Stakeholders in the forest sector have urged authorities at all levels to invest greatly in the sector due to the tremendous potential in addressing the emerging economical, social and environmental challenges in the country.

They made the appeal last week in the 14th Annual Chief Shafi Lawal Edu Memorial Lecture, organised by the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) in collaboration with Chevron Nigeria Limited, in Lagos, themed: «Valuing Nigeria's Forests: Problems and Circumstance».

The guest lecturer and President, Forestry Association of Nigeria, FANATIC, Prof. Labode Popoola said, Pm News Nigeria Mobile with a total land area of 923,678kilometer square has a forest area that's been on a constant decline owing to its increasing population among other factors.

He said significant need for construction, wood and other functions by Thursday Nigerian Guardian Newspaper Vacancies the wood-based industry supported logging which led to large scale deforestation of Nigeria's woods. He noted that non-forest policies, especially, energy policies, continue to present grievous threats to the forest sector.

«The last important forest resources assessment in Nigeria took place between 1996 and 1998 through a $4m grant given by the African Development Bank. The database created from that assessment was anticipated to be updated frequently by way of a Forest Information System, FIS in all of the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, with a terminal at the Federal Department of Forestry,» Popoola said.

«The gains of the Forest Resources Assessment of 1996-1998 have been completely lost. As of today, there is nothing on ground in this regard. Also, there hasn't been any updating since then. Woods cover remains under pressure as a consequence of human activities like agricultural development where vast acreages are cleared without conservation considerations, large-scale per-urban housing project development, fuelwood generation, uncontrolled forest picking, including poaching for logs and poles and urbanization.»

He emphasized the environmental, socio-economic, sociocultural services forests provide, however, lamented that the deforestation rate in Nigeria is about 3.5 per annum, adding that this translates to a loss of about 350,000-400,000 hectares of forest land per annum.

«Moving forward, Nigeria will need to get heavily in the forest sector because of its continuing topicality in the global discourse for sustainable development along with the built-in huge potentials the sector has in addressing emerging environmental, societal and economic challenges.

»Forests remain Nigeria's most under-valued resource, and as long as coordinators and policy makers continue to disregard the economical significance of the forest sector, too as those of sectors and actions that depend or affect it, so will forests continue to be degraded and lost, and their potentially vast economic opportunities will be lost. We CAn't manage the business as usual approach in the forest sector," Popoola said.

Earlier, the Director General, NCF, Adeniyi Karunwi said the NCF continues to be successful in executing projects for example restoration and conservation of dry lands and wetlands habitat in the Sahelian region to wetland and coastal restoration for improved support in the coastal region of the united states, noting that this has made NCF the foremost leader in conservation efforts in Nigeria.