By Gift Olivia Samuel The Sight News
ABUJA: Nigeria has called for ease of access to available funding, especially the $100 billion pledged annually to help developing countries address the impacts of climate change.
Climate change is hitting Africa differently as extreme weather events are becoming more common, frequent and severe. This is even more precarious for West Africa and particularly the Sahel, where rainfed agriculture is the mainstay of most countries. Which is why the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) State of the Climate in Africa 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and the WMO Atlas on Mortality reveal a grim future for Africa in regards to climate change.
In a bid to cushion the effect of the climate change on African countries, the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMet), called for a removal of the complexities making it difficult for African countries to access the $100 billion pledged annually by developed countries to combat climate change especially in Africa.
Speaking on the level of commitment of government funding to address issues of climate, at the 2022 stakeholders Regional Climate Forum for West Africa and the Sahel in Abuja on Monday, the NiMet Director General, Prof. Mansur Bako Matazu, said that it is a global problem but there is a United Nations intervention through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the provision of the global climate fund which is supposed to be accessible to all countries.
Matazu who was represented by Engr. Mailadi Yusuf Abba Misau, however, noted that countries of Africa unfortunately, are not able to access that fund because of the complexity of the nature of accessing these funds, adding that this is one of the issues that African countries have been raising during negotiations of the Conference of the Parties in Climate Change.
According to him, “The developed nations have pledged $100 billion annually to combat climate change especially in Africa, unfortunately, the process through which you can access these funding is so tedious and difficult and I don’t think any African countries have accessed any significant amount of funding.
“So, these are part of the things that the African countries take to Conference of the Parties when they go on negotiations and an interesting thing is, Africa didn’t cause climate change, it was caused essentially by Europe and Americas, they exploited the situation and damaged our climate, and now, we are having to bear the impact and they are holding on to the money, making it difficult for us to access.
“But I tell you, the negotiators are getting their eyes more shined [sic] and as it is, a lot of efforts are being put to access these funds to address issues of climate change”, he said.
Recall that in 2009, at the fifteenth Conference of the tparties (COP15 ) of the UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, climate finance funding of $100 billion a year by 2020 was agreed.The finance is to fund climate change mitigation, which are measures to reduce greenhouse emissions, and adaptation to climate change.
