Climate Action: Stakeholders Chart Ways Toward Emission Targets

Stakeholders have converge on Abuja, Nigeria’s capital to chart a way forward for Nigeria’s emissions targets.

The event organised by the National Council on Climate Change, NCCC, is the second phase of the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency, ICAT, Project.

ICAT IN-Country Cordinator, Dr Bala Bappa, said the expectations from the workshop is to help Nigeria to develop the “Monitoring Reporting and Verification MRV framework,” which will support the Nigeria deliver the Nationally Determined Contributions NDC’s requirement of the Paris Agreement.

“We have five priorities sector the IPPU was not covered in the initial support in the first phrase, so it necessitated the development of this Project to include the IPPU which is Industries Production and Processes Use, it is also called the Industries that is why we are here to interact with the stakholders to get their imput towards developing a robust framework MRV framework for the IPPU sector” he said.

He noted that the technical support will provide Nigeria with the adequate capacity to develop and apply a sectoral MRV system to measure the performance of the targeted climate policies and actions defined for the Industrial Processes and Other Product Use (IPPU) sector.

He further stated that ICAT also aimed to use the technical support to integrate this sectoral MRV system into the national overarching MRV system under the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) of the Paris Agreement.

“The technical support will also help Nigeria to successfully apply good practices and tools that integrate transparency on climate policies and action with evidence-based policymaking and assessment of the impacts (in terms of transformational change methodology, GHG emissions) of Energy, Transport and AFOLU
policies and measures.” He said.

He further explained that the objective of the workshop was to assess the gaps in terms of organization, procedures, data and technical capacities as well as provide recommendations for the good accomplishment of the project on the different objectives.

He remarked that the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) aims to help countries better assess the impacts of their climate policies and actions and fulfil their transparency commitments.

“It does this by increasing the overall transparency capacities of countries, including the capacity to assess the contribution of climate policies and actions on countries’ development objectives, and providing appropriate methodological information and tools to support evidence-based policymaking.” he said.

According to Dr Bala Bappa “ICAT’s innovative approach is to integrate these two aspects;
” ICAT focuses on countries that can highlight the benefits of increased transparency to demonstrate policy impact and evidence-based action. ICAT generates evolving methodological guidance and extracts best practices, to be publicly available to all actors, increasing the global knowledge base.”

Head of Mitigation and Adaptation at Citepa France, Mr Julien Vincent, emphasized the importance of having a good transparency Data reporting, adding that these data will help to reducing any type of emissions.

He said the aim of the workshop was to help stakeholders improve the National Framework and come up with appropriate data for the country’s emission reduction.

“I think the most important thing to start is to have the proper Data, to know what is the picture of the emissions in the country, we have seen really big difference in the last inventories between what was reported in 2021 and what was reported in 2024 and the first step is to get a good Data with the stakeholders, once you have a good Data then you know where you can reduce emissions and what type of necessary measures you can put in place. So that is why we are working here with ICAT transparency to gather all these stakeholders to put in place National Framework to be able to collect the proper Data of the good pictures of what happen in the country. “ he said.

He stated that stakeholders must provide information related to climate change impacts and adaptation in order to build mutual trust and confidence to promote effective implementation, enhanced transparency framework for action and support.

According to Mr Vincent developing country parties should provide information on financial, technology transfer and capacity-building support needed and received under article 9, 10, 11.

The Senior Special Assistant on Climate Finance & Stakeholder Engagemeny, Office of President Bola Tinubu , Mr Ibrahim Shelleng, said that the MRV system are vital components for transparency reporting and ultimately, for climate finance .

“We are still work in progress in terms of our baseline figures we probably have figures from 2018, so we are probably 7 year’s behind in terms of figures, we need to keep updating most importantly what we want to do is to institutionalised the system of collecting Data.” He said.

According to him Data are very important in decision making so there’s need for timely, accurate Data, hence it is important that all institutions have a uniform way of collecting Data. It is important we having this kind of workshop hopefully this will reached down to the subnational level where a lot of these Data are also emanating from.”

“i think this is a key component in a long-term because this also fits into our climate transparency report and the NDC’s as well.”

In a paper presentation by Mr Igwebuike Ijeoma said all emissions taking place in Nigeria must be accounted for, including those induced by the use of imported raw materials.

The ICAT Project is to develop MRV guidelines to support implementation of the National MRV framework (such as regulatory provisions, Data collection templates, guidelines documents, manuals roles and responsibilities, and link to National MRV online system).

The MRV framework will encompass both emission inventories and Data needed for tracking progress on NDC implementation, including indicators to report on policies and measures to implement Nigeria NDCs.