By Chuks Oyema-Aziken
The Director-General, National Council on Climate Change (NCCC), Dr. Nkiruka Chidia Maduekwe has charged stakeholders to take ownership of processes to build robust transparency frameworks needed for effective climate action in sync with national development priorities.
She made the call on Wednesday at the Project launch and inception workshop for the second phase of the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) project in Abuja.
The Workshop was organized by the National Council on Climate Change Secretariat (NCCCS) with the support of Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), CITEPA and GHG management institute.
She said the NCCCS is committed to mainstreaming climate action across all sectors of the Nigerian economy.
Dr. Maduekwe noted that the workshop marks the launch of a critical project aimed at enhancing transparency and effectiveness in our national climate efforts.
In an overview of the Nigeria ICAT Project Phase II Work Plan, ToRs and the implementation strategy, ICAT in Country Facilitator/Coordinating Consultant Dr. Bala Bappa said one of the major pillars of the Paris Agreement is the enhanced transparency framework which provides for accurate and reliable reporting of the implementation of NDCs of the Paris Agreement.
“The ICAT initiative for climate action transparency is supporting Nigeria to develop and operate an efficient monitoring, reporting and verification of the implementation of the Paris Agreement. So in the phase one, what is required to have a robust monitoring, reporting and verification is to have a strong institutional arrangement for the country.
“And for that project, ICAT supported Nigeria to develop an overarching institutional arrangement across three priority sectors of the NDC, to include oil and gas, AFOLU, which is agriculture, livestock and other land uses. And also the transport sector, which includes roads, water and air transport. So the phase one developed this overarching institutional arrangement across these three NDC priority sectors.
“But then the European delegation is also supporting Nigeria to develop MRV in power and waste, which are also our priority sectors. Then there is one outstanding sector, priority sector, that is the IPPU, the industry sector, which does not have this institutional arrangement on ground.
“So ICAT graciously supported Nigeria, is supporting Nigeria in the phase two now to develop an overarching institutional arrangement in the industry sector, which completes the institutional arrangement for the five priority sectors.
“But then to develop institutional arrangements is to identify those source sectors and also, you know, build capacity and, you know, identify the roles and responsibilities of those that will implement the MRV. That calls for broad wide engagement and, you know, carrying of those stakeholders through stakeholder mapping to identify all those people that are responsible for implementing the MRV.
“And then you develop a document that will guide these stakeholders in reporting the MRV system that has been done.
ICAT support is to enable Nigeria develop MRV guidelines to support implementation of the national MRV framework (such as regulatory provisions, data collection templates, guidance documents, manuals, roles and responsibilities, and links to the national MRV online system). The MRV framework will encompass both emission inventories and data needed for tracking progress on NDC implementation, including indicators to report on policies and measures to implement Nigeria’s NDCs
ICAT provides countries with tailored support and practical tools and methodologies to build robust transparency frameworks needed for effective climate action in sync with national development priorities.
Nigeria has recently completed the ICAT project focusing on sectoral MRV system to measure the performance of the targeted climate policies and actions defined for three sectors (Oil & Gas, Transport and AFOLU) and integrating sector MRV systems into an overarching MRV system under the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) of the Paris Agreement.
