By Abubakar Yunusa
Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP), a civil society organisation (CSO), has called for an increase in the budgetary allocation to address climate change in Nigeria.
David Terungwa, GIFSEP’s executive director, on Thursday, said the federal government must increase resources in tackling the effect of climate change.
Terungwa noted that the N599 billion earmarked for climate change in the 2024 budget is meagre compared to the entire N28 trillion that the government planned to expend for the year.
“The key question we are trying to ask is, how climate-friendly is Nigeria’s budget? Did the government meet targets to ensure that we combat climate change in the country,” he asked.
“A lot of policies are being made. These policies would remain invalid without cash backing. The only way we can be sure that action will be taken on climate change is when actions are backed up with a budget.
“We took a critical measurement, tracking all the ministries to look at, what are those climate friendly budgets that we have in the country.
“From the report that we have so far, it’s interesting to know that nearly all the ministries in the country have one or two, climate-friendly budgets, lines or items. The challenge is what is the amount and that is really the issue.
“In all, the climate-friendly projects within the budget, amounting to just about N599 billion. Now if you put that aside with the total budget, which is about $28 trillion, then you will see that it is very small.
“We are expecting that there should be a supplementary budget or as we prepare for the 2025 budget, we’ll have more climate-friendly projects in the budget. All the projects should also be harmonised because there are lots of solar projects in almost all the ministries.
“So at the moment, we would say that the 2024 appropriation act is not climate-friendly. This means that the country needs to decide on a climate-friendly budgeting considering the impact of climate change on the economy, security, food security, on our way of life.
“Climate is to be treated as an emergency. So in that case, we must increase funding for climate activities.”
Faniran Sanjo, director of social development at the federal ministry of budget and economic planning, said there is a need for every relevant body to contribute to addressing climate change.
“What we are concerned about is how can we get resources to even fund the budget. So resource mobilisation is critical to the ministry and that is why we emphasised much on innovative funding for most of the activities of the government,” Sanjo said.
“With the little the government has, it needed to be substantiated by additional resources. That is why we are working towards having a brainstorming session on green bonding for climate change in Nigeria.”