Group Harps On Sustainable Dev

The Centre for Entrepreneurship and Development Research (CEDR), University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus, has urged members of the public to contribute toward a sustainable environment.

The centre made the call at a programme tagged ‘Moving Planet Action Day,’ which was observed globally with the support of the UN and was aimed at achieving an environment ‘free of fossil fuels’ and other environmental problems.

The centre said it used the opportunity to create awareness among members of the public on the dangers associated with the lifestyle that increased carbon footprint in the environment and the need to get rid of the menace.

Delivering a keynote address, Mr Emma Onyeabor, who represented the Deputy Vice Chancellor of UNEC, said the programme was a global call on all to promote initiatives aimed at realising sustainable ecoprenuership toward campus greening in Africa.

Onyeabor said the programme was a way of mitigating the global warming effect in the university community which also included running climate leadership programmes to strengthen and build up the movement.

“This moving planet event is aimed at highlighting students and the public on the reality of climate change and beam more light into the social and economic benefits of ecopreneurship to the society. “We ought to first do our own part as individuals and organisations. Moving planet is an ideal and action-based opportunities to campaign which the UN has set aside all over the world to mark our stand on issues surrounding the use of fossil fuels and the likely cause of climate change,” Onyeabor said. Dr Chukwuemeka Okoye, the Director of CEDR, urged the public to demonstrate green environment through planting of trees and flowers. Okoye explained that there was need to protect and encourage greening in the environment as part of effort to observe climate change and to improve on it.

Mr Evaristus Asadu, the Head of Planning, Research and Statistics in the Enugu State Ministry of Environment and Mineral Resources, said the state government was interested in climate change.

Asadu, who represented the state’s Commissioner for Environment, Mr John Egbo, explained that a department on climatic change had been created in the ministry to tackle the problem.

He said the government was ever willing to partner with organisations and NGOs to ensure that the problem was reduced to the barest minimum.

Some of the key points delivered at the programme included state climate change action plan and constraints on climate change; environmental sustainability and issues in Nigeria; consequences on national development, among others.