A total of 19 Northern States and the Federal Capital Territorial (FCT) will benefit from the federal government’s Agro-Climate Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) project introduced as part of efforts to reverse the effects of land degradation in semi-arid parts of Nigeria.
National project coordinator for ACReSAL, Salisu Dahiru, said that the project, which will be executed with a $700m loan from the World Bank, was based on the desire of the federal government to reverse the menace of land degradation in semi-arid parts of the country.
Dahiru noted that apart from destroying lands for agriculture and threatening livlihoods, climate change partly contributes to migration, environmental refugees, which is the downward migration in search of greener pastures.”
“The crisis between Fulani herdsmen and farmers are caused by pressure on scarce natural resources” Dahiru said. “Most households in Nigeria rely on fuelwood which is not available in the North, so they will be looking for charcoal in the North Central region”.
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He maintained that the widespread dependence on fuelwood has resulted in massive burning of forests to produce charcoal.
“If this continues unabated, the situation where we have desert encroachment in the far North will show it face in the middle belt part of the country,” he warned, adding that it was in a bid to deal with this challenge that the government sought loan from the World Bank.
While explaining that the $700m loan has an implementation period of 6 years, he said it had a 10-year moratorium, interest rate of one percent and a repayment period of 30 years.
He noted that 19 Northern States and the federal capital territorial are the priority states, adding that all 20 Northern states including the FCT have been deemed eligible for ACRESAL support based on their low Aridity index.
“Eligible states are selected based on demonstrated commitment and implementation readiness criteria. They will have access to investment and technical assistance (TA) funding, based on high demonstrated commitment and readiness for implementation”, Dahiru stated.
Story was adapted from Leadership.
