By Mashe Umaru Gwamna
Civil Society Organizations( CSOs), said Nigeria’s climate response has been largely inconsistent, incoherent, and exclusive.
This is as a result of failure to secure the buy-in of the citizenry.
This was contained in a
communiqué issued at the end of the National Conference on Climate Change, COP27 and Beyond, held at the Broadfield Hotel, from 29-30 September 2022.
The conference was attended by frontline communities, civil society, academics, development experts and representatives of various ministries departments and agencies of government at the federal, state, and local levels.
The two days conference was organised by the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA).
The conference was convened based on the realization that climate change is an existential threat that affects Africa more than other regions of the world despite her being the least contributor to the crisis.
Participants met to articulate a common climate change agenda for COP27 with emphasis on just energy transition; build consensus on the need for adequate climate financing for the implementation of adaptation and mitigation plans in Nigeria and Africa; and Interrogate Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions and Nigeria’s Climate Change Act 2021 and synergy in mode of implementation.
The group also shared perspectives on different topics extracted from Nigeria’s climate change response to the issues and politics of COP27’ and Nigeria’s just energy transition agenda.
The keynote address, entitled Nigeria, COP27 and The Quest for Real Solutions delivered by Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey, emphasized said, the yearly Conference of Parties (COPs) meetings have not achieved the purpose of holding the polluting rich countries and corporations accountable for climate change harms.
He said instead victim countries, especially in Africa are made to beg for climate finance with no success.
Bassey noted that the COPs have been reduced to a gathering of the rich and highly placed at the expense of vulnerable communities and nations that bear the brunt of the climate crises.
He explained that the solution to the climate crisis which essentially is about cutting emission at source has been replaced by the commodification of nature through mechanisms such as Net Zero, REDD, Carbon trading and other industry-promoted initiatives.
Similarly,during the panel discussions, participants observed that, climate change is an existential threat that affects Africa more than other regions of the world despite her being the least contributor to the crisis.
“The Conference of Parties meetings under the auspices of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is colonial in nature and has failed to hold the polluting nations and corporations accountable for their historic and ongoing climate atrocities.
“ The failure of the rich Global North countries to honour their climate finance pledges to vulnerable countries to help them adapt to climate change and mitigate further rises in temperature, is deliberate. It is a ploy to dodge responsibility for the historic loss and damage that Africa has suffered and continues to suffer.
“Carbon trading schemes and other false solutions stymy the political will to develop and deploy sound solutions to the climate crisis. They also displace the real and meaningful solutions that governments should be serious about prioritizing in the guidelines for implementation of the Paris Agreement which itself requires a review particularly to eliminate the voluntary emissions approach it has foisted on the world”,said .
Others are” No part of Nigeria is immune to climate impacts such as coastal erosion, desertification, drought and unusual weather patterns that continue to cause displacement, loss of life and livelihoods.
The 2022 floods which have inundated communities and farmlands across the federation, led to deaths, and rendered millions of Nigerians homeless, are yet to attract the needed attention and intervention by the Federal Government.
“Nigeria’s Climate Change Act is fraught with implementation challenges, questions are raised about its embrace of market mechanisms and unproven solutions including Net Zero, and REDD+ hence, the sustained call for its review.
“The Climate Change Council inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari during the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on 28 September 2022 to drive the implementation of the Climate Change Act still has lingering debates about the supposed functions of the Department of Climate Change.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s debt for climate swap deal proposal – which entails bilateral or multilateral debts be forgiven by creditors in exchange for a commitment by the debtor to use the outstanding debt service payments for national climate action programs – is still hazy and needs thorough scrutiny.
“Historical pollution is yet to be addressed in Nigeria’s Niger Delta as reflected in the flailing Ogoni clean up exercise. Instead, the oil corporations are divesting, dodging accountability, and passing the buck to indigenous oil companies.
11. Nigeria’s just energy transition path is still in murky waters as the nation will have to rely heavily on foreign support to deliver on its objectives, thereby throwing the policy up to foreign influence and suggestions.
“The labour workforce which is the crucial engine to the realization of the just energy transition discourse are largely left out, in the current discourse.
“The needed synergy between the Nigerian government and civil society/frontline communities to address climate crisis is absent”.
“The depth of reportage on climate change and particularly its impact on frontline communities, especially women is abysmal and mounting”.
The participants agreed that there is need to
comprehensive mapped environment and climate hotspots across Nigeria to pave way for resilient intervention initiatives.
Nigeria must lead the way among African nations in advancing the call for historical liability pay-up, loss and damage financing and penalties for failure to honour their COP commitments.
“Carbon trading schemes also stymy the political will to develop and deploy sound solutions to the climate crisis and displace the real and meaningful solutions that governments should be serious about prioritizing in the guidelines for implementation of the Paris Agreement.
Emphasis should be on a just, equitable and inclusive climate change agenda that will convey the interests of all, particularly the highly impacted frontline communities.
“The debt for climate swap proposal which entails bilateral or multilateral debts be forgiven by creditors in exchange for a commitment by the debtor to use the outstanding debt service payments for national climate action programs should be subject to scrutiny to ascertain its merits if there is any. Nigeria’s demand for funding support to address climate change must equally align with the demands of the African Group of Negotiators, being a regional engaging body.
“Continuous engagement of frontline communities, the vulnerable and women in climate discussions and ensuring that their voices are captured in climate policy formulation and implementation.
The ongoing divestments by International Oil Companies (IOCs) from onshore oil operations in the Niger Delta must be stopped to compel them to own up, pay up and clean up for their pollution and human rights abuses. The Great Green Wall project and the Lake Chad must be recharged to stop desert encroachment in northern Nigeria
“Synergy between federal and state-level interventionist institutions such as the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and their state level counterparts in response to early warnings systems activated by the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NHSA) and the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMET).
“Trainings and capacitation of Nigerian journalists to report climate change in-depth, to expose false solutions and sustained spotlight on real solutions to the crisis.
“Formation of a Nigeria Climate Watchdog comprising frontline communities, civil society, development experts, the academia, the media, among other crucial stakeholders to interrogate Nigeria’s climate change response pathway and advance the just energy transition campaign.
“Need to protect the rights of the indigenous people, the original landowners whose culture and livelihood are being eroded”.
Also, There is need to re-invent the Nigeria Social Forum is important and the same must accommodate sub-demands in the environment and climate change space.
“Alliance building, partnerships, and engagements with the National Climate Change Council, the African Group of Negotiators, and the UNFCCC processes.
Need to constitute a team that will develop clearly defined granular activities with the mandate to coordinate, prioritize and engage relevant state actors on a jointly developed climate change agenda. The team will also draw up a manifesto on areas of critical intervention as a body of work for sustained engagement
“Climate change must be mainstreamed into the country’s educational curriculum to spur interests amongst the youths and breed a generation of environmentally conscious activists.
“There is also need to simplify the prevailing climate change policy documents for easy assimilation and engaging of the younger generation.
Grassroots sensitization on climate change.
Initiate a Climate engagement plan by civil society with the Nigerian judiciary”, the group said .
