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A respected subnational climate change leader and conservation champion, Yakubu Kolo, has provided reflections on Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC 3.0) and how states hold a central role in both design and implementation, calling for access to finance for states.

He made this call at the National Stakeholders’ NDC 3.0 validation workshop organised by the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC) to present update of Nigeria’s NDCs in preparation for the National Executive’s approval and eventual submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in-person and online on August 27, 2025, with stakeholders from across multiple sectors in attendance.

The Nigerian NDC 3.0 provides a comprehensive update to the 2021 submission, developed through a rigorous whole-of-government and whole-of-society process to ensure the needs of a broad range of stakeholders were addressed.

Kolo, Commissioner for Environment and Climate Change, Niger State, while speaking at the validation workshop, acknowledged that the process of developing NDC 3.0 has shown committed efforts to course-correct and be inclusive, participatory, and people-centered.

“State governments were given the opportunity to provide input which we gladly participated in. We therefore hold the process in high esteem to reflect clarity and transparency in its targets, policies and measures and on cross-cutting issues and actions and it must therefore go beyond the rituals of getting input without an ounce of them reflected in the final document,” he said.

Kolo noted that the Nigerian NDC 3.0 must set clear ambition that reflects leadership, embed stronger adaptation strategies, and ensure financing is both practical and accessible to states.

He stated further: “As the September submission deadline approaches, it must also align ambition with implementation, setting clear targets that are not just impressive on paper but actionable on the ground.”

While concluding his speech as the representative of the subnational governments, Kolo affirmed that the NDC must be ambitious, inclusive, and credible, and must reflect the important contributions of the subnational as the burden bearer of climate change vulnerabilities.

“Anything less would betray our people’s yearnings and squander our chance to lead Africa toward a climate-resilient future,” he concluded.

The NDC validation workshop convened stakeholders from across the country as part of the process to finalise Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 before submitting to the UNFCCC. The workshop had representatives from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Africa Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Youth Constituency, German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), United Nation Women, Global Disability Green Initiatives (GDGI), International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), as well as NGOs/CSOs.

By Ugochukwu Uzuegbu, Communication Specialist, SPP.

Umar Saleh Anka
Year 2025 will mark the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and its mandatory requirement that Parties must develop and implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The NDCs are nationally determined plans put together by each country outlining the actions needed to meet their long-term goals as a statutory commitment under the Paris Agreement. Nigeria, despite facing unprecedented challenges of climate change has demonstrated great poise and good leadership in setting up the process to review its NDCs through stakeholder engagements, consultation, data collation and workshops since May 2025.

Nigeria, among other parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) may have missed the first deadline to submit its NDCs, but the internal process initiated by the government is in order to meet the new deadline of September 2025. It is important to know that the NDCs are not optional, but they are a statutory pledge to the global community, and more importantly, to our citizens, that we are serious about addressing climate change while driving sustainable development.

Across the world, as at August 2025, less than 30 parties have submitted the 3rd iteration of their NDCs, with less than 5 of those from Africa. Nigeria on the other hand is ensuring a broader and open participation of the process in order to build synergy among its domestic stakeholders: an act that is commendable, and should count Nigeria among the countries leading the frontiers of the NDC process. If Nigeria’s NDC 2.0 which committed to an unconditional reduction of emissions by 20% and a conditional target (contingent on international support) of 47% below BAU by 2030 was celebrated as a bold step, her NDC 3.0 must set a new ambition to enhance resilience planning, synergy between adaptation, loss and damage, energy transition, with a clear link with our development plans putting the subnational at the heart of effective implementation, ensuring a purposive intention to train the states to develop our NDC that will align with the national target but a mere mention in the document. The national must ensure supporting the subnational to build a system for Monitoring Reporting and Verification (MRV) to accommodate states input rather than over reliance on the national platform.

In reaffirming our commitment to sustainable development, green infrastructure, and climate resilience in Kano State, we have recently launched a historic climate policy and action plan – strategic implementation framework, we went ahead to develop the state readiness and action plan for the climate finance to guide the state’s environmental governance and transition to a low-carbon economy. In the same strength, we unveiled two new legal instruments: the Kano State Environmental Pollution Control Law and the Kano State Environmental Pollution and Waste Control Regulations 2025. These documents are to reemphasise Kano state’s position as a West African cosmopolitan hub for climate governance, considering the importance of these new laws to the priority sectors of Nigeria’s NDCs, as part of the mitigation measures, we distributed 5 million trees (geo tagged) for the 2025 planting season

