March 23, 2023

The Federal Government is ready to fulfill the Paris Agreement on Climate Change to ensure effective gender inclusion.

Sen. Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment stated this during the inauguration and inception workshop of the project in Abuja on Thursday.

The protect is tagged: “The Nigeria Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), Just and Gender Inclusive Transition (JGIT) Project’’.

The project is aimed at helping countries to better assess the impacts of their climate policies and actions and fulfill their transparency commitments.

Ngige said the objective of the inception meeting was to launch the ICAT Just Transition project and increase awareness among the national stakeholders for better understanding of its implementation.

He said that ICAT, an International multi-stakeholder partnership of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) was supporting Nigeria to set 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 firm up the process leading to the take off and implementation of the project over a 12 months period.

‘`The objectives of the project among others include, to develop JGIT monitoring, MRV and ensure it links with the sectoral MRV system.

”Another objective is to Enhance 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 said.

The minister said that ICAT project would be implemented by a team of national experts and international ICAT consultants under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment.

Dr Yerima Tarfa, ICAT, JGIT Project Team Lead said the initiative would help to increase the overall transparence capacities of countries and assess the contribution of policies and development objectives.

According to him, this is by providing appropriate methodological information and tools to support evidence–based policymaking.

Tarfa noted that Nigeria was the largest economy and leading oil producer and most populous 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 said.

The team lead said the highlights of the NDCs include ending gas flaring by 2030 and 30 per cent energy efficiency level by 2030.

He said the inauguration of the inception workshop would provide the opportunity to create awareness and build a national cross knowledge sharing that would provide a platform for key stakeholder to facilitate the implementation of the Nigeria ICAT JGIT Project.

He added that this would further set up an MRV of Just and Gender Inclusive Transition and its Roadmap for implementation in Nigeria.(NAN)