By Yange Ikyaa
From November 6 to 18 2022, the African continent will play host to the 27th session of the Conference of Parties, or COP 27, of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
COP 27 was originally expected to take place from November 8 to 20 in 2021, this conference was rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, following another shift in date for COP 26 from November 2020 to November 2021.
In order for Africa to ensure a hitch-free summit, the presidencies of the previous and next sessions of the Conference of Parties have remained busy from the beginning of the year, engaging themselves at ministerial level, as well as at head of delegation and technical levels with a view to achieving the quality of work that is required to succeed in welcoming a global gathering to the world’s second largest continent for COP 27.
However, with climate change principally being driven by anthropogenic activities, especially through fossil fuel production and consumption or by ecosystem disruptions, such as deforestation and peatland destruction, it is pertinent to consider what is being done by Nigeria in addressing those environmental anomalies as Africa’s largest economy, most populous nation, and largest oil producer.
This is particularly a huge concern, considering the fact that Nigeria is known to have the highest rate of gas flaring at oil production sites in Africa, a practice considered as one of the leading climate change forcing factors. Although the percentage of gas flared in Nigeria has been reducing since 2002 and stood at 10% in 2018, in terms of volume of gas flared, the country still ranks among the top 10 gas-flaring countries in the world, with 7.4 billion cubic feet of gas flared in the year under review.
A review of COP 27 hosting plans by Valuechain shows that Egypt is planning to push countries to make good on their pledges to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, facilitate “non-adversarial” talks on compensation to developing countries for global warming impacts, and allow climate activists to protest.
In a recent conversation with the media, the country’s Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry, who is also the President-Designate for COP 27, the overall goal of the 2022 conference will focus on achieving the “implementation” of commitments made in the previous COP.
Shoukry maintained that the last summit held last year in Glasgow in Scotland finalized many commitments that were previously made during the Paris Agreement in 2015, with the aim of reducing emissions and limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) with respect to pre-industrial levels.
According to him, “the commitments and the pledges now have to be implemented in all sectors of the climate change agenda, whether it’s in adaptation, mitigation or finance, loss and damage.”
But the question now is: How is Nigeria, Africa’s largest greenhouse gas emitter taking its responsibility in this regard?
According to Prof. Chukwumerije Okereke, who is the Director, Centre for Climate Change and Development, at Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ebonyi State, climate change will cost Nigeria $460 billion by 2050 if action is not taken to mitigate its effects.
Speaking on the sidelines of the ninth international Lagos Climate Change Summit in Lagos recently, Okereke noted that climate change is already costing Nigeria $100 billion per annum, and that this amount will rise to about $460 billion per annum by 2050.
“From 2020 till now, climate change is already costing N15 trillion, representing two to 11 per cent of the GDP, and by 2050 climate change will be costing N69 trillion, representing six to 30 per cent of the GDP” he lamented.
The Nigerian academician, who is also a visiting professor to Oxford University, said that climate change was already having untold effect on flooding and rising sea levels in the country, where it is already affecting 25 million people.
His words: “In Yenegoa, there are 302,782 people estimated to be exposed to high flood risk along the Niger-Benue Basin in the Niger Delta area, with 630 kilometers of land susceptible to flooding.
“In Lagos, 375,000 people are exposed to flooding, and the number will increase to about 3.2 million people by 2050. The direct estimate of damage and loss is N1.48 trillion, and the total damage and loss, including indirect ones due to flooding is about N2.6 trillion.”
He also revealed that with the rise in sea level, an estimated 27 to 53 million people in the country might need to be relocated due to a 0.5-meter increase in sea levels.
With this current climatic scenario, coastal settlements such as Bonny, Forcados, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Warri and Calabar remain at risk, together with vast amounts of oil infrastructure.
The Nigerian government claims it has mapped out a lot of policies to mitigate the effects of climate change, including a long-term sustainability plan to achieve net-zero emission target by 2060 and the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to aggressively embark on actions to mitigate the impact of global warming.
However, according to Okereke, “the action on ground does not come anywhere near what is needed to arrest the situation or address the impact of climate change and to also reduce emissions from economic wide activity.
“So, we have a situation where we have a lot of various policies, documents but very limited action on the ground, and this worries me because I have been shouting that climate change poses an existential threat to Nigeria. We need to inject a lot of finance and a lot of action to stem the problem of climate change.”
Without the government effectively matching action with policies to achieve the desired results in climate change mitigation, the impact of climate change on our agricultural systems in the country is extremely high. This is not good for the national economy, as many Nigerians engage in one kind of agricultural activity or the other, and agriculture is responsible for about 26 per cent of the nation’s GDP.
“With climate change, you will have drought and it will affect different crops and impose even stronger, negative implications on food security system in the country.
