Vice President Kashim Shettima, has charged world leaders to move beyond pledging to performance, and from dialogue to taking reasonable action in tackling climate change and its attendant natural disasters that have claimed innocent lives and rendered many homeless across the globe.
“Let COP30 be remembered as the moment when the world moved from pledges to performance, from ambition to action and from dialogue to delivery,” he declared.
Speaking yesterday during the Leaders’ Climate Summit at the ongoing 30th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP 30), in Belém, Brazil, the Vice President, representing President Bola Tinubu, reaffirmed Nigeria’s global climate leadership with a commitment to achieving an emission reduction target of 32% by 2035.
According to his spokesman, Stanley Nkwocha, Shettima noted that this followed the unveiling of the National Carbon Market Framework and Climate Change Fund. He explained that the new initiatives form the core of Nigeria’s climate finance architecture designed to attract billions of dollars in clean energy and adaptation investments.
With the Framework and the Fund aimed at driving sustainable investment and resilience in the sector in place, Shettima said Nigeria’s renewed climate agenda represented “not just an aspiration, but a solemn national commitment to preserve the planet for future generations.” Demanding reasonable action against climate change, the Nigerian Vice President said: “The Earth speaks in the language of loss and warning. It tells us that our survival is tied to its well-being.
These are the cries that have compelled us to gather, from one city to another, in pursuit of one shared purpose — to save the only home we have.” On his part, UN Secretary General, Antonio Gutierrez, who said it was unfortunate that countries of the world have failed to remain below 1.5 degrees, charged world leaders to embrace a paradigm shift to limit the overshoot magnitude and quickly drive it down in order to salvage what he described as a highly risky situation.
President Da Silva added that the slogan of “Collective Efforts” was adopted for COP 30 to encourage climate action worldwide “from all sectors of society, in particular civic societies and grassroots organisations.” For his part, the Prince of Wales, Williams, who represented his father, King Charles, at the plenary, said it was time for his generation to safeguard the natural world for generations to come.
