African Activists for Climate Justice (ACCJ) project partners from Netherlands have expressed satisfaction with locally-led adaptations in Agunji Community, Nassarawa Eggon Local Government Area of Nasarawa State in combating impact of climate change.
They made this known when delegates from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) Netherlands led by Mrs Marita Hutjes and members of the Programme Management Unit at AACJ, paid a field mission visit to the community on October 7th, 2023.
Giving an opening speech, Mrs Marita Hutjes said she was excited to see a locally led actions being taken by the people of the community to fight the menace of climate change in their locality.
“I find it very excited to see what has been happening how people themselves, have started taken action just with the training that has been given to create the charcoal, and also make it as sources of revenue to make more money to improve their own living environment. I find it very impressive and also very inspiring and is really good to see,” Hutjes said.
She added that she was satisfied and happy with the way the funds donated for climate change projects in Nigeria have been utilised by ACCJ partners.
Hutjes spoke further that she had seen the way money was used in a very practical way to make life better and to adopt climate change that would make people happy.
Also speaking, Mr Benson Simba, Head of Programme Management Unit – AACJ Project in Africa, explained that the project focused on the building the capacity of community to respond to effect of climate change in a very sustainable way.
Simba mentioned that he had seen a clear African narrative standing out in the utilising the indigenous knowledge of the people in terms of being part of the solutions in the challenges of climate change.
Additionally, Mr Kenneth Akpan, Coordinator of the AACJ Project in Nigeria, highlighted that the field mission visit from Netherlands to Agunji community was to assess what was on ground in the fight against climate change in Nasarawa state.
Mr Kenneth also explained that the visit was part of their efforts to monitor projects themselves, noting that the partners had expressed satisfaction with what they saw on ground, also hoping that the visit would bring more interventions.
Mrs Hellen Jonathan, one of the community leaders, while presenting a working document on how to adopt method to reduce cutting down of trees in their community, explained that the community had embarked on massive tree planting to tackle the menace of climate change.
Mrs Hellen announced that they had adopted tree planting and briquette production method to reduce indiscriminate cutting down of trees so as to reduce deforestation thereby mitigating the menace of climate change.
She also said that the Agunji community had also learned nursery establishment to have enough trees to plant in the next rainy season to combat climate change in their communities.
On her part, a young member of the community – Mrs Justina Lawrence, displayed how briquettes were been produced as source of fuel for cooking instead of cutting down trees in the name of making charcoal and had become a better source of income to improve their livelihoods.
The AACJ project is a community-based project hosted by a consortium of five Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) – the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Oxfam, Natural Justice, African Youth Commission (AYC) and the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), that are championing the fight against climate change in Africa. The project aims to organise and mobilise women, youth and indigenous communities to advance their solutions to the climate crisis, to enjoy their rights to a healthy environment and self-determination.