allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Environment - As Senate Considers Climate Bill (Page 1 of 1)

The Committee on Environment and Ecology of the Senate will tomorrow open a debate on a bill for an act to establish a National Climate Commission; in a public hearing scheduled to hold at the National Assembly.

The bill, which has gone through the second reading, is being sponsored by Senator John Shagaya and promoted by Nigeria Climate Action Network (NigeriaCAN), an umbrella organisation of individuals and groups promoting the issues of climate change, led by Mr. Ewa Otu Eleri.

The committee had earlier disclosed that the senate is trying to develop legislation for environmental security for Nigeria. The bill is a part of the holistic picture of sustainable development for the country.

According to Mrs. Vivien Njemanze, clerk to the committee, the hearing is a platform to allow stakeholders to determine whether it is necessary, in the first place, to have a commission; while the public also needs to be informed, and so decide, on the structure to run the commission and how to fund it.

She added that the commission would be charged with the responsibility for the strategic planning and co-ordination of national policies in the field of climate and development.

Issues have moved beyond whether a climate agency was desirable or not. The bill had an initial opposition. But that is not presently the case. The challenge before the committee will likely lie in the fact that climate a cross-cutting and multi-sectoral sector.

The Ministers of transport and aviation, energy, power and steel; science and technology; housing and urban development; commerce and industry; agriculture, water resources and rural development; justice; foreign affairs; finance; and all health have some direct dealings with climate issues.

Agencies whose mandates have to do with the proposed commission include the Nigerian Institute of Geological and Mining Research; Nigerian Institute of Oceanography; Nigerian Metrological Agency (NIMET); Nigerian Communications Commission; Nigerian Communications Commission; and Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

Others are the Nigerian Atomic Energy Commission; Nigerian Academy of Sciences; National Planning Commission; Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN); Manufacturers Association of Nigeria; Energy Commission of Nigeria; Nigerian Society of Engineers; and Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

The public hearing reflected the list of the stakeholders which cuts across diverse areas as shipping and maritime, space, nuclear sector, environment, energy, manufacturing, and oil and gas.

Therefore, where precisely to apply the knife in the thin lines separating competing sectoral interests is the delicate decision which the senate committee will reach after the hearing.

Climate change is a national security and development issue and affects all sectors of the national life. Evidence is increasing about its unwholesome impact on the world. Diseases, low productivity in the agriculture and rising number of heat waves are tied to it. Most groups, except those who stand to gain in slowing down the progress of the Kyoto Protocol, will agree on this.

It is for these reasons that most of the interest groups that will be represented at the hearing are committed to visions of the local and global environment. As individuals and groups, they want to take up arms and combat the perversion of climate of the land.

So the self-identification of each interest group with the bill and the commission it seeks to establish should be seen in the context of the love of the environment.

The Federal Ministry of Environment may think its position is unassailable, as the umbrella body on environmental matters; a position which may be weakened by the experience of the Inter Ministerial Committee on Climate Change.

Nigeria is bound by international best practices, so may go the argument against the ministry. A parallel may also be drawn between the proposed National Climate Commission and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The point is that, because climate issues are very complex, and have potentially grave implications for the environment and society, policy makers need objective sources of information to deal with them.

The argument goes on to say that there is more to the IPCC story: UNEP and WMO actually set up the world climate agency independent of themselves. The arrangement is that IPCC conducts researches and studies and writes report, which UNEP and WMO use. The same should be the case in Nigeria, where the proposed climate commission assists the work of other relevant agencies.

Governments participate in the plenary sessions of IPCC where the main decisions are taken about the agency's work programme. Here also IPCC reports are adopted and approved. Governments accept those reports and go on to use them make technical and socio-economic policies. This is possible because they are sure of the legitimacy of the scientific contents of the reports. For example, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was based on the findings of the first IPCC Assessment Report of 1990. The convention was ready for signing at the landmark Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992; it entered into force two years later, in 1994. The major input for the negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol of 1887 was provided by IPCC.

The integrity of the process of IPCC as an independent agency can also be seen in its dealings with the scientific community. Hundreds of scientists from around the world contribute to the work of the commission. The reports are comprehensive because they draw from the widest possible pool of knowledge, drawn from every relevant discipline.

In the end, it should be said that IPCC works to achieve the human development goals of the United Nations. In the present context, this means that the real stakeholders of the bill are Nigerians and the world community with which Nigeria shares a common destiny.

The bill should be determined by broad-based national interests covering the oil industry, agriculture, health, desertification, the protection of coastal communities, etc.

And this is the core of the argument here: What Nigeria needs is an institution with statutory powers that is capable of giving strong leadership and responding to what an independent analyst calls the clear and present danger of climate change.

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