Environmental experts have decried worsening environmental degradation in South South and urged strict enforcement of laws to protect the environment from further damage.

The stakeholders stated this during a survey on the state of the environment, saying environmental challenges in the region were caused by both natural and human activities.

They identified environmental degradation in the region, including erosion, carbon emissions, water pollution, tree felling, and ocean encroachment, among others, and urged governments to do more with their ecological funds to save the environment.

In Rivers State, environmental experts urged authorities to enforce existing laws to safeguard the earth as they decried the increasing pollution resulting from human activities and called for adequate utilisation of ecological funds.

Chibuogwu Eze, the Director of the Institute of Pollution Studies at Rivers State University, criticised the level of underground water pollution in the Niger Delta, saying that poisonous substances, including lead, infiltrate underground water Eze attributed the pollution of underground waters to the neglect of fuel station operators in maintaining their underground storage tanks, which sometimes leaked fuel into underground waters, which, in turn, seeped into the boreholes.

Fyneface Dumnamene, executive director of the Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre (YEAC-Nigeria), analysed the ecological funds disbursements and faulted states, particularly Rivers, for inadequate spending of the fund.

In Cross River, Francis Bissong, a professor of Conservation and Biogeography at the University of Calabar, said large-scale logging had been going on around the key forest corridors in the state.