At the 19th session of the UN Forum of Forest @ New York are 3 delegates who accompanied His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Ahmadu Umaru and having fruitful deliberations on Forestry policy. These are; the Executive Chairman, Adamawa State Planning Commission Dr. Mary B. Paninga,, the Coordinator of World Bank projects Hon. Robert Ahijo, and the Coordinator of ACRESAL Dr. Ibrahim Chinda.

SPEECH DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNOR OF ADAMAWA STATE, RT. (HON) AHMADU UMARU FINTIRI, ON THE OCCASION OF THE 19TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS FORUM ON FORESTS AT THE UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK, USA.

Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, esteemed colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

While it is both an honour and privilege to be here with you, representing the resilient people of Adamawa State and our region in Nigeria, I am also pleased to stand before you and contribute to the discussions about our ecosystem, specifically the forests, as it relates to the global ecosystem, particularly from a sub-Saharan African perspective. 

I am not going to pontificate about the importance of Forests and how they contribute towards sustainable living—not in this place or to this audience, as I am sure more qualified people are here and can-do better justice to the the topic.
Adamawa State had about 122,000hectares of tree cover, equivalent to 3.6% of its land area but we have lost a sizeable amount in tandem with the national figures. We have 37 gazetted Forest reserves scattered across our 21 LGA which are shrinking due to numerous factors.
It is thus an established fact that our Forests in Adamawa and Nigeria are fast shrinking mostly through human activities like bush burning, farming, tree felling for use either as timber for infrastructure development or for domestic use as cooking fuel. Other causes of the loss of the forest areas are through land degradation, pollution and other effects of climate change.
Consequently, we stand at a pivotal moment in history, being political, opinion or community leaders. As we witness the alarming loss of Forests locally and globally, we are confronted with the urgent need to take decisive action to reverse this trend and safeguard the future of our common home, the Earth.
This was at the back of my mind at the point of my mandate renewal for a second term in office as governor. As a result of the urgency of this issue, I included” Care for the Environment” as one of the 8-point agenda for my current tenure in office.
To give this impetus I have keyed into partnerships with development partners, Civil Society Organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations.
The Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes, ACReSAL project; a World Bank supported initiative in conjunction with the Federal Government, the Federal Capita Territory and 19 State Governments in northern Nigeria comes to mind here. The project seeks to address issues of climate change taking both mitigation and preventive action in a multisectoral approach, looking at the nexus between the Environment, Water resources and Agriculture.
In Adamawa state, with respect to Forests and the Environment, our efforts are concerted on multifaceted and urgent forest management practices. Permit me to highlight a few of these practices:
Ban on Tree Felling: we have passed legislation to ban the felling of Trees for use as fuel for domestic use. To cushion the effect of this ban on the rural poor and ensure the sustainability of this ban, we are purchasing about 30,000 environmentally friendly clean cooking stoves to be distributed free to rural women who were already dependent on the forest for cooking fuel.
Supply of Alternative Cooking Fuel: We are supplying 300 briquette fabrication machines to be distributed in every political ward of the State and will soon embark on capacity building for women and youths on how to produce briquettes from Agric wastes to be used with the clean cooking stoves.
Reafforestation Drive: We have embarked on artificially regenerating our Forest reserves by directly planting native tree seedlings in deforested areas of our reserves. Last year through the ACReSAL project in partnership with the State Ministry of Environment, we reafforested 1500 hectares using a community driven approach; wherein members of the communities are trained and supported to plant, secure and nurture seedlings in the reafforested areas. This year we plan to embark on a 2000-hectare afforestation drive while we continue to manage the 1500ha already planted
Community Based Conservation: as part of our commitment to promote community-based conservation initiatives that empower local stakeholders to become guardians of their forests, we have engaged local stakeholders within communities in participatory forest management, to foster a sense of ownership and responsibility but also harness indigenous knowledge and traditional practices that have sustained our forests for generations.
We understand that protecting our forests is intrinsically linked to addressing the broader challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. In this regard, we are committed to advancing ambitious climate action agendas through the following initiatives which we are looking to implement in the next three years: