Environmental experts say uncontrolled deforestation and illegal logging threaten many communities in Cross River State, South-south Nigeria.
The environmental experts and other stakeholders spoke at a one-day ‘multi-stakeholder conference focused on ending deforestation in Cross River State, decried massive illegal logging in various communities, and fingered state and non-state actors.
We The People (WTP), in collaboration with the Rainforest Resource and Development Center (RRDC), organised the conference in Calabar, the state capital.
Ken Henshaw, the Executive Director of WTP, said the destruction and degradation of the Cross River forests started in 1991 and have continued to date.
As of 1991, the total forest cover in Cross River State stood at 7,920 square kilometres. By 2008, the forest cover declined and dropped about 6,102 square kilometres and occupied only 28.6 per cent of the entire surface area of the state, Henshaw said.
Accordion to him, between 1991 and 2021, the state lost 1,514 square kilometres of forest cover. Between 2007 and 2014, deforestation increased, leading to the loss of 1,070 Square kilometres of forest in seven years.
Although the moratorium on forest activities was placed by the state government 14 years ago, the state of deforestation has rather intensified.
Odey Oyama, the Executive Director of the Rainforest Resource and Development Center (RRDC), said the destruction and rapid degradation of the forest environment were destroying the pristine and highly valued tropical high forest of Cross River State.
Oyama said this is reducing the state’s ability to participate effectively in the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) Programme, the Global Climate Change Mitigation, and the Millennium Development Goals program of the United Nations (UN).
Odey averred that the Forestry Commission, as an institution of government saddled with the statutory responsibility of sustainable forest management, has been very negligent and complacent.
He alleged that “oftentimes, the Commission would maintain a conspiracy of silence than wake up to its duties” whenever cases of illegal logging are reported to it”.
Dr Odigha Odigh, a former Chairman of the Cross River State Forestry Commission, noted that every community in Cross River is experiencing logging as trucks loaded with timber leave the state daily.
The veteran environmentalist identified funding into the forestry sector, planting back cut trees, and employing competent hands to protect the forests, among others, to be provided to those saddled with the responsibility of protecting the forest from loggers.
Speaking on the topic: ‘Policy framework on forest management in Cross River State, Ekpenyong Itam, a professor of Ecological Architecture and Sustainable Urbanism, said there are laws regulating the state’s forests, and it is expected that all must know the law as ignorance of it is not an excuse.
But he said the state government, despite the laws, has not come up with a policy that can address the problems of deforestation and illegal logging.
“We have not developed a policy that can match the present threat, and any time man is facing a threat, and his capacity to manage the threat is below the threat, he is overwhelmed,” he said.
“We are using obsolete policies to match the current situation; that current situation has taken us possibly unaware, but if we sit down, we will understand; it doesn’t take much to analyse.”
