The Federal Ministry of Environment has formally launched the Report of Integrating Conflict-Sensitivity and Peacebuilding into Nigeria’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process.
Permanent secretary of the ministry, Adam Mahmud Kambari, disclosed this at the inception workshop on capacity development for conflict-sensitive adaptation and launch of report on integrating conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding into Nigeria’s NAP process, held in Abuja on Thursday.
The permanent secretary explained that conflicts such as farmer-herder crises, cattle rustling, banditry, which currently threatens the security of our country, can be linked to climate change.
He emphasised that conflict-affected states urgently needed to adapt to the impacts of climate change, explaining that like many developing countries, these states often have high levels of exposure and vulnerability to climate impacts as well as low readiness within their governance systems and institutions to manage and recover from these impacts.
While reiterating that the links between climate change and fragility mean that it would be a mistake to ignore medium and long-term adaptation needs in these peace building contexts, the permanent secretary said a key activity in the NAP process was the conduct of a Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) to identify communities’ vulnerabilities and suggest possible adaption options to address these challenges.
Earlier, the Director, Department of Climate Change, Ministry Environment, Dr. Iniobong Abiola-Awe, said Nigeria is presently formulating its NAP as a means of identifying medium to long-term adaptation needs, adding that they were developing and implementing strategies and programmes to address those needs in a participatory and fully transparent approach.
The director, who said climate change impacts were on the rise globally, also lamented that extreme weather events and climate variability were impacting many sectors, key infrastructure, biodiversity, among others, and were causing security challenges.
While explaining that efforts were on to mitigate the effect of climate change, he noted that the need for adaptation was also very important so that the nation can adjust its systems and operations to these effects without affecting its daily activities.
He noted that the objective of the meeting was to; “formally Launch the Report of Integrating Conflict-Sensitivity and Peacebuilding into Nigeria’s NAP and initiate the process of Capacity Building of relevant stakeholders, from MDAs on Mainstreaming Conflict-Sensitive concerns into Nigeria’s NAP Process and other Development Plans.”
