By Patricia Conteh
The Founder and Principal of Koinadugu College (KC), Dr Alhaji U. Njai, has urged residents within Koinadugu District to embark on nature service through tree planting. Dr Njai made this call during a tree planting exercise organised by students, staff and partners of the college around it campus environ in the district headquarters of Kabala. “It is critical that we balance nature services. This is one of the things we wanted to do because in Koinadugu, we are getting a lot of deforestation, so we need to find a way in which we are balancing that out by planting more trees,” he said.
About one thousand, three hundred (1,300) economic and fruit tree species were planted on Saturday 15th June, 2024 by the college staff headed by Dr.Njai himself, students, and residents of the host community within the Badembaia College vicinity. This act, Dr Njai believes, will “restore the environment that has been destroyed by the massive deforestation in this part of the country.”
The KC Principal emphasized on the need for individual and collective efforts towards minimizing the impacts of climate change.
“Something about the environment and climate requires every individual to do their own little part; as every little part contributes to the greater picture and global effort,” he said.
“The imprint of everyone of us is what is responsible for climate change and environmental degradation. So, everyone of us is responsible to adapting and changing to lifestyles that are much more climate and environmentally friendly,” Dr Njai stressed.
Tapiwa Prosper Chimbadzwe, a guest lecturer on Climate Change and Environmental Health at the Koinadugu College, who was also part of the exercise, applauded the tree planting exercise by the college, stating that it goes a very long way in setting a good precedence for the local communities “that this is the right way to go when it comes to having a healthy relationship with our environment.”
Tapiwa , who is also an environmental conservation advocate, said: “Trees are one of the mitigating measures that we have at hand through nature-based solutions. It is a cheap way of retaining and fighting climate change calamity.”
Alusine Samura, a first year Public Health student at Koinadugu college, expressed excitement over the exercise. “I am very happy to be part of this exercise, as this is my first time to partake in a massive tree planting exercise like this,” he said. “We have a course that we are currently offering at KC called One Health. It teaches us about the important connection between the environment, animals, and humans. The trees we are planting are very important because they will encourage the animals to live around.”
According to statistics from Global Forest watch – a platform that provides data and tools for monitoring forests, Koinadugu District had about 1.03 million hectares of tree cover, which extends to about 83% of its land area. But in 2023, it lost 15.8 thousand hectares of tree cover, which is equivalent to 5.73 metric tons of carbon dioxide emission.
The vision of Koinadugu College and its partners is to have a prototype of students that could promote sustainable nature-based solutions to environmental problems.
The tree planting exercise is an annual tradition of Project 1808, which is now being incorporated by the college.
