… Says Nigeria’s mangrove restoration project crucial in mitigating climate change effects
BY AKUDORO GLORIA
The Project Coordinator of Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) Prof. Nenibarini Zabbey, has highlighted the ongoing progress on various project activities being carried out in order to mitigate the effects of climate change in Ogoniland in Rivers State.
Prof. Zabbey at the just concluded 17th Meeting of the National Council on Environment organized by the Federal Ministry of Environment in collaboration with Food and Agriculture of the United Nations held at NAF Conference Centre in Abuja, disclosed that HYPREP is currently carrying out mangrove restoration of 560 hectares of former mangrove areas.
According to him, Nigeria’s mangrove restoration project is very crucial in mitigating the effects of climate change, because mangroves are the best sequester of carbon.
“Mangrove restoration is better, has more carbon and five times more than tropical rainforest. And so our mangrove restoration project is the world’s largest mangrove restoration in an oil degraded environment. Globally, ours is the largest. So, we have started with the pilot of 560 hectares and the community people are fully involved”, he said.
Prof. Zabbey, also revealed that HYPREP is currently cleaning a total of 2000 hectares of oil degraded environment, while emphasizing that in remediating the degraded environment, the cleaning process is carried out on both terrestrial areas and on wetlands, the mangrove creeks of Ogoniland.
He clarified, “At the moment we are cleaning 39 lots of medium risk complex sites and we have started preliminary activities around the investigation of the high risk complex site.
“Now we have divided our cleanup programme into three phases. We started with the cleanup of simple sites, and simple sites are those sites that are contaminated with oil, but only the soil is contaminated while the complex sites are sites that both soil and groundwater are contaminated.
“The complex site are further divided into two – we have the Medium risk complex sites and High risk complex site. The Medium risk complex sites are located far from residential areas, while the high risk complex sites are located within the jurisdiction. Now we have got 48 Close out certificate from NOSDRA for our simple site”.
Prof. Zabbey expressed HYPREP’s continued dedication in promoting local capacity, stating not more than of 5,000 youths and women of Ogoni in 21 city areas are undergoing training in order to improve their livelihood.
He said beneficiaries are regarded as ‘Environment Vanguards’ and provided with catalytic fund to plant mangrove seedlings.
HYPREP was established under the Federal Ministry of Environment and is saddled with the responsibility to restore and revitalize communities impacted by hydrocarbon pollution, with a primary focus on the Ogoniland region in the country.