By Chris Ochayi

The European Union, EU, support for Nigeria’s climate change programme, has received a major boost with the EU’s resolve to engage journalists as relevant stakeholders to tackle adverse impact of the global warming on Nigeria.

The EU as parts of it’s determination to achieve this goal had organized two day stakeholders engagement for Journalists, aimed to properly educate and inform the public to desist from activities that could aggravate global warming and degradation.

The European Union Nigerian Climate Change Response Programme, EU-NCCRP, in collaboration with the Department of Climate Change, DCC, Ministry of Environment organized the meeting for journalists under the Nigerian Journalists for Climate Action Network, NIJOCAN, held weekend in Keffi in Nasarawa State.

Declaring the meeting open, the Deputy Director, Department of Climate Change, DCC, Mrs. Victoria Paul said federal Government was ready to involve in collaborative engagement with relevant stakeholders in order to achieve its global commitment at reducing Green House Gas Emissions by 2023.

Mrs paul noted that this became necessary as government can not achieve this alone.

IAccording to her, ” Following the ratification of the Paris Agreement in 2017, Nigeria committed itself to conditionally reduce its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emission by 45 now upscaled to 47% in 2030 in line with its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) pledge.”

To support Nigeria’s efforts towards the full implementation of its conditional NDC target, the European Union under the Global Public Goods and Challenges Thematic Programmes, is funding the provision of technical assistance for the implementation of the Nigerian Climate Change Response”

She commended the development partners, European Union for their unrelenting efforts towards ensuring that Nigerian’s conditional commitment to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG| emissions by 47% by 2030 is achieved

In his remarks earlier the Team Lead, European Union Nigerian Climate Change Response Programme , Mr Tod Ngara pledged the organisation commitment to assist Nigeria achieved its mandate through the commitment.

On his part, Communication and Capacity expert, Nigerian Climate Change Response Programme Kayode Elegbeleye urged Journalists to hold government accountable for their actions through their reportage.

Elegbeleye exposed participants to the need to uphold the ethics of the profession and brace up their knowledge to compete favourable with their counterpart globally.

High points of the programme was the development of twelve month action plan and commitment to ensure climate issues where put in the front burner.

Meanwhile, members of NAJOCAN according to the communique issued at the end of the meeting agreed to play their roles in the collaborative reporting project with the EU-NCCRP by highlighting creative and promising innovations adopted by the Nigerian government to tackle the climate change crisis. “

The communique reads, “That NIJOCAN has developed a template for it’s 12-month Action Plan highlighting actionable storylines with specific thematic areas on climate change, dates of delivery of the stories, designated media organisations and team lead for each area.

“That NIJOCAN will report and elevate the voices of those with lived experiences of Climate Change impact and in so doing help them to mitigate and adapt to climate change events in the country.

“That NIJOCAN has developed and refined our vision partly articulated in an operable 12-month Action Plan produced at the stakeholders meeting.”

“That progress made by NIJOCAN in the implementation of the collaborative reporting project action plan will be evaluated by a combined team of the NCCRP and the DCC.

“That NIJOCAN has agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding with the NCCRP to create the needed awareness on climate change through robust reporting/publication of the subject matter to alleviate poverty, promote Climate Change Action’, promote local programmes aimed at economic justice for Nigerians.

“That members of NIJOCAN commend the Goodwill and initiative of the DCC, Federal Ministry of Environment; the NCCRP and the European Union for the efforts made to help Nigeria achieve it’s set climate action targets.

NIJOCAN members are drawn from different media organisations and cover beats such as Agriculture, Environment, finance, defence etc.