The meeting of nearly 200 governments in Lima, Peru in December for the 20th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) must produce the first draft of a global deal to cut emissions, a coalition of Nigerian civil society organisations (CSOs) has said.
At the 2014 Global Week of Action for Climate Justice, Atayi Babs of the Climate and Sustainable Development Network of Nigeria (CSDevNet) decried the slow progress at the last round of talks in Warsaw in Poland, implying that significant progress is needed in key areas including climate financing and how to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.
According to him, the meeting in Lima in December is a staging point towards a crunch summit in Paris in 2015 when it is hoped world leaders will agree, for the first time, a global deal on cutting emissions that includes both rich and poor countries.
“If what we want by Paris 2015 is a new binding global climate agreement, then Lima must produce a solid working draft,” said Babs.
The civil society network believes that “significant progress would also need to be made in Lima on the Green Climate Fund (a mechanism to transfer money from the developed to the developing world), the issue of “loss and damage” (whether rich countries should pay poor ones for damage caused by climate change) and a UN scheme to tackle emissions.”
The CSDevNet recently-held 2014 Global Week of Action for Climate Justice, according to Babs, are in line with the need for awareness campaigns and massive mobilisation of Nigerians on climate justice as well as the imperatives of Nigeria’s effective and gainful involvement in international climate negotiations, in the build-up to a new climate treaty in Paris 2015.
The events featured during the Week included: Pre-COP 20/Post-2015 National Consultative Workshop in Abuja; Post-2015 Agenda And Scaling Up Of Climate Justice Awareness in Akwa Esuk Eyamba community, Akpabuyo LGA, Cross River State ; Climate Justice & Post-2015 Mobilisation Meeting for Farmers in Firo Village, Gnajuwa LGA, Bauchi State; and a Climate Justice/Post-2015 Agenda Workshop for Selected Youth Organisations in South-West Nigeria, in Ibadan, Oyo State.
