How Nigeria Is Coping With Climate Change Challenge

By: Michael Simire on November 3rd, 2009

A package of national community-based climate solutions unveiled in Abuja has been  designed to ensure sustainable ways of adapting to a changing world climate.

Promoters of the Building Nigeria’s Response to Climate Change (BNRCC) initiative have  inaugurated research aimed at ensuring that people affected can cope with the challenges ahead.

The BNRCC is an initiative of the Nigeria Environmental Society Action Team (NEST). A typical project is Adaptation to Climate Variability: A Case Study of Farming Households in the Niger Delta Region.

Co-ordinated by the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension, University of Uyo, in Akwa Ibom State, it is examining how vulnerable households in the region are adapting to variations in climate.

Another scheme is assessing gender knowledge and awareness as well as vulnerability and strategies to adapt  to the impacts of climate change in northern Nigeria. In some states religious groups are taking the initiative in trying to help people to cope by learning how to become less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Similarly, three bodies – CERCOPAN (the Centre for Education, Research and Conservation of Primates and Nature) and two non-governmental organisations, the Mission of Coastal Life Initiative, and Development in Nigeria – are jointly working on alternative livelihood options as a means of promoting community-based adaptation to climate change in the coastal and rainforest zones of Nigeria.

A project that covers two communities in Bauchi State and one in Jigawa State aims to increase the sustainable food security of vulnerable people in fragile ecologies.

The chairman of NEST, Professor David Okali, said in his welcome address at the launch of the scheme that responding to climate change required being responsible in the face of its challenges, while exploring its opportunities.

Dr. Ako Amadi, from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA),  said Nigeria must play a key role at the climate change conference in Copenhagen in December because it was vulnerable to the effects of a warming world.

The Programme Director of BNRCC, Dr. Emmanuel Nzegbule, urged media executives to focus more on climate change issues, because information about them was not readily available in the language the public would understand.

“As part of a proactive strategy to address the emerging threats posed by the impact of climate change, BNRCC strongly recommends that federal, state and local governments take seriously the issue of climate change in all components of governance.

“The media… has a crucial role to play in raising awareness and providing accurate information on this issue.”

The BNRCC project aims to help build informed responses to climate change by enhancing capacity at the community, state and national levels to implement effective adaptation strategies, policies and actions.

BNRCC is funded by CIDA, and  implemented in partnership with NEST. Its goal is to reduce poverty and improve living conditions for Nigerians through better climate change adaptation strategies.