Nigeria and 182 other parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have formally submitted their Intended Nationally Determined Contribution to ongoing conference on climate change in Paris, France.
NAN reports that INDCs are the pledges countries will put forward on what they plan to do about climate change.
Each INDC outlines the steps countries plan to make to reduce emissions.
According to a document from the UN climate change conference in Paris, made available to reporters, Nigeria submitted her INDC on Saturday.
It also said that Angola submitted her INDC on Sunday.
The UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, encouraged other countries to come forward with their INDCs as soon as they were able.
Figueres underlined their commitment and support toward the successful outcome in Paris.
Governments, she said, agreed to submit their INDCs in advance of Paris.
It stated that the Paris agreement would come into effect in 2020.
It would empower all countries to act to prevent average global temperatures rising above two degrees Celsius and to reap the many opportunities that arise from a necessary global transformation to clean and sustainable development.
It said countries had also agreed that there would be no back-tracking in these national climate plans.
According to an executive summary obtained by NAN in New York, Nigeria’s response to climate change focused on increasing resilience and managing the unavoidable impacts.
Nigeria described her adaptation priorities as bringing together existing initiatives and priorities for the future in a National Adaptation Strategy and Plan of Action for Climate Change Nigeria.
In the NASPA-CCN’s vision is a Nigeria in which climate change adaptation is an integrated component of sustainable development, reducing the vulnerability and enhancing the resilience and adaptive capacity of all economic sectors and of all people.
It particularly mentioned women, children and resource-poor men as the adverse impacts of climate change, while also capturing the opportunities that arise as a result of climate change.
In the plan, Nigeria said it was her goal to take action to adapt to climate change by reducing vulnerability to climate change impacts and increasing the resilience and sustainable wellbeing of all Nigerians.
Nigeria said it would also reduce or minimise risks by improving adaptive capacity, leveraging new opportunities and facilitating collaboration inside Nigeria and with the global community.
To this end, a set of 13 sector-specific strategies, policies, programmes and measures had been prepared.
The objectives of these, it added, are to reduce the impacts of climate change through adaptation measures that can be undertaken by the Federal, State and Local Governments, Civil Society Organisations, private sector, communities and individuals.
This includes measures that will improve awareness and preparedness for climate change impacts, mobilise communities for climate change adaptation actions and reduce the impacts of climate change on key sectors and vulnerable communities.
Others are integrate climate change adaptation into national, sectoral, state and local government planning and into the plans of universities, research and educational organisations, civil society organisations, the private sector and the media, among others.
NAN.