Climate Change: LASG, UNICEF calls for collaboration to protect children
The Lagos State Government on Monday urged individuals and groups to collaborate with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to protect children from effects of climate change.
The Commissioner for Youth and Social Development, Mr Mobolaji Ogunlende, said this at the Climate Action for Children programme, organised by UNICEF Lagos Office to mark the World Children’s Day.
Speaking on the topic, ‘Climate Change; with a focus on Children and Climate’’, Ogunlende said everyone must adopt necessary measures to keep the children safe and ensure clean, safe and healthy environment.
According to him, we must encourage and support ourselves to create the awareness and do the right thing. A lot of advocacy needs to be done to send the message across to the world because it’s all about the children.
“Climate Change is very significant in today’s world and keeping the environment clean and ensuring safer community is a task everyone must be involved with. We must all come together collectively to ensure it works.
“Children need a safe, healthy and friendly environment where they can grow and thrive, which is the reason Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s administration is taking the issue of climate change very seriously as one of our key drivers in the THEMES Plus Agenda.
“The E in the acronym is Environment, which is purely making the environment clean, greener and safe. Therefore, its very important for every one of us to take this initiative very seriously.” Ogunlende said.
The commissioner said that the Private Public Partnership (PPP) was part of measures to attain a healthy environment, saying that the idea was for the group to operate in the 57 Local Government Areas across the state.
“Whenever we generate any kind of refuse or waste, we must form the habit of putting it in the right place and that is why we encourage the PPP. By so doing, everyone is contributing and we’ll make progress,” he said.
Ogunlende said that plans were underway to reinstate the monthly environmental sanitation, a cleaning exercise usually observed every last Saturday of the month.
He added that it also fostered unity in the communities.
Earlier, the Chief of UNICEF Lagos Field Office, Mrs Celine Lafoucriere, said that the body described ‘November 20’ as an annual day to celebrate the children in line with the declaration of the Child’s right in UN Assembly.
According to her, in UNICEF, we believe that for every child, there should be ‘climate action’ being the reason we gather the government, Ministry of Youth and Social Action which shows a strong commitment.
“It is most important that we support children and work with them in everything that we are doing so that they can defend, acquire their rights as they grow up and become the agent of change for tomorrow.
“Very importantly, we have our private partners teaming up with us to make sure that for every child, there’s a ‘climate action’ and with these collaborations we can do a whole lot more, especially for children who ‘it is their turn, their time, their future.” Lafoucriere said.
She stressed that the role of parents, teachers and community leaders was key, as they had important roles to play in supporting the children to understand what their rights are and how they can protect them.
The programme had in attendance students, from across Lagos State, young people, private sector organisations and Olivia Arimokwu (Talent Acquisition Manager) as members of the panel session.
