Africa’s leading oil producing nation, Nigeria, who’s Minister of Environment Dr. Muhammed Abubakar, submitted the document on behalf of the Federal Government. According to the Minister, the official record, approved by Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, underscored the West African nation’s commitment to the Paris accord and global climate efforts.
“Nigeria has increased its conditional contribution from 45 per cent to 47 per cent while retaining the unconditional target of 20 per cent,” the document read. “Hence the updated NDC has an unconditional target of 20 per cent below business as usual by 2030 and 47 per cent conditional contribution on international support. This is an important day for Nigeria as the timely submission of the updated report will ensure its inclusion in a synthesis.”
Meanwhile, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa noted that although the fact that 110 parties submitted their updated reports compares favourably with the 75 Parties who made submissions by the end of December 2020, however, this number is “far from satisfactory” since it was only a little over half the Parties who met the cut-off date on 30 July. “The level of ambition reflected in those national climate action plans also needs to be enhanced,” she added.
“One of the key findings in the initial version of the synthesis report showed that collective efforts fall far short of what is required by science to limit a global temperature rise by the end of the century of 2C, let alone the desired objective of less than 1.5C. I truly hope that the revised estimate of collective efforts will reveal a more positive picture,” Espinosa noted.
