While climate change is clearly one of the most socio-economic and development challenges facing Nigeria, many worry that Nigeria's approach to addressing it is riddled with puzzling contradictions.
The 28th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), otherwise referred to as COP28, held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, ended last week, after 14 days of what could ultimately be the world's most frenzied multilateral and bilateral engagements on climate change so far. The essence of these summits, since first convening in 1995, is to get governments signatories to the climate convention to agree on measures for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, in order to achieve the threshold necessary for the preservation of the environment and protection of humanity.
For context, the results of the first-ever UNFCCC Global Stocktake (GST) - a comprehensive collective review of the progress made towards meeting the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement - showed that the parties were not on course to limiting warming to 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. COP28 also took place in a year that may end up as the hottest ever on record, according to climate change experts. October had already been adjudged the hottest month ever on record.
Therefore, one of the major questions ahead of COP28 was whether countries would ratchet up their ambition to cut carbon emissions and specifically, whether a GST text would include the phasing out of fossil fuels, which are the main sources of global warming. The fact that COP28 was hosted by a major oil-exporting nation provided additional fuel for this concern. Nor did it help that the COP President, Mr Al Jaber, is the CEO of an oil company.
Other key issues included the operationalisation of the Loss and Damage Fund established at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. That agreement established a framework and principles for increasing adaptation under the Global Goal on Adaptation, and whether developing countries could extract more climate finance for both mitigation and adaptation measures from the rich countries.
The COP got off to a good start with several countries, including the UAE, Germany, the EU, and the UK pledging money towards the Loss and Damage Fund. By the end of the conference, over US$700 million had been pledged. However, the controversial statement of the COP28 President, who doubles as the UAE's Special Envoy for Climate Change, that there was "no science" yet confirming that the phasing out of fossil fuels will actually restrict global temperature to the desired 1.5°C limit, sparked considerable outrage and a feeling of betrayal of trust by some climate change activists and countries, which threatened to overshadow the progress made on other matters.
It is perhaps a testament to the resilience of the COP President and international negotiators that despite this initial controversy, COP28 ultimately managed to deliver a text, the "UAE Consensus," which commits the world to transitioning away from fossil fuels to reach net zero in a just, fair and equitable manner. Hence, COP28 became the first ever of these conferences in which 'fossil fuel' was mentioned in a climate text, a move that has caused some to declare that this marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. Other key achievements include the agreement to triple global renewable energy use and double energy efficiency, while states have been invited to submit strengthened economy-wide emission reduction pledges by 2024.
However, discussion on the Global Goal on Adaptation did not advance as much as expected and the statement on a workable framework, financial package and measurable timeline to scale up the adaptation effort to help vulnerable countries cope with the climate impact remained weak and vague. COP28 was also supposed to see meaningful progress on a new financial goal to replace the $100 billion promised by rich countries in COP19 at Copenhagen, but again very limited, if any, progress was made in this regard.
On the many agenda items in COP28, one witnessed a clear division between the developed countries, which are generally seeking to press for a more global ambition for decarbonisation, and developing countries that are seeking financial and technical support to help them address climate change, in line with the demands of equity and fairness. One also saw how several countries used the opportunity of the COP to push agenda that are in their national economic interests, such as France, which was pushing for nuclear energy, and Denmark which was pursuing the objective of energy efficiency.
President Bola Tinubu made the most of his participation with involvement in some high-level sessions and meetings with a number of world leaders, where he reiterated Nigeria's commitment to the global agenda and sealed an energy deal with Germany. There the government also launched its Long Term Low Emission Development Strategy (LT-LESTS), which sets out the pathways for achieving Nigeria's net zero pledge, as made by former President Buhari at COP26 in Glasgow.
However, his outing grabbed headlines for a different reason - the size of Nigeria's delegation to the event. An initial report put the number of participants at 4,011, exceeded only by those of the hosting United Arab Emirates' 4,409 delegates. But the true figure of 1,411 participants, which was later revealed, shared in ranking with the contingent from China.
Still, the revelation of a huge delegation precipitated rage from shocked Nigerians, who considered such a wasteful jamboree abhorrent amidst mass poverty and hunger in the country and the solicitous leak by public officials that Tinubu's government inherited a bankrupt treasury. The initial rebuttal of the Presidency through Temitope Ajayi, a special assistant on media and publicity, was a dismissal of the matter as a bagatelle. He denied that the quoted number of participants were all on government sponsorship, as there were numerous members of the Nigerian delegation actually from civil society groups and the private sector, which funded them. However, his pushback, shy of giving the actual number on government funding, only succeeded in stoking the fire, thereby prompting the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris, to issue a statement that only 422 delegates were publicly funded.
