- Stakeholders Seek Action Towards Nigeria’s Climate Adaptation
Poised to ensure that Nigeria fully adapt to climate change, stakeholders have called for a new line of thinking that support a green economy.
According to them, such initiatives could be enshrined within reviewed national laws, and local councils’ action plans.
The call was contained in an interim report from the workshops held in Lagos by a Nigerian non -governmental organisation, the Community Conversation and Development Initiatives (CCDI) in collaboration with the Federal Republic of Germany through its ministry of Foreign Affairs.The themes of the two separate workshops are; “Climate Risk Insurance and Environmental and Social Impact Assessment for the Transition to a Green Economy in Nigeria”.
According to them lack of comprehensive government blueprint of sequential plans of action on the subject, has make it difficult to re-invigorate international commitments on multilateral environmental and climate change agreements at the national level.They stressed that insurance could help Nigeria reduce climate induced risks, noting that the development of agriculture, forestry and fisheries sits within a system affected by both climate and the political economy, mostly because the farming system is rain-fed.According to them, Nigeria can build up its resilience from early warming systems but equally through development of better crop varieties adaptable to extreme climate variability.
They therefore stressed the need for the insurance industry to be more creative and develop new and unique green products, get more global experience of green insurance products and services and rating systems, possibly from sustainable finance initiatives in Ghana, Kenya as well as setting up working groups to address the limited awareness within the Nigerian Insurance industry.
According to them, green insurance and how adoption of principles for sustainable Insurance (UNEPFIPSI) should be encouraged.They also stressed the importance of environmental and social impact assessment before the beginning of projects.
According to them, President’s Muhammadu Buhari’s signing of the Paris Agreement on September 22, 2016 and his declaration that the impacts of climate change would be reversed in Nigeria suggested that the nation’s economic growth must henceforth, be driven by a suite of polices and governance mechanisms targeted at reducing carbon and ecological footprints. This perspective, they said could be enshrined within reviewed national laws, edicts, policies and through states and local councils action plans.