Nigeria Targets Green Climate Funding

Nigeria’s National Council of Climate Change (NCCC) in collaboration with sister agencies and stakeholders are coordinating strategies to enable the country meet up with criteria for accessing the Green Climate Funds.

The NCCC disclosed this at the start of a two-day workshop on Coordination Mechanism for the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Project, yesterday in Abuja.

The chief scientific officer of the council, Bernadette Enofor, said Nigeria has not been a beneficiary of the Green Climate Funds as well as many other global funds due to poor coordinating mechanisms.

The scientist, who said the GCF is a key financial mechanism that supports climate change mitigation and adaptation especially in developing countries, lamented that Nigeria has been applying for the funding but has not met the required standards due to poor coordination.

“It is really very vital, just like I said, Nigeria has not really been accessing the Green Climate Funds and so many global funds because of poor capacity, poor coordination systems and all that.

“So this is one of the deliverables of the Green Climate Fund project to enable us to have a coordinated mechanism to assess that and in the long run it will be better for the country because we can now have more funding for more climate change green projects in-house in the country”, she asserted.

Enofor said the two day workshop will delve into the nitty-gritty of coordination mechanisms and explore best practices, share experiences as well as discuss how to overcome common obstacles, foster collaboration and drive results through effective coordination.

The president of Ecologistics, Dr. Paul Abolo, who is also the chief consultant at the workshop, revealed that the Green Climate Fund is the largest funder of climate change mitigation and adaptation. He said to assess that fund, you need to be ready and coordinated.

“Like we know, preparedness is the new level of partnerships. So what we are doing is that we are getting prepared to make sure that we are equipped to assess the Green Climate Fund to address climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives in Nigeria.”

Earlier, a Climate Investment adviser, Oluwapelumi Oluwatosin, revealed that funding opportunities are available.

He said in terms of climate ambition goals, estimates could vary from the range of about 20 billion to 100 billion and above.

Oluwatosin who said they are going to focus on what to do better in order to help Nigeria achieve its goals, also added that from an investment point of view, what the GCF will look at is how bankable and realistic are our projects?

“One of the ways in which we can do, our ways of working, is to further strengthen coordination between various stakeholders, both the private sector, from the government point of view, so that we can take a whole-of-government, a whole-of- society approach, work together to come up with projects that, at the end of the day, will tick those boxes, go beyond ticking the boxes, and help Nigeria access those funds which are critical to helping us achieve our climate ambitions and goals”, he said.