The Federal Government has promised to ensure Nigeria attains the 120-degree global emission reduction level with the validation of the National Forest Emission Level Document (FREL).

Mr Lawrence Alibo, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Environment, gave the promise on Monday, December 12, 2018 in Abuja at the validation workshop on FREL.

Alibo said that this became imperative as FREL was a benchmark on which Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) was measured.

He said that government was working in line with the pledge made by President Mohammadu Buhari at the COP21 in Paris Convention to attain the 120 degree Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to reduce global emissions.

He quoted the president as saying that the reduction would meet 20 per cent conditional attainment and 45 per cent unconditional emission reduction.

Alibo said that the validation came at the right time to serve as an opportunity for the country to gauge its performance not only in implementing REDD+ but also in meeting its commitment to the NDC.

He said that the workshop symbolised an advancement of the earlier sub-national FREL development under the UNREDD+ programme and submitted to UNFCCC after a successful technical assessment.

The UN Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (UN-REDD) programme created in 2008 is a collaborative programme of the FAO, UNDP and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries.

“The success story of the UNREDD has continued to serve as a pedestal for the country’s continuous progress toward its climate change mitigation targets, especially in the forestry sector.’’

He said that the steady progress being made had attributed to the additional funding from the World Bank.

According him, this has enabled the expansion of implementation in Ondo, Nasarawa and River states where pilot activities are undertaken.

Ajibo challenged participants to see the workshop as an opportunity to work out modalities on how best to reverse the negative effects of climate change in Nigeria.

“In addition to scaling up emission reduction activities in order to limit the increase in average global temperatures to well below 2 degrees centigrade between now and 2020.’’

Mr Suffyan Koroma, the FAO Country Representative in Nigeria, commended the participants for raising awareness on “National Forest Inventory under REDD programme’’.

Koroma, who was represented by Mr John Fonweban, FAO Forestry Officer REDD + Programme, said the objective of the workshop was to review and adopt the National FREL Report for Nigeria prior to its eventual submission to the UNFCCC for technical assessment.

He said that the step would also enable participants to estimate emission factor for accurate figure based on the destruction of the different types of forest in Nigeria.

Koroma said that FREL would serve as a standard on which future REDD+ activities would be measured during the implementation of the strategy in the country.

The FAO official said that the workshop had become imperative to verify all data collection because inadequate data had been a major factor militating against forestry development in Nigeria.

He said that the socio-economic aspect of the inventory was also very crucial as they provided a better understanding of forest resource use by the population.

Koroma said that the inventory would also help in the establishment of possible links between forest resources use, employment and livelihoods.

“It is an inventory that covers all the land use types in the sense that you have one hectare of forest destroyed and used for agric plantation, you will be able to see how much you are losing,’’ he said.

The FAO official said that the workshop would also serve as tools for advocacy and resource mobilisation for sustainable forest management at the country level.

He said that FAO had succeeded in building the capacity of the relevant stakeholders with the use of modern forestry equipment and techniques as well as in the use of Remote Sensing/GIS (SEPAL) tools for land use mapping.

“It also assisted in change detection and accuracy assessment for Activity Data (AD) estimation.’’

A Forest Reference Emission Level or Forest Reference Level (FREL and FRL) is one of the four elements a country is required to develop in order to participate in REDD+ under the UNFCCC.

The FREL and FRL are benchmarks to assess the country’s performance or judge its effectiveness in the implementation of REDD+ activities.

Participants at the three-day workshop were drawn from ministries of environment across the country and other relevant agencies.

The last forest inventory in Nigeria was conducted over 20 years ago.

After two weeks of deliberations and negotiations, the 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended on Saturday, December 15,2018 upon the approval of the Paris Agreement Work Programme, otherwise known as the “Katowice Climate Package”.

The conclusion has however attracted a barrage of comments from stakeholders who have on one hand hailed it as a welcome development and,on the other hand, condemned it for being weak and lacking direction.

United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, was however full of praises for COP24, which he said has displayed the resilience of the Paris Agreement.

He said: “The approval of the Paris Agreement Work Programme is the basis for a transformative process which will require strengthened ambition from the international community. Science has clearly shown that we need enhanced ambition to defeat climate change.

“From now on, my five priorities will be: ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition and ambition.

“Ambition in mitigation. Ambition in adaptation. Ambition in finance. Ambition in technical cooperation and capacity building. Ambition in technological innovation.

“Ambition will be at the centre of the Climate Summit that I will convene in September 2019.

“And ambition must guide all Member States as they prepare their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for 2020 to reverse the present trend in which climate change is still running faster than us.

