Nigeria supports Africa, G-77, China on climate change

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-12-18 22:48

LAGOS: Nigeria full supports Africa,G-77 and China's position on climate change at the Copenhagen conference, the Foreign Ministry says.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe voiced the solidarity with other developing countries in a speech delivered on Thursday at the high-level negotiation talks pending a decision of world leaders.

"Our response from Nigeria is to remain firmly committed to the Bali Road Map which strategically launched an open and transparent two-track negotiation process," the News Agency of Nigeria quoted him as saying.

"We support the African Group position that these processes must result in two separate outcomes leading to an international instrument on the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol as well as long-term global action by all other countries," Maduekwe said.

The minister, who is the head of the Nigerian delegation to the 15th Conference of Parties (COP-15), said COP-15 could not afford to fall apart.

He said Copenhagen represented an opportunity for collective atonement and provided the only approach that could prevent what was a crisis from becoming a catastrophe.

The minister warned climate change was the beginning of the disaster that must be averted in Africa.

Maduekwe also expressed fear that the MDGs stood the risk of being completely derailed.

"Our degraded soil arising from climate change is certain to encourage the perpetual company of hunger and poverty unless a major intervention which can only come from outside Africa takes place," the minister said.

"Copenhagen is not about them versus us; it is about a new humanity," he added.

"There is no time to lose. By the middle of this century, more than a billion people would be victims of water shortages and hunger, including 600 million people in Africa alone," the minister noted.

"Climate change, as of today, accounts for more than 150,000 deaths a year and Greenhouse gas emissions may be the ultimate weapons of mass destruction if we go home from Copenhagen without a deal that everyone can identify with," Maduekwe pointed out.

He called on the developed world to support efforts by African countries to adapt to the negative impact of climate change.

In Nigeria, the minister said, climate change is not an academic issue, but rather "a unique, real issue that we have to live with."

He cited the aggressive decertification in the northern part of Nigeria that had virtually seen Lake Chad disappearing.

The minister also mentioned the gully erosions in the southern part of Nigeria that were swallowing up whole villages as some of the devastating effects of climate change.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), established under the Kyoto Protocol, is a beacon of hope in Nigeria through public- private sector cooperation as anticipated by the CDM, the minister said.

Maduekwe called for the expansion of CDM facilities so that Nigeria could leverage on them to achieve a zero-level status for gas flaring by multinational oil companies in Nigeria.