Follow Us on Google
By Henry Uche
The Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre) has warned against the impact of climate change on Nigeria’s economy.
The centre said that Nigeria’s aspiration to upper-middle-income status by 2050 would face a serious challenge if decisive climate actions were not taken to contain the growing impacts of climate change.
According to HEDA, this could severely threaten lives, livelihoods and the nation’s long-term economic development.
Other News
In its report, titled, ‘Enhancing Accountability in Climate Adaptation Finance in Nigeria: Synthesis Report and Case Studies on Ecological Fund,’ HEDA maintained that Nigeria currently stands at a defining climate crossroads as intensifying perennial floods, prolonged droughts, deadly heatwaves, rising sea levels and shifting weather patterns threaten lives, livelihoods and national development.
Referring to the 2022-2024 nationwide flooding that affected 34 out of 36 states, destroyed thousands of hectares of farmlands and displaced thousands of people, with consequential health issues, HEDA maintained that there was the need for urgent national adaptation to the menace.
HEDA’s chairman, Olanrewaju Suraju, had explained that the peculiarity of Nigeria’s immediate challenge towards climate crises of intensifying floods, increased droughts, heat-waves, sea-level rise, ocean acidification and changing weather patterns, calls for prioritisation of climate adaptation for survival, pressing necessity to protect lives and livelihoods and the country’s development prospects both now and in the future.
This priority, he revealed, was reflected in national policy commitments like the most recent Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0), National Climate Change Policy, Climate Change Act (2021) and National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Framework; yet, financing for adaptation remains inadequate, fragmented and weakly-monitored.
