IPPAM Advocates Aggressive Climate Change Policy to Sustain Social, Economic Devt

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The Institute for Public Policy Analysis and Management (IPPAM) has warned that if an aggressive climate change policy is not put in place to sustain the social and economic development in the country, the country will lose 11 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to climate change.

It also lamented that Nigeria does not have any document developed with rigour as regards to the issue of climate change.

The Vice-Chancellor, Alex Ekwueme University, Ebonyi, Prof. Chinedum Nwajuiba, while speaking Thursday at a one-day public policy roundtable series with the theme: “Climate Change, Livelihoods and Public Policy Responses in Nigeria”, organised by IPPAM said the country’s Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP) in some instances is inconsistent with Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which should be the pillar of sustainable development in the country.

He stated categorically that the ambitions laid down in the ERGP cannot be met without due considerations of the impacts of climate change and its potential to retard or even stop any development effort in Nigeria.

Nwajuiba stated: “If the NDC is supposed to be the central pillar, Nigeria’s development policy as envisaged in the draft implementation plan, seems to have a missing link between the ERGP and the NDC.

“We don’t have a real policy in Nigeria and I don’t know if we have a nominal or real policy, because policy has to be a real policy not nominal which means you truly believe you have a document to guide you.

“Nigeria does not have one example of a policy document developed with rigour as regards to climate change. We had the chance to put it into practice and really develop a document with so much rigour that the product of areas, research at macro levels has all kinds of stakeholders, both local and international. Research that covers states research at macro level, local and international.

“Countries have policies which means there is a document somewhere that supposedly is a policy to guide, but practitioners don’t even remember that such a guide exists, nobody would still call that a policy,” he added.

On his part, the Consultant of Clean Energy, Mr. Ishaku Mshelia, said one of the tragedy of most African nations especially Nigeria is policy inconsistency and inability to put in practice and implement purpose-driven policies.

He said developed countries are not bothered about agriculture because their agriculture is based on irrigation,stressing that if irrigation facilities are scattered all over the country, no one would be talking about drought in the north or flood.

According to him, “We have to come up with a strategy that is hinged on moving from the inferior stage we are to the superior stage we should be. Climate change impact is highly huge in terms of destruction of economic activities on the people. There is social dislocation, look at the IDPs, only God knows what they might be facing because of this economic dislocation.”

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