Monday, November 29, 2010

Scientists urge conservation of Africa's forests

Compass Newspaper (Nigeria): In a bid to reduce the severity of climate change, scientists have called for the preservation of Africa’s surviving tropical forests and planting new trees to replace those lost to deforestation.

They added that the forests ease the local impact of climate change by absorbing more carbon from the air and by regulating local weather conditions. They also cited the forests’ roles as watersheds, defences against soil erosion and conservation pools for biodiversity.

During the 2010 Open Day of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), which was marked with the planting of indigenous trees by institutes’ workers in Ibadan, the Manager of the IITA - Leventis Foundation Project, Dr. John Peacock, said that reforestation and education on the benefits of conservation were critical to stemming and reclaiming Africa’s lost forest and biodiversity.

According to him, the planting of trees was part of a new initiative to restore rainforests in Nigeria . IITA is also contributing to the important United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) initiative in Nigeria ….

The Osun-Osogbo Sacred grove in Nigeria, shot by Alex Mazzeto - Jurema Oliveira (talk), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

1 comment:

Brian Thomas said...

I just realized that this landslide was caused by an earthquake, and not something directly climate-related. I'll let the error stand, a reminder of this blogger's fallibilit.