Speaking on the need for and the implications of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory Quality Assurance Workshop that held recently in Abuja and Lagos, Director, Department of Climate Change in the Federal Ministry of Environment, Dr Peter Tarfa, says that, besides being very fortunate to be picked for the training programme, Nigeria will immensely benefit in terms of socio-economic development

We are here for an international training supported by the UNFCCC with the assistance of the UNDP Regional Office in Lome, Togo. We are to train national experts on greenhouse gas (GHG) Inventory for Quality Assurance. This is a very critically required training that Nigeria has been able to get from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Several countries are clamouring for it; we have been fortunate to be picked.

Need for qualitative data

Under the Paris Agreement, there is the aspect of reporting and our report should be qualitative and transparent. To be able to do that, we need assurance on the quality of the data we are generating. We have been engaging consultants in the preparation of our National Communications and Biennial Update Report (BUR), among others. We as government are responsible for ensuring that what is submitted to the international community is factual and transparent and verifiable.

How do we do that if we don’t have the capacity to determine the quality of work, especially the data? How do we critique and say, “No, consultant, you did not give me the appropriate data?” How are we sure that the data from in an area (say energy or steel industry) are apt and reflective of the sector?

Transforming the economy

The whole idea about this reporting is to help the countries to go towards the low carbon development pathway. It will transform the economy, it will help us to be able to advise government appropriately. What will be the benefit now to the economy if we have energy generation through renewable energy, and then we have a healthier environment by being able to eliminate the generators. I can assure you that virtually every household in Nigeria owns a generator.

So, what is the contribution of that to the quality of our air? So, the climate change regime is a tool that is used for socio-economic development and by really getting all the data we can determine whether there is an emission reduction down the line it will help us to inform government to form policies that will lead to development.

Why Nigeria was selected

Nigeria was selected because: we have the largest economy in Africa; we are a major contributor to global emissions; and because of our socio-economic development, population, as well as level of industrialisation, given the oil and gas sector alone.

So, if we get it right, it is going to have a major input on the economy, and in meeting obligations under the Paris Agreement.

Implication of training for Nigeria at COP24

It will help us to clearly understand what kind of Rulebooks we should be clamouring for. When we are looking at the aspect of mitigation as a component of the Rulebook, we will be able to say okay, countries should be encouraged financially and technically including capacity building to put in place a robust natural GHG inventory framework.

Once we can do that, and it is continuous and becomes a seamless exercise, we will have data that will be useful for research, useful for economic planning, and meeting our obligation on NDCs. So, it is a very, very significant gathering and I must inform you also that the participants cut across all the major priority sectors like transport, agriculture, industry, power, oil & gas (NNPC), and private experts, who should be responsible for quality assurance when data is generated. All these entities are the data providers, including NiMET, we are the data controllers. But the quality assurance is supposed to be a national independent outfit.

Need for accredited entities

So, we will get to a stage where we accredit entities across the IPCC structure; we will accredit Nigeria entities the way you have accredited banks to do banking business. So, similarly, we must accredit these entities. They will be responsible for quality assurance in the area of energy, etc. All the criteria must be developed for accrediting them. It is a major requirement and if we set this right it will help us in creating jobs; it will transform the economy in the sense that the way we do business will change.

If we can eliminate all these emissions coming from generators, you have a serene, healthier environment. If you can also put in place quality and environmentally friendly transportation system in a city like Lagos, it will also lead to reduction of emissions and it will give us a healthier environment and people can move around in mass and more seamlessly via a cleaner transportation system. To do all these, we need to have data – quality data. The training is to ensure that the data being generated is qualitative for the different sectors.

Impact on the NDCs

It will have an impact on the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the sense that, down the line in the year 2020, we must revise the NDCs. Our NDCs and the revision will be based on data. We will not backslide; rather we have committed to 20%. If we have data and see how what we are in, we can even beat our chest to say we are able to do up to 50% unconditionally. Nigeria is indeed very fortunate to be picked for this programme.

