Nigeria’s Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Change, Nkiruka Maduekwe, has said the federal government would be exploring ways to amplify “nature-based solutions” this year to address lingering climate problems in the country.
Ms Maduekwe, who is also the Director-General/Chief Executive Officer, National Council on Climate Change Secretariat (NCCCS), disclosed this on Friday during an interactive session with Journalists in Abuja.
|
|
She seized the opportunity to reveal some of the Council’s climate-related activities that would be embarked upon for the year.
She explained that Nigeria is situated in one of the global hotspots of high human vulnerability, and continues to experience the adverse impacts of climate change, such as droughts, rising temperatures, erosion, deforestation, flooding, desertification, and increasing sea levels.
|
|
|
|---|
Climate change impacts
In recent years, increased frequency of extreme weather events such as the changing rainfall patterns and delayed rainfall among others, have significantly affected agricultural productivity, businesses and infrastructural development across different parts of the country.
The lingering impacts of climate-induced crises are evident in the back-to-back flood disasters experienced across major food producing regions in the past three years, with farmers being the hardest hit after losing most of their crops to drought—due to delayed rainfall in the early part of the year- and severe flooding amidst heavy rainfall in the later months.
Last year, Nigeria’s disaster management agency, NEMA, hinted that floods killed over 303 people and affected over 1.2 million persons. The disaster also injured over 2,712 people, inundated over 1161,539 hectares of farmland, and completely damaged 106,000 hectares.
NEMA said 673,333 people were also displaced. Meanwhile, several communities and cities in at least 201 local government areas across over 30 of Nigeria’s 36 states were also affected by floods, which resulted in dire humanitarian conditions, amidst significant shortfall in the prices of major staple foods in the country.
In her remarks, Ms Maduekwe said these impacts are further exacerbated by prior existing vulnerabilities such as high rate of poverty, exposure to security threats leading to massive displacement of persons, property loss, migration, and disruption of economic activities and normal functions of the society.
She said approximately 70 per cent of the country’s population is dependent on climate-sensitive livelihoods, such as smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and fishing communities, and a huge population of over 220 million, projected to reach over 400 million by the year 2050.
Measures
Based on this, the NCCCS boss said the Council has adopted “Amplifying Nature-Based Climate Solutions” as their theme for the year 2025, which is anchored on Section 27 of the Climate Change Act 2021.
To kick-start this, she said the NCCCS is embarking on a technical site visit to the Mangrove Forest located majorly in the Niger Delta region of the country.
“Nigeria’s mangrove forest is indicated as the largest in Africa and third (3rd) largest in the world, covering approximately 5 per cent of the global mangrove forest,” Ms Maduekwe said.
Given the drive towards utilising nature-based solutions as critical mitigation and adaptation strategies to addressing climate change, she said Nigeria’s mangrove forest provides an easy win with their remarkable capacity for carbon sequestration and contribution to coastal resilience, amongst others.
Exploring mangrove potentials
Additionally, she noted that Nigeria’s mangrove forest has the potential to serve as a hub for global climate finance, through the carbon market.
Ms Maduekwe said the planned technical visit to the country’s mangrove regions would allow the NCCCS to have an aerial assessment of the impact of climate change on the mangroves, foster collaboration in driving reforestation and conservation of the mangrove.
Other objectives of the visit include to socialise the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) , the Carbon Market Policy, engender a whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach in the ongoing third round of NDC review process.
She explained that they would showcase the mangrove forest across the Niger Delta as part of a comprehensive strategy to enhance understanding of ecosystem services, strengthen local partnerships for sustainable mangrove conservation, inform carbon credit systems, and foster disaster risk reduction to develop financing strategies for the benefit of the state.
The official noted that as part of the World’s Wetlands Day and in furtherance to the 2025 theme of Amplifying Nature-Based Climate Solutions, the NCCCS will be convening a Stakeholder Town Hall Meeting in collaboration with the Nigeria Conservation Foundation and the Climate Change Council Cross Rivers State.
“The Town Hall Meeting provides the crucial platform for all relevant stakeholders to discuss the next steps towards ensuring sustainable mangrove conservation and protection in Nigeria,” she said.
She said a key output from the proposed meeting is the National Roadmap on Mangrove Conservation, Reforestation, Afforestation, and Protection.
This Roadmap, she said, is expected to align with the ongoing NDC 3.0 review and indicate clear avenues to drive finance for mangrove conservation and protection in Nigeria.
“There is the need to leverage on the Mangrove Breakthrough Initiative launched at the COP27 with the objective to raise $4 Billion USD sustainable finance for mangrove conservation and reforestation,” Ms Maduekwe said.
Other activities
In addition to the Mangrove programme, the NCCCS said it would deliver several other climate-related activities by working closely with the various MDAs to actualise its mandate.
It listed some of the activities planned for the year to include: The Youth Climate Summit; Tree Planting as part of the Earth Day and Environmental Day; Capacity Building for MDAs on the Climate Change Desk Operationalisation; Mangrove Art Exhibition; Climate Negotiators Training; Climate Security Summit; and UNFCCC COP 30.
“It is important to note that the NCCCS will be working closely with the media to ensure early notification of the UNFCCC CoP30 registrations. The NCCCS has scheduled 1st July 2025 as the start-date to receive the request for accreditation and 29th September 2025 as the request deadline,” the official said.
To ensure that all ministries are kept abreast of these important dates, she said the NCCCS has disseminated its 2025 Activities Schedule to all ministries.
The COP 30 registration portal will be used as the platform to receive accreditation requests from MDAs and the private sector, she noted.
Discover more from Premium Times Nigeria
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
