As Nigeria joined the rest of the World to mark the 2020 World Earth Day yesterday, the Minister of State for Environment, Barr Sharon Ikeazor has challenged leaders across the globe to adopt renewed and concerted action to end the Covid-19 pandemic, scale up efforts to preserve and restore natural ecosystems, enhance waste management systems and mitigate the effect of climate change.
The WED is celebrated every 22nd April annually, and this year’s event with the theme, “Climate Action And the Opportunities It Presents”, marked the 50 years of modern environmental movement which commenced in 1970, on the need for emerging public consciousness about the planet.
She noted that WED is a day set aside to raise awareness on climate change and the environment, advocating the need for stronger commitment and massive action in addressing all environmental issues, including the deadly Covid-19 pandemic.
Ikeazor pointed out that climate change is one of the biggest challenges to humanity, adding that Nigeria would focus on inspiring, sensitising and enlightening the citizens to take action that would mitigate the impact of climate change in line with this year’s theme.
According to her, “This year will be the first Digital Earth Day due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the federal ministry of Environment in collaboration with the British High Commission in Nigeria will be organising a webinar to present National climate action, discuss the relationship between climate change and health, as well as sustainable recovery from Covid-19″.
She was optimistic that affordable and scalable solutions are readily available that would enable Nigerians to turn the challenges of climate action into opportunities, saying that federal government is on the right track in addressing Covid-19 disease as well as other life threatening diseases such as Lassa fever and among others.
The minister hinted that federal government has scaled up its commitment to mitigate, adapt and promote the capacity for resilience through the ratification of the Paris Agreement by Mr President and strengthening existing institutional framework for effective coordination of climate change activities and other actions.
She disclosed that the ministry through the department of Climate Change had developed a draft Sectoral Action Plan (SAP) for the implementation of the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC’s), saying that the ministry is currently reviewing the National Policy on Climate Change in readiness for National Adaptation Plan (NAP) framework for Climate Change.
Ikeazor added, “There’s a sustained effort to sensitise Nigerians to adopt clean technologies that will meet the country’s emission reduction target; even as we have developed the national Forest Reference Emission Factor Level (FREL) and submitted it to the UNFCCC but we are thinking ahead because we want the environment to be a priority as we recover from COVID-19”.
A statement made available to the media by the director of Press in the ministry,
Saghir el Mohammed stated revealed that the ministry also developed a Climate Change Resilience Action Plan for the Lake Chad Basin and incorporated climate change components into the Disaster Risk Reduction Policy for Nigeria, in conjunction with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).