In the sidelines of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory Quality Assurance Workshop that held recently in Abuja and Lagos, William Agyemang-Bonsu, Manager, Mitigation and Transparency Support (Mitigation, Data and Analysis) at the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, says emissions estimate should be the basis for which Nigeria decides what climate policies are appropriate

We are holding this training to assist Nigeria to be able to prepare qualitative and robust greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory. If our goal is only to produce the numbers, the emission estimates and that’s the end of it, then we have not been helpful to Nigeria, or the expertise in Nigeria has not been utilised to the maximum.

And therefore, we want to see where the sources of emissions are and how averagely they are estimated. And this depends on several factors, the latest that is used for estimation and the activity data that goes into estimating the emissions as well as the choice of emission factor, and all these together and now for these sectors we have emission estimates in the sector.

The industries in Nigeria wil have their own categorisation in terms of how much emission is coming from that sub-sector of industry. If you go to cement production, you have a similar type of emissions happening over there. If you go to energy, power production, you also have some emissions there. Various sectors have their sources of emissions and these emissions must be estimated.

Waste sector – management or wastewater treatment plat – all these facilities potentially have emissions that are GHG emissions, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane or nitrous oxide. And the discussions we’ve been having is that we want to ensure that these estimates are of the highest quality possible and you are using the approved methodology which is the IPCC 2006 Guidelines.

If I may retract a bit, that during the emission estimate, if our goal as Nigeria is only to get these numbers and report to the Climate Change Secretariat that this is where Nigeria’s emissions are, then we have failed the country. I’m repeating that because it’s very important. This is because the emission estimate should be the basis for which Nigeria will decide what climate policy in terms of emission reduction policy are appropriate to be put in place in the country.

Going beyond even the policy development, for me what is critical is that it becomes the basis of very many development interventions in various sectors. For example, if you look at Ikeja in Lagos, you see clearly that there is traffic congestion problem, and because we have those volumes of traffic, we would have high levels of GHG emissions especially CO2. So, what Nigeria, especially the municipality of Ikeja or the state of Lagos, could be doing would be to look at how to develop infrastructure such that congestion can be reduced.

But in doing that, the benefit of that intervention is that it would reduce not only GHG, but also particulate matter or emissions which normally would have implications for human health in the urban centre. So, even though we set out to do a climate intervention which was reducing congestion to reduce GHG emissions, we would have development benefit, health impact is reduced.

And I’m saying again and again that should be what drives us as Nigerians to do climate policy and interventions; take climate actions. We need to do that because its of development benefit. The other benefits that will arise as a result of the interventions in GHG emissions. And I would encourage you to look at those reductions as rather the co-benefit – benefit resulting as a result of development. So, that should be the goal, and that’s what we are trying to understand how these emissions are properly estimated already informs policy making.

So, it’s a more scientific technical work, but the goal is not only to do the technical work and let it rest there, the goal is to bring up the policy and inform development. There are several areas where we can do climate interventions, but what comes out of it is more of development benefits, and that’s what I will encourage that we do to help our development in the country.

Another point fundamentally linked with GHG emission inventory which is for the future is to look at over the years, working with other stakeholders at the national level, including all the MDAs, private sector, research, academia and NGOs, how we can base the work being done, make this national system for GHG inventory an important foundation for measurement reporting and verification. But at the same time, lay a foundation for potential future work.

Nigeria is one of the biggest economies in Africa with a large skill base and when able to lay this good foundation of inventory across sectors, the goal is to help Nigeria into the future to develop what we call an Emissions Trading Scheme. This is something a little bit into the future and will only happen this foundation works. That’s why the robustness of the estimates is critical.

Once we can estimate the GHGs, attributing the emissions to specific sources within the country, we can have a scheme as is being done in other countries, including some developing countries such as Korea and China. Because of the size of the economy in Nigeria, we can start to do that. This is the foundation.

Because you know where they came from, you can allocate actions to reduce emissions to these various sources where they are coming from. And the beauty of it is that it gets to a stage where a lot of these actions would not be driven by government, but by either the private sector or other entities that are interested in contributing to addressing those emission reductions.

