nigeria to tackle because it’s also contributing to climate emissions,” the diplomat said.

“That has to be our priority. So that means a radically different approach to agriculture, which I know is very much in the plans of the government. It means we have to make each hectare more productive, so we don’t need to use so much land and cut down the forest.

“We can’t look at this from one individual angle because we have to join up the environmental, agricultural, forestry bits. I think we have to look at it from the point of view of poor individuals who are really struggling at the moment, so that’s for me what should be the top priority.”