A bold red X clearly communicates this nine-year-old Nigerian’s plea. “Don’t Destroy Nature” is the title of the child’s picture, which depicts a person chopping down a tree with a large X drawn across the woodcutter declaring the youngster’s clear disapproval for the practice. The picture was one of many submissions in the Micah Challenge’s poster art competition to celebrate World Environment Day last June. The theme this year was “Forest: Nature at Your service” and several events, such as a trash art competition and media and awareness campaigns, were organized to communicate this important message.
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Micah Challenge Tree planting on
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A bold red X clearly communicates this nine-year-old Nigerian’s plea.
"Don’t Destroy Nature” is the title of the child’s picture, which depicts a person chopping down a tree with a large X drawn across the woodcutter declaring the youngster’s clear disapproval for the practice.
The picture was one of many submissions in the Micah Challenge’s poster art competition to celebrate World Environment Day last June. The theme this year was “Forest: Nature at Your service” and several events, such as a trash art competition and media and awareness campaigns, were organized to communicate this important message.
Since 1990, Nigeria has lost more than one-third of its forest covers — about 6.1 million hectares. Deforestation is rampant throughout the African continent, and the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports that indigenous forests in Africa are being cut down at the “alarming rate” of about 3.4 million hectares per year. Deforestation contributes to climate change, disrupts the natural water cycle, promotes soil erosion and reduces biodiversity.
“It is a mandate from God to take care of his creation, and it’s called stewardship” says Talitha Pam, Constituency Bridger/Program Assistant with CRWRC, which is one of several supporters of the Micah Challenge, a campaign to see the church working alongside governments and other collaborators to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and halve global poverty by 2015. “It is a justice issue. If we love the Lord and our neighbours, we must act.”
It is a cry that is reaching around the world as the famine in east Africa has brought global attention to the lack of food security in African countries as well as the link between famine and environmental degradation.
“We need to supplement our relief efforts with sustainable solutions for disaster risk reduction,” says Stephan Lutz, a CRWRC Program Consultant in Kenya who has collaborated on many initiatives that support sustainable agriculture practices such as seed bulking and multiplication, crop diversification, convservation farming and other practices that promote food security and ecological restoration.
“We are looking for creative, innovative, low-cost initiatives with our church partners and collaborators to integrate environmental restoration into all our efforts,” says Lutz. “We may not be able to prevent every disaster, but I really do believe we can do a lot better at mitigating the risks and the impacts.”
“For example, one of our church partners in Kenya came to us one time and said there were a lot of farmers interested in beekeeping to supplement their income, so we were able to take that information and support a program to expand beekeeping initiatives he says. “Over the last eight years, our CRWRC partner organization working in Western Kenya has reached more than 2,000 farmers who are now using modern beekeeping technology to earn an extra income, making their households more resilient in times of disaster or drought.”
Lutz also says CRWRC has participated in many other environmental- and agricultural-based collaborations worth celebrating including the implementation of sand dams in Eastern Kenya.
Sand dams help farmers access water during the dry seasons by capturing water in the sand carried in rivers during rainy seasons. The sand can store millions of litres of water.
It is the hope of the CRWRC that not only this generation, but children and youth, such as the nine-year-old Nigerian artist who participated in the poster contest, will grow up understanding, defending and restoring the natural environment.
“We have to take care of our soil, trees and water,” says Lutz. “Our environment gives and sustains life, and it is to be protected.”
Some of the Ways CRWRC helps promote environmental restoration and helps mitigate the risks related to disasters:
- Participates in the distribution of food in exchange for assets on projects such as water catchment basins, tree planting and seeding grass to feed livestock
- Employs a disaster risk reduction specialist to work within drought-affected communities to improve their ability to prepare for future droughts and increase their likelihood of survival long-term
~ by Shannon Sutherland Smith, freelance writer, Alberta