Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments September 25, 2016 erstellt
Description:
Human activities are gradually driving global change in population, consumption, technology, economic advances, and organization of human societies. These changes are likely to impact on the ecosystems, human systems, and urban systems which should challenge humanity to review or rethink activities that currently put the climate at risk. The phenomenon, climate change, is one that should concern everyone, and like an indigenous Rights Campaigner, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, stated: “Climate change is adding poverty to poverty every day, forcing many to leave home for a better future” Nigeria should be concerned about this fact as it is expected to be most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due its geographical location - in the tropics and with a long coastline; predictions of States like Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, etc turning to deserts and semi deserts in the 21st Century; destruction of the Niger-Delta region where 80% of all government revenues and 97% of Nigerian foreign exchange come from; increased floods; scarcity of usable water; land degradation, and its low capacity to adapt to these changes. It is believed that where the situation remains business-as-usual, its impact could be vast. Nigeria has shown commitment in combating climate change by signing and ratifying various international laws on climate change and developing policies to pursue its climate change plan and strategy. More so and just recently, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Paris Treaty on Climate, a legally-binding global climate deal entered into in December, 2015 to wit - The Paris Climate Conference (COP21). The universal agreement for the Conference was to keep a global temperature rise below 20C and to drive efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.50C above pre-industrial level. Nigeria demonstrated commitment to the success of the Conference by submitting an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) which was approved by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 2015. The INDC is a key vehicle for governments to communicate, internationally, how it intends to cut down emissions for the post-2020 period. Like other policy documents on climate change, it is important that these sophisticated policies are supported with strong implementation mechanisms to bring about desirable results. The lack of implementation of existing policies is a bane to the development of climate systems and services. This can be attributed to lack of awareness, adequate financing, top-down policy approach, lack of an independent enforcing agency, and so on. This article looks critically at why Nigeria should get serious, existing legal and policy framework for climate change in Nigeria, national actions on climate change - the work so far, implementation challenges of climate change policies, and building an effective implementation process for climate change policies and the INDC