“It is our duty to reach for more and I count on all of you to raise ambitions so that we can beat back climate change.”

Johan Rockström, resilience scientist who as Director Designate is leading the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, spoke in a similar vein, describing the Katowice agreement as “a relief”.

His words: “Countries recognise the need for global collaboration to deal with the global climate crisis. The Paris Agreement is alive and kicking, despite a rise in populism and nationalism. With the rulebook now finally adopted, the Paris agreement can be implemented. Overall, the Katowice decisions provide enough momentum to move forward.”

But he frowned at the fact that the UN Summit failed to align ambitions with science, “in particular missing the necessity of making clear that global emissions from fossil fuels must be cut by half by 2030 to stay inline with the IPCC 1.5 C report.”

He said: “This is a real concern. We continue to follow a path that will take us to a very dangerous 3-4 degrees warmer world within this century. Extreme weather events hit people all across the planet already now,at only one-degree global warming. Especially the US is a hard-hit victim, a nation that played an unfortunate role at the climate summit, which already suffers and will suffer even more in the future from an increase of regional droughts and hurricanes.

“However, Katowice is only one step on the long and winding road to achieving sustainable prosperity within a fossil-fuel free future. All of us need to stop tip-toeing and speed up our steps. And Europe can and must be a forerunner.”

Ottmar Edenhofer, climate economist and acting Director at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, also expressed cautious optimism on the issue, saying: “Once again, governments across the world have proven that they’re capable and willing to cooperate in order to protect their citizens from climate risks. Despite a growing number of populist governments, multilateralism succeeded.

“However, the world needs more than climate policy targets and processes – it needs concrete measures, and they must be taken now.  In this respect, climate change can no longer be simply regarded as the biggest market failure of all time – with the continued rise of global greenhouse gas emissions after years of negotiation, it has also become an unprecedented government failure.

“Through appropriate policy measures – like effective CO2pricing – governments have to build a new trust-relationship to citizens.Carbon pricing cannot solve everything, yet without it nothing can be solved.And governments can actually use carbon pricing to enhance social justice,because the generated income can and must be given back to the people, be it through electricity tax cuts, infrastructure investments, or Christmas cheques.”

Joseph Onoja, Director of Technical Programmes at the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), gave the summit a thumbs-up for eventually arriving at a decision, but likewise offered a word of caution and advice.

He said: “Suffice to say that it was a tensed gathering because a decision was not reached until the very closing minutes of the summit,the good thing is that the decision was made at the end. It is indeed a right step towards the right direction. However, it is time for action.

“Climate change is not waiting for humanity to act. We have negotiated for long. Now is the time to act. As for the content, it will not be completely water tight, but we have a good enough document to work with, which will be impactful if implemented.

“In terms of the commitments, countries were committed to their interests but, at the end, the global interest won and that is the beauty of negotiation. Now is the time to act.”

Environmentalist and renewable energy expert, Huzi Mshelia, opined that, going by the COP’s outcome, countries have shown commitment to the process to the extent that they acknowledged the climate change threat and are engaging.

“The adoption of the guidelines, even without conclusion on markets, is a good step in the right direction because it could have been tragic to come out of Katowice without anything,” he stated.

He went further: “For a start, the guidelines would prompt further action albeit not as urgently as the situation deserves. The development in Katowice has reinforced my earlier belief that we need to do more domestically, particularly the mobilisation of local financial resources to address our vulnerabilities. While the international climate regime isencouraged, domestic actions are, in my opinion, even more critical and urgent.

“For Nigeria, the economy is directly at risks of climate change and our response is to immediately build appropriate safeguards to climate-proof the economy; any other approach will show lack of understanding of the dynamics of this phenomenon.”

But environmental activists and Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey, faulted the basis of the summit as well as its outcome.

His words: “The Paris Agreement was not the best agreement that the world needed to tackle global warming. A Rulebook to implement a set of voluntary nationally determined commitments does not add up to change the climate trajectory, sadly. The Paris Rule Book does not address the key cause of global warming: continual extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

“The outcome of Katowice is essentially business as usual, a postponement of many issues yet to be decided and a broad weakening of the justice basis of the Climate Convention. It will essentially give a tiny nudge to act and that action will mostly be in the frame of false solutions based on market mechanisms and other carbon offset routes. COP24 was an arena for power play and left vulnerable nations, that were never part of creating the problem,with the burning end of the climate stick, unfortunately.“The world can and must do better. Polluters must be kept away from future climate conferences. Nations must agree to keep fossil fuels in the ground as required by science. Time to ensure that all concerns are based on the best interest of the people and the planet.”