NGOs in Niger on Wednesday urged Nigerians to use less wood to grill their mutton during this year’s Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha in a bid to save precious trees.
They begged them to replace wood with locally sourced charcoal for the barbecue at the festival beginning this weekend, called Tabaski in West Africa.
The capital Niamey alone uses “around 50,000 tons” of wood – or the equivalent of 25,000 trees – for the festival each year, the Environment Department said.
“Mutton grills during Tabaski create abusive wood consumption that simply cannot continue with the climate crisis,” Sani Ayouba, the coordinator of one of the groups participating in the campaign, told AFP.
Two-thirds of Niger is covered in desert, and each year the landlocked country loses more than 100,000 hectares (1,000 square kilometers) of farmland to desertification, the government says.
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