Year 2025 will mark the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and its mandatory requirement that Parties must develop and implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The NDCs are nationally determined plans put together by each country outlining the actions needed to meet their long-term goals as a statutory commitment under the Paris Agreement.
Nigeria, despite facing unprecedented challenges of climate change has demonstrated great poise and good leadership in setting up the process to review its NDCs through stakeholder engagements, consultation, data collation and workshops since May 2025.
Nigeria, among other parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) may have missed the first deadline to submit its NDCs, but the internal process initiated by the government is in order to meet the new deadline of September 2025. It is important to know that the NDCs are not optional, but they are a statutory pledge to the global community, and more importantly, to our citizens, that we are serious about addressing climate change while driving sustainable development.
Across the world, as at August 2025, less than 30 parties have submitted the 3rd iteration of their NDCs, with less than 5 of those from Africa. Nigeria on the other hand is ensuring a broader and open participation of the process in order to build synergy among its domestic stakeholders: an act that is commendable, and should count Nigeria among the countries leading the frontiers of the NDC process.
If Nigeria’s NDC 2.0 which committed to an unconditional reduction of emissions by 20% and a conditional target (contingent on international support) of 47% below BAU by 2030 was celebrated as a bold step, her NDC 3.0 must set a new ambition to enhance resilience planning, synergy between adaptation, loss and damage, energy transition, with a clear link with our development plans putting the subnational at the heart of effective implementation, ensuring a purposive intention to train the states to develop our NDC that will align with the national target but a mere mention in the document. The national must ensure supporting the subnational to build a system for Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) to accommodate states input rather than over reliance on the national platform.
In reaffirming our commitment to sustainable development, green infrastructure, and climate resilience in Kano State, we have recently launched a historic climate policy and action plan – strategic implementation framework, we went ahead to develop the state readiness and action plan for the climate finance to guide the state’s environmental governance and transition to a low-carbon economy. In the same strength, we unveiled two new legal instruments: the Kano State Environmental Pollution Control Law and the Kano State Environmental Pollution and Waste Control Regulations 2025.
These documents are to reemphasise Kano state’s position as a West African cosmopolitan hub for climate governance, considering the importance of these new laws to the priority sectors of Nigeria’s NDCs, as part of the mitigation measures, we distributed 5 million trees (geo tagged) for the 2025 planting season.
Yes, we praised the new NDC process, but we must not forget the things that set us back in the past. We must address them in a holistic manner whilst awaiting the final approval of the NDC 3.0. I recognise that all the states were given the opportunity to provide data for the development of the NDC 3.0. It is therefore imperative that these data be aggregated, synthesised and integrated into the NDC with recognition of the peculiar climate challenges facing the respective states in Nigeria and targeting them for implementation to align with one of the principles of the UNFCCC of equity.
This is important because, many of the projects promised in past NDCs are nowhere to be found on the ground; whilst validation exercises carried out in states have too often been tokenistic, with subnational inputs ignored in the final documents – this cannot continue. We are positive that NDC 3.0 will bridge the gap and empower the states to build a system that can support the national with valid and verifiable data.
Nevertheless, what is clear is that our next NDC must set economy-wide emission reduction targets that accelerate clean, sustainable, affordable, and just energy access. It must explicitly align climate and biodiversity action, halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation, and transforming food systems through agroecology – all of which are critical priorities for the Nigerian states that are on the frontline of desertification, drought, and food insecurity, and actively bearing the direct brunt of climate change. The states must be elevated to translate NDCs commitments into practical action. Therefore, the validation must acknowledge this and not repeat the mistakes of the past.
The NDCs operation thrive in a broader context of plans and alignment with Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS), Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) and Climate Change Act 2021. Nigeria’s NDCs 3.0 must be bold, grounded in ambition, people-centered with the subnational at the heart of effective implementation for inclusive accountability and ensuring lasting impacts.
By Umar Saleh Anka, Ph.D, Director, Climate Change, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Kano State, Nigeria