By Rotimi Ajayi

Since signing on to the Kyoto Protocol, Nigeria has been making efforts at developing the roadmap for tackling the threats and impacts of Climate Change.

Nigeria became a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 and thereafter the Kyoto Protocol. Immediately after signing on, the Federal Government commenced activities with the support of the Development Agencies, to develop series of documents that will aid in tackling Climate Change threats and impacts.

These documents include, the National Climate Change Policy, the first and second National Communications to the UNFCCC, the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) and the National Adaptation Strategy and Plan of Action (NASPA).

Last week both the Policy and NASPA were unveiled to stakeholders in Abuja. Now that the documents have been unveiled, the onus is now on the Federal Government to demonstrate leadership in national drive to save Nigerians from the impacts which the NASPA warned about.

The NASPA document read in part, “Climate change is already having significant impacts in Nigeria, and these impacts are expected to increase in the future. Recent estimates suggest that, in the absence of adaptation, climate change could result in a loss of between 2% and 11% of Nigeria’s GDP by 2020, rising to between 6% and 30% by the year 2050. This loss is equivalent to between N15 trillion (US$100 billion) and N69 trillion (US$460 billion).”

The document further underscored the position of the Federal Government on this. It read “the Government of Nigeria acknowledges the importance of developing a national response to climate change, and is taking steps to build a governance structure to manage the issue.

The Government first created a national focal point: the Special Climate Change Unit (SCCU) within the Federal Ministry of Environment. It also mobilized the Inter-ministerial Coordinating Committee on Climate Change.

In 2010, the National Assembly passed a bill to create a national Climate Change Commission, which, once established, will likely facilitate coordination and support for the multi-level and cross-sectoral adaptation responses. In addition, development of a National Climate Change Policy for Nigeria, and of a Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) programme document, is on-going.”

The Ministry of Environment supplemented these documents with a proposal for a National Climate Change Trust Fund. This is to ensure the availability of Fund to prosecute the projects that would evolve from the plan of actions. The proposal itself sells its imperativeness. It reads in part, “Climate change is a serious threat to poverty eradication and sustainable development in Nigeria.

This is because the country has a large rural population directly depending on climate sensitive economic and development sectors (agriculture and fisheries) and natural resources (such as water, biodiversity, grassland) for their subsistence and livelihoods.

In addition, the adaptive capacity of the rural majority to climate change impacts is very low. Unfortunately, most current development strategies in the country tend to overlook climate change risks. The costs of not addressing climate change or to adapt to it are very uncertain, but their welfare consequences are expected to be enormous.

In order to have a national coverage, the Federal Minister of Environment will need to cause an Executive Memorandum to be developed which will be taken to the Federal Executive Council for deliberation and adoption.

This should be followed with a Presidential memo that will be taken to the National Council of States so that the Governors could buy into the action plans.

The need for national coverage for implementation of the Plans of action stems from the fact that the impacts of climate change would spread across the geo-political zones of the country and the programs of adaptation and mitigation that would be needed to combats these would certainly have effects only if driven by the States and local Government and the organized Private Sector.