By Nneka Nwogwugwu
As Nigeria joins other countries in the fight against climate change, President Muhammadu Buhari has made a move by signing the Climate Change bill into law.
This announcement was by the president’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu on November 18.
The signing occurred after Buhari announced a 2060 net zero target at the COP26 climate change talks in Glasgow.
The Climate Change Act owes its origin to a bill sponsored by a member of the House of Representatives, Sam Onuigbo, and provides for, among other things, the mainstreaming of climate change actions and the establishment of a National Council on Climate Change.
Onuigbo, in an interview with the Guardian, said that he had been trying to pass a climate bill for more than ten years.
‘’In the 8th Assembly when I chaired the committee on Climate Change, we tried to have an agency and a Technical Committee to advice the agency; it was going to be chaired by the Vice President. There were issues about whether there were many people in the council. Mr. President raised some few points as his reason. But if you ask me, I would tell you that some faceless interests stopped these bills.
‘’In the 9th Assembly, we decided to move the thing to a higher level of policy-making, coordination, implementation and monitoring, by creating National Council on climate change. The only bureaucratic thing about it is that we must have people to enforce it. That is why we structured it in such a way as to have Mr. President – given the serious nature of climate change – as the head. It is not something to leave in the hands of people without absolute authority. That is why we formed the bill, and the council to be headed by the president and his vice. All other ministers, including the minister of environment, are members of this council.’’
Further explaining on the law, he added, ‘’In this bill also, we have the climate change fund. Truly, a lot of fund comes into the country, but they come in in silos; it is difficult to do proper monitoring and coordination of the funds. But going forward, when these fund come in, they would be centralised and monitored.
‘’We actually wanted to make the ecological fund to belong to the climate change fund in the first bill, but it is better to take things one-step at a time. We were even asking for 1 per cent of the budget then, but we have realised it is important to get the bill in place first. We can always amend it later. However, it is important to have money that is coming in being properly accounted for.
‘’We also have broadened this Act in a way that allows us to accommodate some nature-based solutions like the Great Green Wall, and even natural capital accounting. What is involved? We talk about fish, the minerals, and forestry, being regarded as assets when determining the GDP. Now, we are allowing the GDP capture all these; that is the blue economy.
‘’That is why Nigeria is working to protect our natural assets. So, the Act is very holistic. It also talks about carbon budget; it regulates emission levels for annual and five-year cycles. If these things are un-documented, it is difficult for people to take it seriously. I can tell you that with this Act, we are getting more phone calls from foreign investors who want to invest in our oil and gas sectors.’’
The main objective of the climate law is to provide an overarching legal framework for achieving Nigeria’s long-term climate goals including a net-zero carbon emission target, national climate resilience, an adequate volume of climate finance, and the mainstreaming climate change actions into national development priorities.
The bill places climate change action in the broader context of efforts to achieve inclusive green and sustainable economic development for the most populous African country in the world.
FEATURES OF THE LAW
The law provides that the government shall set five-year carbon budgets in the context of a National Climate Change Action Plan which should be ratified by the Federal Executive Council. The budgets are supposed to advance efforts to achieve net-zero GHG emission reduction between 2050 – 2070.
The five-year budget shall be broken down to the annual carbon budget for each of the years that make up the five-year cycle. President Buhari has, at COP26, already committed Nigeria to a net-zero carbon target by 2060. The first carbon budget is to be submitted for approval not later than 12 months from the date that the bill is signed by the President, so now no later than 18th November 2022. Subsequent carbon budgets are to be submitted for approval not later than 12 months to the end of the date of the expiration of the current budget cycle.
The new law provides for a National Council on Climate Change that will oversee the implementation of the National Climate Change Action Plan.
The National Climate Council is a major innovation intended in the Act intended to suit the largely bureaucratic nature of governance in Nigeria. Headed by the President who will serve as the Chairman, the Council will supervise the activities and help the Environment Ministry to coordinate the implementation of sectoral targets and guidelines needed to achieve the National Climate Change Action Plan.
The Council shall administer a Climate Change Fund established under the new Act and play a key role in mobilizing financial resources to support climate change actions throughout the country.
Other members of the Council include the Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, who shall be the Vice-Chairman, Ministers in charge of Environment, Budget, National Planning, Power, Transportation, Petroleum Resources, Agriculture and Rural Development, Water Resources, among others.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the National Security Adviser are also members of the Council.
The Council will be served by a Secretariat situated at the Presidency that is headed by a Director-General who shall serve as the Secretary to the Council.
It is instructive that the Act seeks to democratize climate governance through the inclusion of representatives of the private sector, youth, women groups, people with disabilities, and civil society organizations in the Council.
A professor in environment and development at Reading University who helped revise the climate bill, Chukwumerije Okereke, said that the signing of the law is the biggest thing that has happened in Nigeria with regards to climate governance.
In a publication by Okereke and Onuigbo in November, Okereke said the bill’s progress owed more to a “small team working very hard behind the scenes” rather than grassroots pressure from civil society.
Giving out significance of the law, they wrote, ‘’the new climate change law is significant in many ways. It sends a strong positive message to the world that Nigeria understands the enormity and urgency of the climate change challenge and is serious to implement the net-zero carbon pledge made by President Buhari at COP26 in Glasgow.
‘’The high-level body such as the National Council on Climate Change is about the only organ in Nigeria that can be reasonably expected to facilitate the coordination of the various ministries, departments, and agencies whose engagement and active participation would be required to meet the urgent and enormous task of national deep decarbonization required to achieve the ambitious climate target, and steer the country on the path of just green transition to ensure climate-resilient development of the country in the coming decades.
‘’A National Climate Change Council will go a long way in assisting the Federal Ministry of Environment in the goal of setting a national platform for the mobilization and disbursement of trillions of climate investments needed to scale up and accelerate the green transition efforts in Nigeria in the coming months and years.
‘’To succeed in the task of fighting climate change Nigeria will need a large scale of climate finance from both domestic and international sources. With the implementation of the country’s NDC projected to cost about USD177 billion by 2030, only a body as high profile as the National Council on Climate Change can be expected to oversee the task of mobilizing such an amount in the context of dwindling oil revenue and a world that is moving away from fossil fuel. President Buhari has in fact put the cost of Nigerian green transition at trillions rather than billions of dollars and he is right!’’
They advised the presidency also include actions after signing the law.
‘’The signing of the bill into law is very significant but plenty of work is still needed to translate this bold action into concrete policies that will document the emission profiles of the key sectors of the economy, produce credible decarbonization pathways for the country, strengthen the resilience of the country against climate change impacts and unlock trillions of dollars in climate investment needed to secure the transition,’’ the statement noted.