• As UN climate chief calls for urgency, people-centred climate action
• Germany provides €7m to drive climate action in Nigeria, others
A new civil society report has delivered a stark verdict that three decades after the Rio Earth Summit and a decade on from the Paris Agreement, governments are still protecting profits over people, shielded by elite capture and fossil-fuel disinformation.
The report came just as the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development(BMZ) announced that it had provided €7 million for driving ambitious Climate Action in Agri-food Systems (ClimA) project in Nigeria, Cambodia and Bolivia
The report, tagged Inequity, Inequality, Inaction, stated that climate cooperation was breaking down, and COP30 must deliver fair-shares reset rooted in justice, not greed. It shows that Global North countries have failed to cut emissions and are still expanding oil and gas, while also failing to deliver promised finance.
The report also warns that inequality within countries is driving the crisis. The global rich can shield themselves from many climate impacts while pushing the costs of transition and disaster onto workers and overstretched public systems. This elite capture, particularly by fossil fuel interests, of crucial political processes is deepening injustice, fuelling political paralysis, and blocking the stronger action needed to keep us within climate limits.
Chair, Friends of the Earth International, Hemantha Withanage, said: “Ten years after the Paris Agreement, we see the familiar story of wealthy Global North countries falling far short of delivering their fair share of emissions reductions and international climate finance, even as they gaslight and blame larger Global South countries for the accelerating climate crisis.
ON Germany’s €7 million funding to drive climate action in Nigeria, it was gathered that the project, to be implemented for five years, aimed at accelerating climate-resilient food systems in Nigeria as well as establishing enabling institutional, strategic, and financial conditions to facilitate ambitious climate protection across Nigeria’s agricultural and food systems
Speaking at the official launch of the project, the Project Manager, Alexis Brakhan, yesterday in Abuja, mentioned that although Agri-food Systems account for about 31 per cent of human-made greenhouse gas emissions, the sector was increasingly impacted by extreme weather events, including droughts, and shifting rainfall patterns.
He stressed that without effective mitigation in the sector, achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement would be impossible.
