Forest Conservation & Climate Change Mitigation town hall meeting concluded in Odukpani, C/River

A town hall meeting aimed at forest conservation and mitigating climate change, Wednesday, concluded in Mbarakom, Iboku Esite Ndik, Creek Town, Odukpani LGA, Cross River State. The event was facilitated by Peace Point Action (PPA) NegroidHaven can confirm. 

The town hall meeting which is supported by UN REDD Programme, Small Grants Programme (SGP), Global Environment Facility Investing in our Planet (GEF), and UNDP was an assessment/reassessment programme and follow-up for a year ago capacity development programme conducted for REDD-focus communities which bordered on training ranging from building energy efficiency stove, to snail farming and construction of snail pane of improved seedlings of stocking amounting to 3250 species, to improved Afang farming and set up, to economic trees planting like bush mango, and in-school sensitisation, etc. 

According to the Founder of PPA, Mr Umoh Isua-Ikoh, the assessment/ reassessment programme was to hear from the recipients of the programme their success and probably failure stories, sustainable plans to continue with the programme as well as areas for improvements. 

According to him, 'We wish to know directly from the rural recipients if there are success and failure stories; we want to hear from them the results of the project after a year of PPA activity'. 

Continuing, Isua-Ikoh hinted that, 'Over the one year plus we have spent in the community, we have some projects we have implemented in the community: we trained the community members on snail farming, and construct snail pane sticking it with improved seedlings amounting to 3250 species; we trained them on Afang farming and set up Afang farms for them; we trained them on economic tree planting particularly Bush mango; we trained them also on fuel efficiency stove, we have done in-school sensitisation especially at Government Comprehensive Secondary School and Presbyterian Nursery and Primary School all in Creek Town, Odukpani LGA. 

According to Isua-Ikoh, the goal of the project is to ensure that the forest is safe, why we came up with this design programme is because we identified that most rural dwellers go to the forest to exploit it searching for Afang, Bush mango, snail farms, wood-fire, etc. In other words, if we organise training in this regard teaching them how to fetch this without exploiting the forest, such practices reduces.