UNEP forecasts decades impact of climate change in Nigeria

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has said without drastic efforts to reduce all Greenhouse Gas emissions, the human impact of climate change will become far worse in decades to come.

To mitigate and reverse the ugly trend, the global body urged stakeholders and negotiators in the climate sector to increase the implementation of concrete actions to address methane emissions in Nigeria.

UNEP issued the warning at a capacity-building workshop on the potent greenhouse gas, methane, for the Nigerian oil and gas sector organised by Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN) and the EU Delegation to Nigeria and implemented by UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) in collaboration with the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC).

Speaking, Marci Paranski, Programme Manager Officer, UNEP noted that the country cannot meet the Paris Agreement Goals and the global methane pledge without taking targeted action to reduce methane emissions and advised the authorities to take advantage of the opportunity to reduce methane as a short term action to solve climate change.

Disclosing that methane is responsible for about 30 percent of the total global warming the world is currently experiencing, she added that the pollutant is also responsible for about one million premature deaths due to respiratory disease around the world.

She stated: “We are currently experiencing a climate emergency as global temperatures continue to rise and effects of global warming are felt more and more throughout the world, but countries around the world, including Nigeria, are experiencing these frequent and extreme weather posing threat to the livelihood, food security and health, and putting millions of lives at risk.

“Reductions of methane in the oil and gas sector are one of the most cost effective ways to solve climate change using technologies that exist today.

“The cost of this measurement and mitigation remains far outweighed by the cost of inaction, either in terms of climate impact and economic value, we will be facing 30 billion in lost product every year in the face of no action.”

In her remarks, Director-General and Chief Executive Officer, National Council on Climate Change (NCCC), Dr Nkiruka Maduekwe, described methane as a colourless and odourless flammable gas, a short-lived pollutant in the air found in waste, agriculture and in oil and gas sectors.

Maduekwe who is also the Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Change, said the idea behind the methane reduction in Nigeria was based on Nigeria’s 2021 Naturally Determined Contributions (NDCs), commitment making it the first country in Africa to make a pledge to reduce methane emissions.