By Bisola Adeyemo
Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdullahi, has urged African leaders to step up their climate action to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.
Engineer Hassan Musa, the ministry’s permanent secretary said this on Thursday during the ongoing Nigeria-Africa Natural Resources and Energy Investment Summit in Abuja with the theme: “Towards a Greener Africa.”
Speaking on behalf of the minister, Engineer Hassan said the earth which provides necessary resources for humans to survive has been negatively impacted by the rapid population growth and anthropogenic activities towards increased economic development.
“This has led to increased pollution of over exploitation of natural resources, causing great damage to the environment with sometimes irreversible consequences.” He said.
Speaking further, he stressed that Nigeria as a country has not been left behind by other countries facing the impact of climate change.
“Nigeria like other countries has been faced with several environmental challenges like desertification, flooding, coastal erosion deforestation, land degradation, pollution, biodiversity, and others.
“These challenges have been aggravated by the adverse impact of climate change.
” In a bid to commit to transformational change in global climate policy, Nigeria has also revised its National policy on climate change (NPCC) which is expected to implement mitigation measures, promote low carbon, and also strengthen adaptation towards a sustainable climate resilience development pathway in Nigeria.
“Also with the support from the UK government Nigeria recently launched an updated Nigeria Energy Calculator 2050 (NECAL 2050) to assist the country in achieving climate goals.
” It will also help industries and the energy sectors to set greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, as well as to identify realist solution which supports the implementation of Nigeria Climate Commitments also known as Nationally Determine Contributions (NDCs).” The minister added.
In conclusion, the minister said that Africa is blessed with renewable energy sources such as hydro, sun, and wind, and the time is right to sound planning to ensure access to affordable reliable sustainable, and modern energy mix in Africa.