*Nigeria to focus on carbon trading, debt for climate swap deals
Hauwa Ali and Fatima Saka
The UN’s COP27 climate summit kicked off on Sunday with participants expressing high hopes that the outcome will reshape commitment towards achieving renewable energy.
The conference is taking place at the Sharm El Sheikh International Convention Centre, in Egypt’s Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
This is after a year of extreme weather disasters that have fuelled calls for wealthy industrialised nations to compensate poorer countries.
Just in the past few months, climate-induced catastrophes have killed thousands, displaced millions and cost billions in damages across the world.
Massive floods devastated swaths of Pakistan and Nigeria, droughts worsened in Africa and the western United States, cyclones whipped the Caribbean, and unprecedented heatwaves seared three continents.
The conference in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh comes in a fraught year marked by Russia’s war on Ukraine, an energy crunch, soaring inflation and the lingering effects from the Covid pandemic.
“Whilst I do understand that leaders around the world have faced competing priorities this year, we must be clear: as challenging as our current moment is, inaction is myopic and can only defer climate catastrophe,” said Alok Sharma, British president of the previous COP26 as he handed over the chairmanship to Egypt.
“How many more wake-up calls does the world — and world leaders — actually need,” he said at the opening ceremony.
The world must slash greenhouse emissions 45 percent by 2030 to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above late-19th-century levels.
Warming beyond that threshold, scientists warn, could push Earth toward an unlivable hothouse state.
But current trends would see carbon pollution increase 10 percent by the end of the decade and Earth’s surface heat up 2.8C, according to findings unveiled last week.
Promises made under the 2015 Paris Agreement would, if kept, only shave off a few tenths of a degree.
The COP27 summit will focus like never before on money — a major sticking point that has soured relations between countries that got rich burning fossil fuels and the poorer ones suffering from the worst consequences of climate change.
Developing nations have “high expectations” for the creation of a dedicated funding facility to cover “loss and damage”, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said on Friday.
“The most vulnerable countries are tired, they are frustrated,” Stiell said. “The time to have an open and honest discussion on loss and damage is now.”
The United States and the European Union — fearful of creating an open-ended reparations framework — have dragged their feet and challenged the need for a separate funding stream.
UN chief Antonio Guterres has called for a “historic pact” to bridge the North-South divide.
“Our planet is on course for reaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible and forever bake in catastrophic temperature rise,” Guterres said recently.
“We need to move from tipping points to turning points for hope.”
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US-China tensions
After the first day of talks, more than 120 world leaders will join the summit on Monday and Tuesday.
The most conspicuous no-show will be China’s Xi Jinping, whose leadership was renewed last month at a Communist Party Congress.
US President Joe Biden has said he will come, but only after legislative elections on Tuesday that could see either or both houses of Congress fall into the hands of Republicans hostile to international action on climate change.
Cooperation between the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies and carbon polluters — has been crucial to rare breakthroughs in the nearly 30-year saga of UN climate talks, including the 2015 Paris Agreement.
But Sino-US relations have sunk to a 40-year low after a visit to Taiwan by House leader Nancy Pelosi and a US ban on the sale of high-level chip technology to China, leaving the outcome of COP27 in doubt.
A meeting between Xi and Biden at the G20 summit in Bali days before the UN climate meeting ends, if it happens, could be decisive.
One bright spot at COP27 will be the arrival of Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose campaign vowed to protect the Amazon and reverse the extractive policies of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro.
Meanwhile, Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, Barr. Mohammed Abdullahi said the expectations of Nigeria and Africa at COP 27 will be achieved as issues that are of concern to them are already in the front burner of agenda for discussions
Abdullahi made the assertion Sunday as Nigeria joins global leaders for the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations FrameWork Convention on Climate Change at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.
Speaking on the expectations of Nigeria at COP 27 dubbed Africa and action COP, the Minister of Environment who is also the head of Nigeria’s delegation stated that amongst other issues Nigeria will push for loss and damage.
“We are focused on ensuring that we bring the issue of loss and damage to the fore and we are already making progress in this regards, because during the Pre-Cop engagement the COP 27 President, Sameh Shoukry highlighted flood related issue with particular reference to Nigeria and Pakistan amongst other nations as one of the key issue on the agenda for discussion, already the issues of flood is linked to loss and damage and that is of priority to us as a nation.”
Speaking further, the Minister added that Nigeria delegation will also focus on the African carbon market initiative as it try to kick start the framework for carbon trading, adding that similar attention will also be giving to a nobel issue called debt for climate swap aimed to call the attention of developed countries on the impact of their industrialisation on the developing countries and the need for them to mitigate the impact on the continent of Africa and Nigeria in particular.
“In addition, Nigeria as the leader of the PAN African Agency for the Great Green Wall will focus on climate finance to support its activities in the Sahel Region particularly in the most endemic Northern states described as the front line states where there is fast approaching desert encroachment and of course wetland drying up, these and others are huge issues that we will be focusing on” Abdullahi affirmed.
Speaking on unfulfilled promises made to the developing countries by the developed countries during past COPs the Minister stated that Nigeria will not take a know it all approach but will align its position with the African agenda that was agreed at the Dakar meeting.
“Part of what we will do is to galvanize the action plan for Africa to push for a positive climate funding action from the developed countries, that is why the Nigeria Energy Transition Plan is aligned to ensuring that we get the requisite funding for smooth transition to renewables without which it will be very difficult to deploy infrastructure to support our mini grid, deployment of solar and support bio-fuel.
African countries and developing countries indeed understand that funding is important in whatever position COP 27 will take.” Abdullahi posited.
As the leader of Nigeria delegation and representative of President Muhammadu Buhari to COP 27, the Minister speaking on his plan to interface and engage with private sector and investor that could support the energy transition plan of Nigeria stated that a number of bilateral meetings and engagement has been arranged to discuss funding from development partners and the private sector, stressing that what he intend to do is to capitalize on the GGW accelerator which is a window for financing the activities of the Great Green Wall member states.
Towards these ends, a side meeting has been arranged with the sustainable energy for all donors that focus on climate finance particularly carbon trading, “we are also working with Nigerian private enterprise amongst other development partners.”
Furthermore, the Minister assured Nigerians that he and his team of negotiators will return to the country with a strong, dependable and bankable commitment from the development partners.
“We have secured the assurance of the Head of the United Nations Sustainable Energy for all, Damilola Ogunbiyi who is also a Nigerian that there is a window of about 400 million dollars to support Africa’s carbon market initiative, we are beginning to record achievements even before we started”
“Nigeria negotiators will align with other African countries in recognition of what we agreed in Kigali and at the Africa Ministers’ Conference on Environment (AMCEN) declaration in Dakar Senegal. to focus on afforestation, Climate Finance, the need to mitigate desertification and of course to emphasize on loss and damage, this is important and crucial to address some of the climate challenges Africa grappled with” the Minister underscored,” he added.
