Minister Canvases for Innovative Finance Mechanism for Sustainability As National Council On Environment Meets
A call has been made to galvanize more financial windows for climate and environmental actions in order to build a sustainable future for our generation and the ones yet unborn. The Minister of State for Environment, Dr. Iziaq Adekunle Salako, made this call at the 17th meeting of National Council on Environment which was held today, Wednesday, 24th of April, 2024 at the NAF Conference Hall, Kado Abuja. He called on stakeholders in the public and private sectors to use the conference as a platform to forge strategic partnership in order to mobilize scarce funding and create innovative models to combat the hydra-headed menace of climate change impacts.
“Today, we are facing a climate emergency requiring bold and ambitious actions from all of us as leaders and indeed from all members of the human race. Our interaction with nature, our consumption and development activities over the years have greatly depleted our God given resource and distorted the equilibrium in our environment. We are faced with global warming fueling environmental degradation, natural disasters, extreme weather conditions, food insecurity, water and land crisis, economic disruption, armed conflict, banditry and terrorism. The level of seas are rising as the arctic ice is melting, coral reefs dying, oceans acidifying, our biodiversity getting lost and our existence threatened. Clearly, we must tackle these planetary crisis headlong with high ambition and concerted action.
“It is a widely accepted maxim that without money, ambitions are prone to become wishful thinking and intended actions paralyzed. Our gathering here at this national council on environment to examine innovative ways of funding our ambitions and actioning our thoughts is therefore a critical imperative. As important as the environment sector is, we still have to compete with other sectors for the limited fund available in both the public and private sectors. We therefore need to think more outside the box, be more transparent, evidence driven and be result oriented in order to attract the needed fund to our sector”, Salako noted.
He said the Federal Ministry of Environment was well prepared to take the leadership role in this regard and had been implementing innovative financing mechanisms like the issuance of the Nigeria Sovereign Green Bond to drive private sector funding into the system. He invited state governments to come on board and examine the opportunities for climate financing through the issuance of their own green bonds.
“I enjoin all of us, stakeholders in the public and private sectors to see this gathering as an important platform to forge strategic partnership in order to mobilize scarce funding and create innovative models to combat this hydra-headed menace steering us in the face. The Federal Ministry of Environment is well prepared to take leadership in this regard and has been implementing innovative financing mechanisms like the issuance of the Nigeria Sovereign Green Bond to drive private sector funding into the system. I invite state governments to come on board and examine the opportunities for climate financing through the issuance of their own green bonds.
“The need to galvanize more financial windows for environmental sustainability efforts is not just an aspiration but a commitment that will define our era. In our drive to build a sustainable future for our generation and the ones yet unborn, mobilizing funding for climate and environmental actions is a core imperative. In doing this, we need to emphasis our areas of comparative advantages and present such to the global community as our contribution to addressing the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.”
Salako said Nigeria is emphasizing on nature based solutions to combat the effects of climate and environmental change because of the natural advantages and its potential to reduce capital flight and improve the livelihoods of our people.
“Nigeria is emphasizing is nature based solutions. The global north who are the greatest contributor to the environmental challenges being faced by the world is offering us all kinds of technologies, some of them controversial as the solution to the crisis. As we evaluate and consider these technologies, let us not loose touch with nature based solutions that offers us natural advantages and possess a higher potential to reduce capital flight and improve the livelihoods of our people.
“The Federal Ministry of Environment at COP 28 in Dubai last December championed and launched the Ministerial Alliance for Ambition on Nature Finance to give us a voice in promoting ambition on biodiversity finance in global south countries like Nigeria where most of the biodiversity performing critical ecosystem services for the entire world is located. As the developed world comes around with their technologies and carbon credit schemes where they almost exclusively determine the pricing, let us also put forward our rich biodiversity worth trillion of dollars”, the Minister concluded.
