The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is Advocating tree planting in schools as a way of teaching the students how to combat climate change, hunger and poverty.
The Chief of Enugu UNICEF Field Office, Juliet Chiluwe who 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.
According to her, as part of activities marking the 2023 World Children’s Day, UNICEF, through the U-Report project, is partnering with three schools here in Enugu to plant a total of 30 trees that will help create a more conducive climate.
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The Chief of field office said: “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.
“Tree planting is 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.
“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.”
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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.
One of the students overwhelmed with the presence of the head of the Unicef Enugu office in their school, Sylvia Okafor, an SSS 2, appreciated UNICEF for the exercise
She emphasized the need for environmental sanitation, saying “one of the things we must do to reduce the effect of climate change is envirometant sanitation.”
