Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency has urged Nigeria to effectively utilise the country’s satellites in a bid to monitor natural forests, agriculture and water.
Dr Emmanuel Obeng, a Senior Program Officer at Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, was speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria in Abuja at a training programme on the use of African Monitoring of the Environment for Sustainable Development (AMESD).
Obeng said information gathered from many earth satellites would assist Nigeria in the development of its environment, agricultural and water sectors.
He said: “We are making the product known to all the sector institutions that we have products that we can use to monitor bushfires, we have products that can be used to monitor forests, agriculture and water.
“Thereafter, we encourage them to form a network. If these products are known, as it is, they show you trend of bush fires.
“With time, it will help them as they are directed to take decisions on it: which parts to organise people to fight bushfires because the product will show you bushfire incidents daily.
“Small water bodies that vary within the year, part of the year they will be there, part of the year they will not be there and this product will help you to know where they are and what are they.”
Nigeria has an AMESD satellite reception station in Kaduna, North Central Nigeria. From their, information is transmitted to three other receiving stations.
Obeng also advised his Nigerian colleagues to utilise the sector’s capacity in harnessing data potential to improve the environmental sector.
