Trees play a vital role in combating climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Nigeria once had extensive forests but has experienced severe deforestation, with the annual loss of 350,000-400,000 hectares of forest between 2000-2005. This deforestation is primarily due to logging, agriculture, and fuelwood collection, which over 70% of Nigerian households still rely on for cooking. The massive deforestation has led to environmental and economic problems for Nigeria, including desertification, heat waves, drought, loss of biodiversity, and carbon emissions. The document proposes strategies to address this, including expanding tree planting programs, protecting existing forests, pursuing more sustainable industrial development, and developing innovative solutions to energy

1. Trees our Greatest Allies Against
Climate Change:
Killing the Protector
Trees our Greatest Allies Against
Climate Change:
Killing the Protector
By
Ofoegbu Donald Ikenna
Program Coordinator
Heinrich Boell Foundation

2. What they say
about trees!!!
CHAPTER 1

3. • No matter where you live, trees make your life
possible. When a tree is lost anywhere, people
feel it everywhere.
• Robert Frost had it right — the woods are
lovely, dark and deep. They’re our respite.
Our places of peace. Our natural air filters.
Our water factories. Our medicine cabinets.
We literally can’t live without them.

4. Why the Hype?
CHAPTER 2

5. Trees are important tools in the fight
against global warming, because
they absorb and store the key
greenhouse gas emitted by our cars
and power plants - carbon dioxide
(CO2), before it has a chance to
reach the upper atmosphere where it
can help trap heat around the
Earth’s surface.

6. Trees and forests are complex
ecosystems that are important to the
carbon and water cycles that sustain
life on earth. When they are
degraded, it can set off a devastating
chain of events both locally and
around the world.

7. To reduce carbon dioxide build-up and its effects
on climate change, we can either reduce carbon
dioxide emissions (mainly burn less fossil fuels),
or we can re-absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
Trees enter the picture here because they can be
used to take carbon dioxide out of the air. All
plants make food out of carbon dioxide from the
air, water, and solar energy through the process
of photosynthesis. This food is then used to make
most of the body of the plant, including roots,
leaves, stem or trunk, and flowers and fruit.

8. While all living plant matter absorbs CO2
as part of photosynthesis, trees process
significantly more than smaller plants
due to their large size and extensive root
structures.
In essence, trees, as kings of the plant
world, have much more “woody
biomass” to store CO2 than smaller
plants, and as a result are considered
nature’s most efficient “carbon sinks.”

9. Trees (and shrubs) are unique among plants in that
they have a woody stem and roots that get bigger every
year and these woody parts last for decades or even
centuries. Since this wood is mainly made of carbon
from carbon dioxide, tree stems and roots are good,
long-term storage places for carbon.
Annual plants (such as corn, tomatoes, annual grasses)
and many non-woody perennial plants (such as
perennial grasses, clover, alfalfa) are not good places
for long-term carbon storage. Most of the carbon
dioxide they absorb is re-released within one to several
growing seasons as leaves, stems, and roots die and
decay.

10. The Betrayal;The Betrayal;
What have we done?What have we done?
CHAPTER 2

11. Killing the Protector: Betraying a friend
As of 2005, Nigeria has the highest
rate of deforestation in the world
according to the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO); The annual
rate of deforestation in Nigeria is
3.5%, approximately 350,000-
400,000 hectares per year

12. Between 2000 and 2005, Nigeria lost
55.7% of our primary forests. Forest
has been cleared for logging, timber
export, subsistence agriculture and
notably the collection of wood for
fuel which remains problematic in
western Africa.

13. Over 70% of
Nigerian Households
still depend on
firewood for
cooking.

14. The Price of
Betrayal
CHAPTER 3

15. Of all the sources of energy forOf all the sources of energy for
domestic cooking, firewood ranksdomestic cooking, firewood ranks
highest when compared with gashighest when compared with gas
and kerosene.and kerosene.
This traditional sources of domesticThis traditional sources of domestic
energy combined with commercialenergy combined with commercial
gas flaring continue to contributegas flaring continue to contribute
significantly to environmentalsignificantly to environmental
pollution and depletion of the ozonepollution and depletion of the ozone
layer, leading to global warming.layer, leading to global warming.