“I have also argued that the depletion of the groundwater around the country caused by climate change has resulted in the movement of people from the north to the south, thereby fueling insecurity.
“So, you have desertification in the north, flooding in the west, erosion in the east and deforestation in the south.
“And all of these things are threatening the existence and the wellbeing of millions of Nigerians,” Okereke concluded.
One of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) series of Adaptation Gap Reports indicates that total bilateral and multilateral funding for climate change adaptation in developing countries has risen substantially in the five years leading up to 2014, reaching $22.5 billion. However, the report warns that despite this increase, there will be a significant funding gap by 2050, unless new and additional finance for adaptation is made available.
Ibrahim Thiaw, who is the Deputy Executive Director of UNEP, said “it is vital that governments understand the costs involved in adapting to climate change.
“This report serves as a powerful reminder that climate change will continue to have serious economic costs. The adaptation finance gap is large, and likely to grow substantially over the coming decades, unless significant progress is made to secure new, additional and innovative financing for adaptation.”
There have also been previous estimates that have placed the cost of adapting to climate change at between $70 to $100 billion annually for the period from 2010 to 2050, a figure which is based on a World Bank study from 2010. The Adaptation Finance Gap Report, which is written by authors from 15 institutions and reviewed by 31 experts, builds upon these earlier estimates by reviewing national and sector studies.
As a result, the report finds that the World Bank’s earlier figures are likely to be a significant underestimation. The true cost of adapting to climate change in developing countries could range between $140 and $300 billion per year in 2030, and between $280 and $500 billion per year in 2050, it says.
Adaptation costs are likely to increase sharply over time even if the world succeeds in limiting a global rise in temperatures to below two degrees Celsius by 2100, the report warns; further claiming that with higher scenarios of global warming, estimates of the adaptation costs in developing countries are higher even in early years.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has previously called on developed countries to provide $100 billion annually by 2020 to help developing countries mitigate climate change, and adapt to its impacts, such as drought, rising sea levels and floods.
However, while dedicated climate funds are breaking down the barriers to investing in adaptation projects in developing countries, contributions to these funds are low when compared to the contributions made to funds that mitigate climate change. In Nigeria, the Great Green Wall, which was designed as a massive tree-planting campaign to counter the southward expansion of the Sahara Desert, is progressing at a pace lower that is needed to achieve meaningful results.
At the global level, the Green Climate Fund, which was set up by the UNFCCC, with its stated goal of splitting funding equally between mitigation and adaptation efforts, is expected to play a significant role in efforts to fund adaptation, the report states.
“The adaptation finance gap is large, and likely to grow substantially over the coming decades, unless significant progress is made to secure new and additional finance for adaptation,” the report concludes.
“To meet finance needs and avoid an adaptation gap the total finance for adaptation in 2030 would have to be approximately six to 13 times greater than international public finance today,” said Thiaw. But bridging this gap is considered vital, if the world is to address future adaptation needs, especially those of developing countries.
The Paris Agreement on climate change, which was negotiated by 195 countries in December 2015, includes several key provisions designed to advance adaptation. Three are particularly very important, including the adoption of a global goal on adaptation, the commitment to increase developed country funding to developing countries, and the requirement that all parties draw up and regularly update adaptation plans and strategies.
The agreement also calls for balance between adaptation and mitigation finance and support in a bid to meet longstanding demand for adaptation finance from developing countries.
In Nigeria, The Great Green Wall Initiative for the Sahara and Sahel was adopted by the Heads of Governments and States of the African Union in 2005 to address the issues of desertification, land degradation, bio-diversity loss, and promote climate change resilience by ecosystems and communities, as well as improve food security in about 21 countries of the Sahel region in Africa.
The initiative does not literally mean building a green wall but is about a sustainable land management and restoration program adapted to the development priorities of the countries involved.
As part of its commitment to contribute to the African Union’s Great Green Wall of the Sahara and Sahel Region Initiative, Nigeria in 2015, through an Act of Parliament, set up the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW).
The focus is primarily on the following states which are affected by desertification (and by implication affecting the livelihood of over 50million people4); Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara. These areas constitute about 35% of Nigeria’s total land area.
“The mission of the NAGGW is to halt and reverse land degradation, prevent depletion of biological diversity, ensure that by 2025, ecosystems are resilient to climate change and continue to provide essential services that would contribute to human welfare and poverty eradication.”
Nigeria has further set up an institutional arrangement to enable it to implement the plans set out in its National Strategic Action Plan, which are: National Council on Great Green Wall, which is the governing body for the agency and provides policy direction for the programme implementation among others; the State Implementation Committee, which is responsible for coordinating the implementation of the programme at State level; and the Local Government Implementation Committee, which is to coordinate the implementation of the programme at Local Government and Community levels.