Dr. Pa Lamin Beyai, Country Director, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Country Office in Abuja, Nigeria
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) says it will support the Federal Government in ensuring that clean-up of oil spills in Ogoniland takes place as soon as possible.
UNDP Country Director, Pa-Lamin Beyai told NAN on Tuesday in Abuja that the clean-up would enhance the livelihood of the people in the area.
Beyai commended the Federal Government for taking some measures to implement the environmental remediation in Ogoniland as proposed by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
NAN reports that the UNEP report on Ogoniland was released on August 4, 2011.
“In 2015, agreements were reached at the Ministry of Environment on the implementation of the report and we were involved in the assessment process.
“Beyond that, the livelihood component was supposed to be led by the UNDP.
“It has taken longer than it should for the implementation but we are happy that the government has taken it up and want to implement the report.
“Hopefully, before June, it should be implemented.
“But UNDP will support the government all the way in ensuring that the cleaning up takes place as soon as feasible,” he said.
In addition, the country director said that UNDP had been supporting Nigeria in mitigating the impact of climate change and other environmental challenges.
Beyai said the organisation assisted in preparing the Nigerian team for negotiation at the 21st Conference of Parties to Climate Change (COP 21) in Paris in 2015.
“We set up a team that prepared the Nigerian position; we inaugurated the team and gave them funding up to the level of presenting Nigerian position in Paris.
“We did that because Nigeria is a big country, leading other Africa countries to negotiate at COP 21 and we gave the assistance to give the team importance and credibility.”
The Country Director said that UNDP would …Read More
Source:: PM Newspaper