Additionally, what happens is that Nigeria under the Paris Agreement has committed to do some voluntary reductions. And what the Paris Agreement requires is that Parties under the Agreement over time will increase their mitigation ambition. So, if you have laid this foundation when you know all the sources and are adequately estimated and you have other actors beyond government contributing to these reductions, Nigeria can confidently stand up before the international community and tell them: “We can do 50% reduction by 2030 because we know that other partners out there will be able to do some reductions on their own, in addition to what the government can do.”

And you can only make that proclamation that we will do 50% reduction when you know where you are. You must know where you are – in terms of accurate emission sources – and you will be able to say: “I will reduce that where I am to that level and compare that level to where I was, and the reduction is 50%.” So, its not mere saying do this and that; no. Yo have to know where you are in terms of emissions and therefore you can say: “Based on our experience, the contributions we have had from the private sector, philanthropies, donors as well as our own contributions as government, we are able to do the 50% reductions.”

This is critical and should not only be driven by the Department of Climate Change because it has implications for the whole economy and therefore all hands should be on deck. There should be research and academia bringing in their expertise; there should be other private sector entities, NGOs, municipalities, various MDAs participating in that.

So, we have a core group that we’ve started working with, trying to explain some of these methodologies and discussing looking at what they have done so far and the areas they can improve and discussing the improvements, we are looking at within the time span of now and into the future which activities can be done in terms of improvement immediately, in to the medium term and which can we look at in the long term.

Nigeria’s bid to prepare qualitative greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories has received a boost, thanks to a fatherly arm extended by the United Nations, whose bodies are collaborating in the landmark initiative.

At the International Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory Quality Assurance Training for Nigeria organised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Support Programme on National Communications and Biennial Update Report (BUR) held in Lagos from November 5 to 9, 2018, experts from various sectors were skilled on GHG inventory strategies.

In his opening remarks at the workshop, Director, Department of Climate Change (DCC) in the Federal Ministry of Environment, Dr Peter Tarfa, emphasised that there is a growing understanding that the response to climate change can only be effective if the knowledge of climate change is linked across all stakeholders.

Tarfa, who was represented by Mrs Iniobong Abiola-Awe, a Deputy Director in the DCC and National Coordinator, National GHG Inventory Management System, said: “Quality control in climate change reporting entails how we review the quality of all factors involved in the production of our national reporting. It is a good practice to document and archive all information required to produce the national emissions inventory estimates with all the quality checks at each level of preparation to such a way that the reported emissions estimates are transparent and steps in their calculation can be retraced.”

According to him, one of the goals of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on good practice guidance is to support the development of national GHG inventories that can be readily assessed in terms of readiness and completeness.

“It is a good practice to implement quality assurance procedures in the development of national GHG inventory to accomplish this goal. Understanding all the necessary check points to undertake quality assurance right from the process of data collection to report compilation is necessary. There is a great need to draw attention of all stakeholders and to disseminate knowledge, promote awareness and understanding of effective climate change knowledge reporting for national development.”

One of the trainers at the workshop, Rasack Nayamuth, said: “The training covers quality assurance and on how to compile, including the computerisation, of the GHG inventory. It is following last week’s training in Abuja that covered hands-on training for national experts on how to run the 2006 IPCC software, which is the methodology recommended by the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC to do inventories. All countries follow the same method so that it can be comparable over the years, over time and between countries.

“Nigeria is a signatory Party to the Convention (UNFCCC) and as such has obligations to report what it is achieving in terms of implementation of the Convention. The ultimate objective of the Convention is to stabilise the level of GHG in the atmosphere to eventually try to reduce global warming over a longer period which the IPCC is measuring.”

Manager, Mitigation and Transparency Support (Mitigation, data and Analysis) at the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat, William Agyemang-Bonsu, stressed that the benefit of the intervention is that it would reduce not only GHG, but also particulate matter or emissions which normally would have implications for human health in the urban centre.

“The goal is not only to do the technical work and let it rest there, the goal is to bring up the policy and inform development,” he said, adding that the nation should not only look at making the national system for GHG inventory an important foundation for measurement, reporting and verification, but at the same time lay a foundation for potential future work.”