In a welcome address by the Representative of the Principal of GBHS Muea, Ms. Regina Tendonge thanked ERuDeF for honoring her school to host the event. She called on the students to pay attention to all the presentations and urged them to be at the forefront of building green cities.
Speaking during the ceremony, the Representative of ERuDeF’s CEO, Ms Ita Nawom, made a strong appeal to the young people, to practice sustainable ways of living, farming, waste disposal, building and water management given that they are the ones to take the fight for nature conservation to another level. She equally thanked the students for the candor with which they are approaching environmental issues and encouraged them to put all hands on deck and work towards building green cities because the effects would be enjoyed in generations to come.
Ms. Ita called on the students to respect the Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development’s recent ban on non degradable plastics, as it is a way of ensuring that the environment is kept clean and healthy. She urged the students to be ambassadors of the environment in their families and communities in her rhetorical question, what about planting a tree for each child born into our municipality?
On his part, the Head of ERuDeF’s Forest and Climate Change Unit, Kingsly Neba, drilled the students with a brief history of the World Earth Day Celebration explaining that it is an annual event celebrated each year worldwide on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. He told students the day has been designed to change human behaviour and provoke policy change towards a sustainable environment.
“As people migrate from rural areas to cities, the bleak reality of climate change becomes very evident. The need to create sustainable communities has become more important” He said. Kingsly Neba called on the audience to plant trees and flowers to improve the quality of air, reduce the production of waste, promote waste recycling, plant trees to protect water catchments and avoid the dumping of refuse on water courses.
His presentation provoked intriguing and challenging questions from students who sought to know what it takes in reality to build green cities. Kingsly Neba and other members of the panel provided satisfactory answers to the students.
The students of Charity Comprehensive Academy CCA presented a sketch on the dangers of killing threatened wildlife species for food while encouraging the public to read The Green Vision for information concerning the environment. The students were each offered a copy of the paper before moving to the field to take part in the tree planting exercise proper.
They were educated on how to create barestem nurseries by ERuDeF’s Botanist Ms Limbi Blessing. Ms Limbi explained to the students that these forms of nurseries were the best because of the non-degradable nature of polytene bags, formerly used during seed nursing. Students from all three schools nursed different agroforestry species including Acacia, Leucaena and Caliandra. They also planted seedlings of some threatened trees notably, Prunus and Mahoganay in the GBHS Muea campus in a bid to make the campus a green city.
The Coordinator of the Environmental Club of GBHS Muea, John Bunyui Njabe said, given his 20-year experience in the field of the environment, many more students are gaining awareness, through the cross-curricular approach he and others have been using to educate students on environmental issues. Being a Geography teacher, his vision is to see that environmental studies be included in the school curricula. Commenting on the ban on plastic bags, Mr. Njabe said plastics are not the only bio-non degradable product since there are others like bottles and other metals. He suggested sensitization on the proper use and disposal of plastics, and that government puts in place a recycling plan. He expressed fear of problems with the alternatives, e.g. it might be more expensive and give room for illegal importation.
The results of an essay competition on the theme ‘How To Build Green Cities’ were announced. The host school, GBHS Muea grabbed the first and third prizes, while CCA went home with the second prize. ‘I am overwhelmed, I didn’t expect to receive the first prize because the competition was really tough, however, this prize has encouraged me a lot, and I plan to do more, to be a real ambassador of the environment just as we have been called today to be’ said David Malong, winner of the first prize of the competition. His runners-up, Asah Brandon and Ngwane Bertina for second and third prizes respectively, had similar emotions to share. The other students expressed regret for not taking part in the competition and promised to do so in subsequent editions. Though with no prize to ride home with, students of BGS Molyko expressed happiness to have been honored to be part of the celebration and were grateful to ERuDeF for knowledge gotten.
By Immaculate Mkong
