The Kano State Government has begun planting one million tree seedlings to address the menace of climate change in the state.

The State’s Commissioner for Environment, Dr. Kabiru Ibrahim-Getso, made the disclosure at a press briefing on the 2021 tree planting campaign at the ministry’s conference room on Thursday in Kano.

The theme of this year tree-planting campaign, is “Mitigating climate change effects and achieving beautification in Kano State”.

The state government planted two million tree seedlings in 2020 to control flood and desert encroachment.

According to him, last year, Kano State experienced extreme heat with maximum temperature of about 44 degrees celsius which attributed to inadequate trees thereby having an adverse effect on the environment.

“This will checkmate menace of indiscriminate felling of trees, climate change, soil erosion, land degradation as well as enhance productivity of agricultural land and decrease the rare of desertification process.

“The campaign will last two weeks and has been divided into two phases.

“The first phase of the exercise will cover Bayero University Kano to Kabuga road, Zaria road and State road while the second phase will be launched by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, at Yusuf Maitama Sule University main campus where 1,200 seedlings will be planted.

“The seedlings would be planted, shared across communities, state major roads, institutions such as churches, schools, hospitals, mosques among others,” he said.

Ibrahim-Getso said that the state government will implement environmental mitigation measures to safeguard our ecosystem and ensure its restoration of tree planting campaign from last year across the 44 local government area in the state.

He further explained that the “2021 tree planting campaign like the previous one of 2020 is designed to sensitive stakeholders on importance of tree planting in our general environment.”

He added that the effort is in fulfilment of the pledge of Federal Government and 36 Nigerian Governors to plant 25 million tree to mitigate climate change.

“Some of the benefits of planting trees include, supply of oxygen, improve air quality by absorbing pollutant gases, slows water evaporation and prevent water pollution, provide food, medicine through various fruits, among others.

“2021 tree plant campaign was deliberately designed to take off at this material time of rainy season to avert all encumbrances associated with nursing seedlings particularly watering,” he said.

The commissioner thanked the Federal Ministry of Environment for its support and other agencies of biodiversity conservation and environmental protection.