Yet, this did not appease critics who still felt that the high number represented another evidence of profligacy and abuse of the public treasury by the Tinubu administration. They pointed out that most of the delegates, including the President's son, Seyi, and personnel of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government without regulatory and oversight duties on the environment, had no business being at the conference. Some have insisted that the government should publicly disclose what this profligate outing cost in terms of flight tickets, hotel accommodation/feeding and estacode - the main drive of this needless caravan to COP28. The 2023 budget, which financed the trip, had a N11.34 trillion deficit funded by borrowing, before the appropriation of Tinubu's supplementary budget.
While climate change is clearly one of the most socio-economic and development challenges facing Nigeria, many worry that Nigeria's approach to addressing it is riddled with puzzling contradictions. On one hand, Nigeria has elaborated an ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), made a net-zero by 2060 pledge, launched a Long Term, Low Emissions Development Strategy and enacted a Climate Change law, which establishes a National Council on Climate Change. But on the other hand, it has lacked the political will to take ambitious action on mitigation and adaptation that comes close to matching the scale of the challenge. For example, despite making the promise to stop gas flaring in its NDC submitted in 2015, data from the National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) suggest the country lost a total of 4.2 billion standard cubic feet of gas, flared between 2012 and 2021, and which led to the loss of $14.6 billion in revenue. Added to this is a fine of $8.3 billion levied against the oil companies, yet to be paid, with all totalling $22.9 billion.
In Rivers, Delta, Imo, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Abia, Edo and Anambra states, there are 198 active flare sites, according to reports of the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR). A House of Representatives ad-hoc committee, chaired by Ahmed Munir, which investigated this a few months ago, at a post-investigative meeting with the Ministry of Environment, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and NOSDRA, vowed to recover over $9 billion fines from these errant oil firms.
Power generation still hovers at around 4,000 MW and despite ambitious pledges in the NDC, Nigeria still lags behind many African countries such as Kenya in the generation of electricity from renewable sources. Climate change puts Nigeria's littoral states in grave danger. Many of them, like Lagos, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Cross River, already sit below sea levels, while several cities and communities could be lost to Accelerated Seal Level Rise. According to the government's own estimate, climate-induced flooding is costing Nigeria billions of naira per annum. However, the government has not been able to go beyond writing documents and attending COP meetings to mobilise the kind of response needed to address these climate-related challenges.
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Desertification in the North, which is fuelled by drought, has not witnessed a convincing governmental response. Nigeria once committed to the planting of 25 million trees to boost its carbon sink and checkmate deforestation, as urged by the 2016 Paris Agreement. Still, what has been at play since then are inconsistent, ad-hoc and remedial measures. The net effect is human suffering and the exacerbation of insecurity, as herders migrate down the Southern part, leading to all sorts of conflicts with local communities. The felling of trees for firewood or energy ravages the ecosystem, leading to the burning of 32 million cubic metres of fuel wood annually, say experts. In the 20 years up to 2021, Nigeria lost 1.14 million hectares of tree cover, according to a Reuters report.
Concerted efforts to scale up renewable energy generation in the country, build sea-defence walls, stop gas flaring, and collect the $9 billion fines from oil firms, among other climate actions - not a COP jamboree - should be the true test of Nigeria's steely resolve to key into the global grid of climate change and green economy transition. Failure to discharge these will render the country's avowals at COP28 hollow.
Nigeria cannot escape nature's wrath over environmental degradation if a new governance template that abhors corruption is not put in place. And this includes judicious spending of the much-looted, mismanaged and misappropriated Ecological Funds. The federal government used N94 billion from it to finance budget deficits between 2009 and 2011, the MDAs took loans from it, while a former governor was jailed for shelling out N100 million out of his state's accrual to the South-West zone of his party in 2003 for elections, and helping himself to the balance. Erosion continues to devastate villages yearly over none or the improper deployment of the fund by governors.
With the curtain having fallen on COP28, all eyes are now globally on how much funds will ultimately be made available to developing nations to support their climate adaptation, mitigation and energy transition commitments by the big polluters - the US, China, India and others, among other imperatives. Already, the $30 billion voluntary pledges secured for climate-related projects seem minuscule when weighed against the challenges in contention.