16. OOVERVER 98,000 Women DIE98,000 Women DIE
Yearly from exposure to firewoodYearly from exposure to firewood
smoke. – ICEEDsmoke. – ICEED (2014)(2014)

17. DERSERTIFICATION:
• A lot of damage has been done to Nigeria’s land through the
processes of deforestation, notably contributing to the
overwhelming trend of desertification. Sahara desert is
advancing south wards at the rate of 6.0 percent every year.
As at 2010, Nigeria lost about 350,000 hectares of land every
year to desert encroachment. This has led to demographic
displacements in villages across 11 states in the North. It is
estimated that Nigeria loses about $5.1billion every year owing
to rapid encroachment of drought and desert in most parts of
the north. The effects deforestation have taken the form of
violence from migrating herdsmen from the north to the
south, food shortages and food inflation from drought as well
as diseases i.e Meningitis, Malaria, measles and other Heat-
related illnesses.

18. • HEAT WAVE: A study conducted from 1901 to 2005
gathered that there was a temperature increase in
Nigeria of 1.1°C, while the global mean temperature
increase was only 0.74°C. The northern region of
nigeria experiences low rainfall and high temperature
that rises up to 45 degrees Celsius. Heat in the desert
can be as high as 150 degree Celsius every day.
• DROUGHT: The same study also found in the same
period of time that the amount of rainfall in the
country decreased by 81mm. It was noticed that both
of these trends simultaneously had sharp changes in
the 1970s.

19. • CARBON EMISSION: The carbon emissions from
deforestation is also said to account for 53% of the
total carbon emissions of Nigeria; from 1990 to
2010 Nigeria nearly halved their amount of Forest
Cover, moving from 17,234 to 9041 hectares.
• ENDANGERED SPECIES: Nigeria’s wide biodiversity
of 899 species of birds, 274 mammals, 154 reptiles,
53 amphibians and 4,715 species of higher plants
have also been affected by the negative impacts of
deforestation. The numbers of the rare Cross River
gorilla have decreased to around 300 individuals
because of poaching by locals and mass habitat
destruction
• FLOOD AND EROSION

20. The Road To
Repentance
CHAPTER 4

21. Step 1: Initiate Tree Planting Acts & Programs
Tree Planting Policies and Programs:
• Organize tree planting competitions{Biz CSR, Govt, NGOs, Asstns, Schools,
Estates, Communities, Churches, etc}
• Tree planting as a legal requirement or condition or
criteria {Before Court marriage, Child Adoption, Award of Government Contracts, political party, formation, etc}
• Tree planting as a part of academic curriculum;
certification or admission in all stages and fields of
academic learning {primary to tertiary; Sciences to Arts}
• Give trees as gifts
• Trees have life, make them your pet.
• Have trees as part of public structural designs in award
of public projects
• LGAs embark on beatification programs with tree
planting

22. • Pass bills to limit, if not stop the falling of
trees across states especially without
replanting.
• Initiate court orders; fines and sanctions that
commands offenders to plant trees. i.e. gas
flares, estate developers and even illegal
loggers, environmental polluters and even
traffic offenders.
• Encourage and expand use of small
renewable solutions for heating and lighting.
Step 2: Defend the Defender

23. Need to balance
industrialization and
environmental protection.
We can have real economic
growth and development and
health environment.
Step 3: Industrial morality

24. • S—Substitute (e.g. Substitute components, technology,
inputs/materials, even people for best healthy and sustainable result)
• C—Combine (e.g. What combination of components, technology,
services, waste, etc, can provide a reasonable and usable result)
• A—Adapt (e.g., alter, change function, use part of another element)
• M—Magnify/Modify (e.g., increase or reduce in scale, change
shape, modify attributes to get useful results)
• P—Put to other uses
• E—Eliminate (e.g., remove elements, simplify, reduce to
core functionality)
• R—Rearrange/Reverse (e.g., turn inside out or upside
down)
Step 4: Development of a SCAMPER approach to Energy problem
solving

25. ThanThan
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