To protect Nigeria’s forest endowment through strategic planning for climate change mitigation nationwide, the Nigerian government has launched the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest REED+.
The REDD + strategy programme is aimed at identifying drivers of deforestation and forest degradation so as to enable validation of emission reduction attributed to the REDD+ activities.
Speaking at the launch, Nigeria’s Minister of Environment Dr Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar, said that Nigeria’s vision for implementing REDD+ is “to establish a climate resilient economy through sustainable management of forests, to enhance carbon sinks, and reduce GHG emissions by at least 20% by year 2050”. Recognizing the significance of the forest and land sector as a source of Nigeria’s GHG emissions, and the need for international support to help develop and implement nature-based solutions identified in the Strategy”.
Dr. Abubakar, explains that Nigeria will implement its REDD+ Strategy in phases over a thirty-year period from 2021 to 2050 to achieve the short, medium, and long-term goals. “ Nigeria will be anchoring its National REDD+ Strategy on one general objective, which is: To reduce the rate of carbon emissions and enhance removals from the forest sector while creating benefits for resilience building and green economic development”. This will be by way of adopting ecologically friendly and climate-smart forest and forest-related investments especially in the agriculture and forest sectors that will promote the conservation and rehabilitation of forest ecosystems as well as generate economic, social and environmental incentives”.
The strategy is being implemented with other partners to this, Dr. Mohammed is calling on the partnering governments, to amplify Nigeria’s message on the effect of climate change.
“As the United Kingdom prepares to host the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP 26), mobilising a coalition of leading organisations for the Race To Zero campaign. We call on the UK and other governments, through their high commission and embassies here in Nigeria, to hear and to amplify our message that we, like many other nations, are suffering from the effects of climate change today, that we are committed to protecting and improving our own natural environment for the benefit of Nigerians while also combating global climate change, and that we are eager to partner with others in supporting these efforts.”
According to the national Coordinator REDD+, Dr. Moses Ama, with the REDD+ policy strategy, stakeholders are sure of a sustainable engagements.
“We must begin to put the right budget, if the 17 states do REDD + programme, this is good for the country because emission reduction that the government is pledging are not going to come from Abuja, but from the villages which translate to States. We need to encourage states that have indicated interest through political will. We want to do things differently, move from business as usual to business unusual.
We want to change our reaction to the forest. It is our desire that government will begin to put some funding to support readiness, readiness is not quite expensive, is all about stakeholders engagement capacity building, institutional strengthening, so that investors will believe that is okay, we can see that stakeholders engagement is robust, and we have been able to analysis what the drivers of refreshing order, and their policy, we have identified, let’s go to this sub National to invest for the purpose of getting them off the forest and gaining carbon from that” he said.
Pein Mawtovani, of the World Bank, said that the initiative shows Nigeria’s commitment to climate protection.
“We at the World Bank are privilege and honoured to be able to support this process with technical and financial cognition. We look forward to supporting in various ongoing operations in partnership with the Government both at the Federal and State level. We believe the project is going to be critical and a success to engaging with relevant stakeholders,” he said.
Nigeria’s REDD+ Strategy is structured to adopt a national policy on Benefit Sharing Arrangement for REDD+ Carbon Trading, an integrated approach to establish the required national and sub-national Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems to be fed into a national, aggregated database.
Lateefah Ibrahim
