Part of my nation is underwater. Seasonal flooding is normal in Nigeria, but not like this. Thirty-four of the country’s 36 states have been affected. More than 1.4 million people have been displaced. Together with drought-driven famine in the Horn of Africa, cascading wildfires across the North and wave upon wave of intensifying cyclones in the South, climate disasters in Africa form the backdrop to this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference (known as COP27) in Egypt.
Many of my peers are frustrated with Western hypocrisy and its inability to take responsibility. Governments have repeatedly failed to meet their commitments to the $100 billion fund for climate adaptation and mitigation in the developing world — for the mess their own industries caused. According to the United Nations, Africa is the continent worst affected by climate change despite contributing the least to it. Even though the COP27’s agenda notes the need for compensation for loss and damages (as distinct from adaptation and mitigation funding), that demand has mostly been met with silence in the West.
Amid this simmering acrimony, I offer a few words of advice to Western negotiators at this year’s COP27. They should help the West avoid exacerbating what the U.N. secretary general has called “a climate of mistrust” enveloping our world. Some of the global south’s demands seem obvious. But experience of the recent past suggests they need to be reiterated.
First, rich countries should direct a greater share of funding to developing nations’ adaptation to the effects of climate change. Most financing currently flows toward mitigation projects, such as renewable energy projects, that reduce emissions. While such projects have their uses, far more money needs to go to helping Africa adapt to the effects of climate change — which seems only fair for a continent that produces less than 3 percent of global emissions.
Africa urgently needs investment in adaptation infrastructure — such as flood prevention systems — to stave off the disasters that destroy communities and cripple economies.
Second, don’t tell Africans they can’t use their own resources. If Africa were to use all its known reserves of natural gas — the cleanest transitional fossil fuel — its share of global emissions would rise from a mere 3 percent to 3.5 percent.
We are not the problem. Yet the continent needs a reliable source of power if it is to pull millions of citizens out of poverty and create jobs for its burgeoning youth population. Africa’s future must be carbon-free. But current energy demands cannot yet be met solely through weather-dependent solar and wind power.
Don’t tell Africa that the world cannot afford the climate cost of its hydrocarbons — and then fire up coal stations whenever Europe feels an energy pinch. Don’t tell the poorest in the world that their marginal energy use will break the carbon budget — only to sign off on new domestic permits for oil and gas exploration. It gives the impression your citizens have more of a right to energy than Africans.
Third, when you realize you need Africa’s reserves, don’t cut its citizens out of the benefits. In the wake of the Ukraine war, there has been a resurgence of interest in Africa’s gas. But this impulse is coming from Western companies — backed by their governments — who are interested only in extracting these resources and then exporting them to Europe.
Funding for gas that benefits Africa as well as the West is conspicuously lacking. At last year’s COP, Western governments and multilateral lenders pledged to stop all funding for overseas fossil fuel projects. Without these pools of capital, Africa will struggle to tap the gas needed to boost its own domestic power supply. Consequently, its development and industrialization will suffer. Donor countries don’t believe in the developing world exploiting its own hydrocarbons even as they pursue new oil and gas projects within their own borders.
Western development has unleashed climate catastrophe on my continent. Now, the rich countries’ green policies dictate that Africans should remain poor for the greater good. To compound the injustice, Africa’s hydrocarbons will be exploited after all — just not for Africans.
Fourth, follow your own logic. Africa is told that the falling cost of renewables means that it must leapfrog carbon-emitting industries. At the same time, Western governments are effectively paying their citizens to burn more hydrocarbons: Lavish subsidy packages have been drawn up to offset spiraling energy bills. Meanwhile, Africa is the continent closest to being carbon-neutral. It reserves the right to plug holes in its energy mix with the resources in its ground — especially when they will make almost no difference to global emissions.
The Western countries are unable to take politically difficult decisions that hurt domestically. Instead, they move the problem offshore, essentially dictating that the developing world must swallow the pill too bitter for their own voters’ palates. Africa didn’t cause the mess, yet we pay the price. At this year’s COP, that should be the starting point for all negotiations.
FG to scale up climate change adaptation plan
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajia Sadiya Umar Farouq has expressed the commitment of the Federal government to scale up climate change adaption in Nigeria through her ministry, in order to build community resilient and adaptation practices to mitigate and reduce the consequent of climate change.
Speaking during a side event on “Scaling up Climate Change Adaptation in Nigeria” organised by her Ministry in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Environment at COP 27, taking place in Egypt, the Minister explained that;
“Our communities are composed of the poor, elderly, children and persons living with disabilities the addition effect of climate change has rendered them more vulnerable than they already are. “
The Minister expressed the resolve of her ministry to mitigate the impact of climate change on the vulnerable members of the society through the scaling up of climate change adaptation in Nigeria.
Stating that From the humanitarian perspective her Ministry will work with the Nigerian adaptation plan which seeks to reduce the vulnerability of communities to the impact of climate change by building adaptive capacity and resilience, the minister added that the plan also advocates integration of climate change adaptation in to relevant new and existing policies programme and activities as well as developing planning process and strategies.
“The reason we are here today is to harness and discourse good practices programme and strategies that other countries are using to reduce vulnerabilities to climate change”
“We want to know how to build adaptive capacities and resilience in line with national and international policies and commitment in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation”
“Specifically we want to know how to identify and map out climate change risk better we harmonise input and launch a people centred climate change adaptation in collaboration with key partners like the federal ministry of environment and other relevant Ministry Department and Agencies”
Earlier in his remarks, the Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdulahi quoting the report of the inter-governmental panel on climate change affirmed that by 2050 many coastal mega cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt and other low line coastal cities in Nigeria will in a century witnessed weather catastrophe every year affecting millions of people and properties and causing devastation.
The minister said Nigeria has taken bold step to develop the Adaptation Communication guided by the NAP Global Network, saying the adaptation communication will play central role in identifying national needs and enable international follow up while informing future action, driving ambition and contributing information for the global stock taking.
“It is obvious that the challenges of climate change are enormous and since no individual Ministry can confront the challenges alone, we are calling for joint and cooperative efforts to tackle the problem, it is therefore pertinent that we begin to take our pledges into action as take away from COP 27” He said.
