The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has underscored the need for tree planting across schools as a way of teaching students how to combat climate change, hunger and poverty.
The Chief of Enugu UNICEF Field Office, Juliet Chiluwe stated this in Enugu, during the flag-off of the Tree Planting Exercise to mark the 2023 World Children’s Day Celebration at the Metropolitan Girls Secondary School Enugu.
advised the students to make planting and nurturing of trees a habit.
She noted that UNICEF, through the U-Report project, was partnering with three schools here in Enugu to plant a total of 30 trees that will help create a more conducive climate as part of activities marking the 2023 World Children’s Day.
“Tree planting exercise is an initiative of UNICEF under its U-report project which aims to green up Nigerian schools by teaching the students the importance of tree planting to combating hunger, poverty, and climate change,”she said.
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She further noted that tree planting was part of the broad GREEN ECONOMY INITIATIVE with the overall goal of achieving sustainable development especially with respect to goals 13 and 15 which demand urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts and seek to fight “desertification and halt biodiversity loss.
“Our approach is to present not just the ecological/environmental values of environmental protection, but also make people see the economic values (short and long term) of environmental conservation,”she said. “We are all aware of the changing climate, with human activity being the primary factor in the acceleration of climate change over the past century. The scientific evidence is available and quite overwhelming.”
She said that UNICEF was committed to initiatives that would help fight climate change such as tree planting, waste recycling, building resilient and sustainable environment for economic growth and healthier children and young people.
Story was adapted from Business Day.
