Despite the clear reality of the menace of climate change on the environment, economy and infrastructure, Nigeria still appears unaware of the looming danger of not taking steps to check the growing impact of the problem.
But environmentalists, experts and other participants in a national conversation on the issue in Abuja on Wednesday called for concerted efforts to tackle the problem, to avert a high roll of the looming disaster.
The event was the presentation of a report titled “Climate Change and Socio-Economic Development in Nigeria’ by Agora Policy, an Abuja-based socio-economic policy think tank on the theme “Nigeria, Climate Change and the Green Economy”.
Supported by MacArthur Foundation, the event which also featured a panel discussion on the theme not only highlighted the high cost of inaction in the face of the growing reality of climate change, but also called for urgent interventions to tackle the emerging consequences, by mainstream the issue of climate change into the nation’s plans and development processes.
In presenting the highlights of the report, a professor of Global Climate and Environmental Governance, Chukwumerije Okereke, who is also the Director of the Centre for Climate Change and Development at Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike in Ebonyi State gave a snap shot of the dangers to the Nigerian economy if nothing was done urgently to address the problem.
“Climate change is increasing hunger, poverty, disease-burden, migration, confict and insecurity in Nigeria. It is damaging infrastructure, changing Nigeria’s coastlines, fuelling desertification, producing water scarcity, facilitating erosion and resulting in the loss of revenue for states and the national government. The total economic cost of climate change to Nigeria is estimated at about $100 billion cumulatively.
“Climate change may also cause Nigeria to lose trillions of dollars in stranded assets,“ Okereke said.
He warned that the cost of doing nothing urgently to check the menace was huge, pointing out that if by 2050 nothing was done about climate change, Nigeria may not exist as we know it today.
“Our sea level expansion is accelerating everyday, resulting in the loss of about 600 metres of the nation’s coastlands. If nothing is done urgently, by 2050,communities will disappear, and infrastructures worth billions of dollars would be lost, while the country’s economic poverty will increase to about $1.1 billion, with an additional 4 million cases due to the impact of climate change,” he said.
The World Bank country director in Nigeria, Shubham Chauduri, underlined the importance of awareness on the dangers of climate change among relevant stakeholders, and the need for partnership to tackle the impact of climate change on the environment and economy.
At the World Bank, Chauduri said one of its programmes was to ensure climate resilience by helping and supporting Nigeria build capacity to be able to respond to the reality of climate change.
He said although Nigeria had enough white papers, documents, and policies on the damaging consequences of climate change, what the country required urgently was concrete action to safeguard its people and the entire environmental ecosystem from the destructive impact of a changing climate.
During the panel discussion moderated by Amara Nwakpa, most of the panelists, including the Director General of the National Council of Climate Change, Salisu Dahiru; Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Bank, Abubakar Suleiman; Programme Officer, Ford Foundation, and Senior Officer, Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Tengi George-Ikoli, canvassed for concrete policies and actionable initiatives to tackle the menace of climate change.
They said Nigeria’s capacity to fight poverty, achieve sustainable development goals, increase national productivity and competitiveness may be impaired if the issue of climate change was not given the desired attention as a collective concern and not the business of a few.
For George-Okoli, what Nigeria needs to interact more with the agencies in the international community to learn from their ideas, experiences and programmes.
Apart from developing “bankable climate change resilient projects”, she said Nigeria needed to initiate “more specifically” projects that would help achieve its net-zero goals.
She emphasised the role of technology, finances, technical capacity building and human resource development to be able to shift from fossil fuels to renewables to curtail the impact of devastation of the extractive industries to the environment, which is at the heart of the climate change issue today.
In his introductory remarks, the Founder of Agora Policy and host of the event, Waziri Adio, said the public presentation of the 84-page report was to create a platform to deliberate on how Nigeria can minimise the burdens and maximise the opportunities of climate change.
Adio said the event organised as part of the preparation for Nigeria’s participation in the forthcoming COP28 schedule for Dubai, United UAE between November 30 and December 12, 2023 was to help in raising the status and the depth of climate change discussion and action in Nigeria.
“Climate change does not enjoy the prominence that it deserves in Nigeria. Climate change still does not rank very high on our policy agenda and in our popular imagination. Our national attitude oscillates between denial and indifference.
“But the rise in temperature, the irregular raining patterns, the near perennial flooding across the country, the increasing threats of desertification and gully erosion and others already have deep, negative impacts on food production, food security and food inflation, and on water, on health and productivity, on energy and infrastructure, and on the conflicts that continue to multiply partly on account of vanishing natural resources, are real.
“Whether we want to accept it or not, whether we think it is other people’s or our own headache or not, whether we think it is our portion or not—climate change is already exerting a big toll on the things we consider critical and urgent. It is already here and now, not a matter of hereafter. It is not what we can simply wish away by faith,” Adio said.
