Nigeria has called on the international community to significantly increase global financing to protect and restore nature’s economic value through predictable, equitable, and accessible funding mechanisms.
Vice President Kashim Shettima made the call in Belém, Brazil, where he represented President Bola Tinubu at a high-level thematic session titled “Climate and Nature: Forests and Oceans”, held on the margins of the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 30).
The Vice President said that since forests, landscapes, and oceans are shared resources outside the jurisdiction of any single nation, their protection requires global solidarity.
He lamented that while nature is arguably the most critical infrastructure in the world, it has long been treated as a commodity to exploit rather than an asset to invest in.
He added that Nigeria is firmly driven by this understanding “to integrate nature-positive investments into” its climate finance architecture.
“Through our National Carbon Market Framework and Climate Change Fund, we aim to mobilise up to three billion US dollars annually in climate finance. These resources will be reinvested in community-led reforestation, blue carbon projects, and sustainable agriculture.
“We call on our global partners to recognise the economic value of nature and to channel significant finance towards protecting and restoring it through predictable, equitable, and accessible funding mechanisms,” he said.
Shettima noted that countries of the Global South that “have contributed least to this crisis are today paying its highest price,” insisting that for climate justice to prevail, nations that have benefited more “from centuries of extraction must now lead in restoration.”
Accordingly, he urged the global community to increase grant-based finance, operationalise Blue Carbon Markets, and implement debt-for-nature swaps to enable developing countries to invest in conservation.
“We urge the international community to scale up grant-based finance for nature-based solutions, implement debt-for-nature swaps that free developing countries to invest in conservation, operationalise Blue Carbon Markets under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, and strengthen community-led governance so that indigenous peoples, farmers, and fisher folk are rewarded for their stewardship rather than displaced by it,” he stated.
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The Vice President warned that nations that neglect their forests and oceans have always paid dearly for it, stressing that Nigeria will sit in the front row of any global forum where these twin determinants of ecological order are being discussed.
“We, too, are under siege. We see the signs of danger in deforestation, desertification, illegal mining, coastal erosion, and rising sea levels within our borders. The Sahara advances by nearly one kilometre each year, displacing communities and eroding livelihoods. Each piece of land these threats overcome invites conflict into human lives, compounding our development challenges,” he said.
Shettima further stated that while Nigeria’s Climate Change Act 2021 enshrines nature-based solutions as a legal obligation of the state, the country is “taking bold, coordinated steps to restore balance between climate, nature, and development.”
He reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to working with partners across the globe to “advance a global agenda where climate action becomes synonymous with nature restoration and human prosperity.”
Rejecting what he described as “the portrayal of Africa as a mere victim of climate change,” Shettima argued that “it is an outdated narrative” about a continent that is also a source of solutions.
He listed Africa’s rainforests, mangroves, peat lands, and oceans as some of the planet’s largest untapped carbon sinks and highlighted the continent’s young people as “the world’s greatest untapped source of innovation and resolve.”