In its quest to tackle the challenges associated with climate change, the Ogun State government through the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development and its agencies has signified its readiness to collaborate with interested institutions to explore opportunities in mitigating the challenge of climate change.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Engr. Olayiwola Abiodun stated this in Abeokuta while playing host to the delegation from the Centre for Climate Change, the Bells University of Technology, Ota who had come to seek government collaboration in addressing the problems associated with climate change.
Engr. Olayiwola pointed out that the Ministry considered adequate planning in its programmes and activities, to further confront the problems caused to the environment by human activities and development.
He noted that synergy with the Center would enable the Ministry to achieve its aim of confronting the challenges associated with climate change, through the activities of other relevant agencies such as the Ministries of Environment and Transport, among others.
In his remarks, the Director of the Center for Climate Change, Prof. Babatunde Agbola said the purpose of the visit was to be conversant with the activities of the Ministry and its agencies, to understand the types, intensity and extent of land uses.
Agbola stated that “this will enable us to keep track of how land uses and physical developments affect climate change, and the consequences of climate change on the Ministry’s policies and activities”.
The University don also recommended the creation of a Climate Change desk in the Ministry to aid the process of integration, monitoring, evaluation, and technological transfer.
Meanwhile, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Forestry, Timothy Olatunji, who also received the delegation at the agency, said the combined effort by Stakeholders is necessary to tackle the climate change challenge headlong, to further create a friendly eco-system that would make the world habitable for human beings and others creatures.
Olatunji stated that the Ministry had taken proactive steps to investigate the effect of climate change, such as uninterrupted tree planting in all forests and reserved in the three Senatorial District of the State, and initiated sensitisation programmes and activities that would encourage both individual communities on the needs to plant trees and conserved the forest and its resources, among others.