The Federal Government is ready to meet the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to promote effective gender participation.
Sen. Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment revealed this during the opening and beginning workshop of the project in Abuja on Thursday.
The project is tagged: “The Nigeria Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), Just and Gender Inclusive Transition (JGIT) Project’’.
The initiative is aimed at assisting governments to better analyse the implications of their climate policies and activities and achieve their transparency obligations.
Ngige said the purpose of the genesis meeting was to launch the ICAT Just Transition project and promote awareness among the national stakeholders for a better understanding of its execution.
He added that ICAT, an International multi-stakeholder collaboration of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) was enabling Nigeria to build up Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of a Just and Gender Inclusive Transition(JGIT).
The minister, represented by Ms Daju Kachollom, Permanent Secretary in the ministry said Nigeria had signed a Project Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with the UNOPS, represented by the ICAT management.
According to him, the PCA is to tighten up the procedure leading to the takeoff and implementation of the project over a 12 months period.
‘`The goals of the project among others are, to build JGIT monitoring, and MRV and guarantee its links with the sectoral MRV system.
”Another objective is to Enhance the Transparency Framework (ETF) implemented by the Federal Ministry of Environment to achieve synergy, institutional memory and stakeholder inclusion and cooperation.
“It will further enable a tripartite cooperation between government, labour and employer associations, to achieve a Just and Gender Inclusive Transition going forward with the implementation of the Paris agreement,” he added.
The minister added that the ICAT project will be executed by a team of national specialists and foreign ICAT consultants under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment.
Dr Yerima Tarfa, ICAT, JGIT Project Team Lead stated the effort will help to strengthen the overall transparency capacity of nations and measure the impact of policies and development objectives.
According to him, this is via giving relevant methodological knowledge and tools to promote evidence–based policymaking.
Tarfa said that Nigeria was the largest economy and top oil producer and most populated in Africa.
“It faces the unique challenge of having to diversify its economy away from fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas and increasingly, coal) while responding to the unmet energy needs of its growing population.
“Nonetheless, Nigeria is turning this challenge into an opportunity by increasing the use of renewable energy, reducing its carbon footprints and eliminating gas flaring.
“Nigeria’s National Determined Contributions (NDCs) is committed to a 20 per cent emission reduction by 2030 unconditionally and 45 per cent conditional, with focus on power and electricity, oil and gas,” he added.
The team head stated the highlights of the NDCs include stopping gas flaring by 2030 and a 30 per cent energy efficiency level by 2030.
He said the inauguration of the inception workshop would offer the chance to promote awareness and construct a national cross-knowledge exchange that would provide a platform for key stakeholders to enable the execution of the Nigeria ICAT JGIT Project.
He stated that this will further build up an MRV of Just and Gender Inclusive Transition and its Roadmap for execution in Nigeria.
