The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq has stated the Federal Government’s readiness to scale up climate change adaption in Nigeria through her ministry.
This is in a bid to build community resilient and adaptation practices to mitigate and reduce the consequent of climate change.
She said this at a side event at COP27, taking place in Egypt, titled, “Scaling up Climate Change Adaptation in Nigeria” organised by her ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment.
In her statement, the minister explained that: “Our communities are composed of the poor, elderly, children and persons living with disabilities the addition effect of climate change has rendered them more vulnerable than they already are.”
According to her, her ministry will attempt to mitigate the impact of climate change on the vulnerable members of society through the scaling up of climate change adaptation in Nigeria.
She said her ministry will work with the Nigerian adaptation plan which seeks to reduce the vulnerability of communities to the impact of climate change by building adaptive capacity and resilience.
She added that the plan also advocates integration of climate change adaptation into relevant policies programme and activities, as well as developing planning process and strategies.
“The reason we are here today is to harness and discuss good practices programme and strategies that other countries are using to reduce vulnerabilities to climate change.
“We want to know how to build adaptive capacities and resilience in line with national and international policies and commitment in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation”
“Specifically we want to know how to identify and map out climate change risk better we harmonise input and launch a people-centred climate change adaptation in collaboration with key partners like the federal ministry of environment and other relevant Ministry Department and Agencies.”
Earlier in his remarks, the Minister of Environment, Mohammed Abdulahi quoting the report of the inter-governmental panel on climate change affirmed that by 2050 many coastal mega cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt and other low line coastal cities in Nigeria will in a century witnessed weather catastrophe every year affecting millions of people and properties and causing devastation.
Consequently Nigeria has taken a bold step to develop Adaptation Communication guided by the NAP Global Network, adaptation communication will play a central role in identifying national needs and enabling international follow up while informing future action, driving ambition and contributing information for the global stock-taking.
He said, “It is obvious that the challenges of climate change are enormous and since no individual Ministry can confront the challenges alone, we are calling for joint and cooperative efforts to tackle the problem, it is therefore pertinent that we begin to take our pledges into action as take away from COP 27.”
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