Daily Trust (Abuja)

Nigeria: The Country to Get Climate Change Commission

By Abdul-Rahman Abubakar and Turaki A. Hassan, 23 July 2009

Abuja — The Senate yesterday read for the third time a bill seeking to establish the National Climate Change Commission as a statutory body and to vest it with the responsibility to regulate, coordinate policies and actions on climate change in Nigeria and to set up a National Carbon Market Scheme in addition to tackling the effect of global warming and its impact on Nigeria.

Senators unanimously passed the bill after a clause by clause consideration of the report of its committee on Environment and Ecology which held a public hearing to gather more information and input on the bill from experts and cross section of Nigerians.

Sponsored by Senator Mohammed Kabiru Jibril (PDP, Kaduna Central), the commission when fully establish is expected to address all issues of environmental pollution, erosion, deforestation, desertification and effects of climate change on Nigerian dues to depletion of the ozone layers.

Addressing newsmen shortly after the bill was passed Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology Grace Folashade Bent (PDP, Adamawa South) said, "We have achieved a major landmark in our effort to tackle the menace of climate change in Nigeria."

Senator Bent said without the commission Nigeria will not be able to access international aid and grant to be paid third world nations by countries that have the highest emission of green house gases and said, "we can now go and negotiate with them and bargain since we have a laid down structure."

The bill stipulates that 10 percent of Ecological Funds and certain percentage of funds from the Consolidated Revenue Account will be given to the commission for the discharge of its duties.

The Commission will comprise of the department of Multilateral and Bilateral Programmmes, Statistics, Planning, Research and Policies, Administration and Services, Vulnerability, Adaptation and Mitigation, Monitoring and Regulation.

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  • Steve Klaber
    Jul 23 2009, 09:50
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    Good start! But to fight climate change and drive back the desert, concentrate more on the water cycle than the carbon cycle. Get your waters functioning properly and they will water and cool your drylands. To fix your waters, you must clear them of their weeds and the silt that they have generated. This is a never ending task, that needs the profit available in biofuels. It's there! Your dominant weed, Typha, is an excellent fuel plant, readily made into charcoal, biomass briquettes, ethanol or methane. The fact that, with the commission, you could probably get carbon credits for harvesting the weeds for fuel is all very well and good, but to be sustainable, the harvest must be profitable without "funny money". It can be profitable, the energy market is insatiable.

    Imagine your nation and its neighbors cleared of these weeds. Imagine Lake Chad restored, the Sahel verdant, the desert shrunken. Imagine malaria extinct, and Quelea no longer a problem. These things can be! The main obstacle is a bunch of weeds.