Education
Nigeria’s land ownership system, major driver of forest destruction – CSO – EnviroNews
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A civil society organisation (CSO), We The People, says that Nigeria’s land ownership system has become a major driver of forest destruction and weakens indigenous communities’ control over forests.
The organisation’s Executive Director, Ken Henshaw, disclosed this on the sideline of a capacity-building workshop for members of the Cross River Indigenous Forest Host Communities Network, in Calabar, Cross River State, on Friday, July 3, 2026.
The theme of the workshop is: “Building resilience, rights and global solidarity.”
Henshaw said sustainable forest conservation would remain impossible without indigenous communities occupying the centre of planning, policy formulation and implementation.
He argued that communities had been systematically excluded from forest governance despite being ancestral custodians with deep cultural and economic ties to the forests.
According to him, several government forest conservation policies, including the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme, failed to achieve expected environmental and economic outcomes.
“Available records show that deforestation increased during the implementation of REDD+, while anticipated carbon credit revenues also failed to materialise,” he said.
Henshaw blamed repeated policy failures on weak implementation and the exclusion of forest-dependent communities from conservation decisions.
He criticised governments for frequently invoking overriding public interest to revoke community land rights for highways, plantations, logging concessions and other projects.
“Overriding public interest should prioritise citizens’ welfare, livelihoods and ecosystem protection instead of government revenue generation,” he said.
Henshaw urged forest communities to reclaim their agency and actively participate in protecting forests and influencing environmental policies affecting their ancestral lands.
Also speaking, Mr. Nsikak Udofot, Project Officer on Mining and Forestry, challenged claims that host communities were the primary drivers of deforestation.
Udofot alleged that many large-scale forest destroyers originated outside Cross River and warned that newly planted trees could not quickly replacement lost carbon storage as mature forests stored enormous amounts of carbon accumulated over centuries,
The Project Coordinator of the Cross River Indigenous Forest Host Communities Network, Carlos Akpet, called for community action plans, saying practical grassroots mobilisation remained essential to reversing forest loss.
By Christian Njoku
