Nigeria has implored the international community to significantly increase global financing to protect and restore nature’s economic value through predictable, equitable, and accessible funding mechanisms.
According to Nigerian Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, since forests, landscapes, and oceans are shared resources that are outside the jurisdiction of any single nation, their protection requires global solidarity.
Shettima stated Nigeria’s position in Belem, Brazil, where he represented President Bola Tinubu at a high-level thematic session titled; “Climate and Nature: Forests and Oceans,” on the margins of the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 30) being held in that South American country.
According to a release by his spokesman, Stanley Nkwoccha, Shettima regretted that while nature is probably the most critical infrastructure in the world, it has long been treated as a commodity to exploit rather than an asset to invest in, even as he said Nigeria is solidly driven by this knowledge “to integrate nature-positive investments into” its climate finance architecture.
“Through our National Carbon Market Framework and Climate Change Fund, we aim to mobilise up to three billion US dollars annually in climate finance. These resources will be reinvested in community-led reforestation, blue carbon projects, and sustainable agriculture.
“We call on our global partners to recognise the economic value of nature and to channel significant finance towards protecting and restoring it through predictable, equitable, and accessible funding mechanisms,” he declared.
Shettima contended that the Global South countries that “have contributed least to this crisis, are today paying its highest price,” insisting that for climate justice to be seen as well served, nations that have benefited more “from centuries of extraction must now lead in restoration.”
Accordingly, he called on the global community to increase grant-based finance, operationalise Blue Carbon Markets, and implement debt-for-nature swaps to enable developing countries to invest in conservation.