Yes, we praised the new NDC process, but we must not forget the things that set us back in the past. We must address them in a holistic manner whilst awaiting the final approval of the NDC 3.0. I recognise that all the states were given the opportunity to provide data for the development of the NDC 3.0. It is therefore imperative that these data be aggregated, synthesised and integrated into the NDC with recognition of the peculiar climate challenges facing the respective states in Nigeria and targeting them for implementation to align with one of the principles of the UNFCCC of equity. This is important because, many of the projects promised in past NDCs are nowhere to be found on the ground; whilst validation exercises carried out in states have too often been tokenistic, with subnational inputs ignored in the final documents – this cannot continue. We are positive that NDC 3.0 will bridge the gap and empower the states to build a system that can support the national with valid and verifiable data

Nevertheless, what is clear is that our next NDC must set economy-wide emission reduction targets that accelerate clean, sustainable, affordable, and just energy access. It must explicitly align climate and biodiversity action, halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation, and transforming food systems through agroecology—all of which are critical priorities for the Nigerian states that are on the frontline of desertification, drought, and food insecurity, and actively bearing the direct brunt of climate change. The states must be elevated to translate NDCs commitments into practical action. Therefore, the validation must acknowledge this and not repeat the mistakes of the past.

The NDCs operation thrive in a broader context of plans and alignment with Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS), Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs) and Climate Change Act 2021. Nigeria’s NDCs 3.0 must be bold, grounded in ambition, people-centered with the subnational at the heart of effective implementation for inclusive accountability and ensuring lasting impacts.

Umar Saleh Anka, Ph.D(s), FOSHA, FNES, FIEPN is the Director, Climate Change, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Kano State, Nigeria

On Wednesday, 27 August, 2025, Nigeria’s National Council on Climate Change will bring together stakeholders from across the country to the “National Validation Workshop of Nigeria’s NDC 3.0.” The NDCs, as most of us know are series of national commitments under Article 4.2 of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which represent countries’ pathways to climate action. This is to be reviewed every five years and in line with these important stipulations, Parties to the Paris Agreement, Nigeria inclusive, are expected to develop and summit the third iteration of their national climate commitments known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0) before the end of this year. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change, adopted in 2015, to limit global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels.

A big commendation must of course go to all involved in the process of the development of Nigeria’s NDCs 3.0 because of the massive effort made to make the process inclusive. There were conscious efforts to engage everyone, even reaching out to subnational leaders to make their submissions.

The importance of this effort at integrating subnational considerations in the development process of the NDCs cannot be overemphasized. This is because the devastation wrought by climate change in the form of destruction of infrastructure, loss of arable land due to land degradation, health challenges, insecurity, etc are ultimately borne by people within communities, local governments and states. In essence, the subnational. They should therefore be critical to this.

This was a point I re-iterated on the 3rd of June when the National Council on Climate Change came to brief my committee— House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change and Security— on our NDCs 3.0 process. I made it clear to them that there was a need to also engage subnational legislators. These legislators have key roles to play. For instance, the draft NDCs 3.0 makes the case for eradication of generator use, support for a switch to clean cook options, etc. None of these can be implemented at a location called “the federal”. Implementation must be at the subnational, hence subnational legislators have a critical role to play either through lawmaking, or through oversight and appropriation. Not engaging them was therefore a big oversight.

Even though this engagement with the subnational legislators was not carried out, a cursory look at the draft NDCs 3.0 did show an attempt at subnational considerations with the inclusion of certain provisions such as recommendations for ranching, reduction in deforestation, gas flaring, etc. These are key provisions which would impact positively on the subnational, especially on the security, ecological health, and human wellbeing, of the people. This is of course as long as we are able to get to the implementation part and also ensure that the process is just.

So, we must commend them for first making an effort, while also highlighting where they could have done better. The first of where they could have done better was the oversight on inclusion of subnational parliaments which I have mentioned above.

Secondly, it is ironic that the effort at reaching out to subnational leaders failed to pay attention to one thing which the NDCs development proces had flagged— lack of capacity on the part of subnational actors. What that means is that based on this lack of capacity, the contributions from the subnational leaders might be flawed and not totally reflective of how best to capture their needs. A better way would have been to carry out a proper professionally-led assessment backed by capacity building sessions. This becomes more poignant when one considers that while the NDCs 3.0 process detailed specific assessment efforts with focus on just transition; gender, youth and children; the NDC and the SDGs; labour within the context of the transition; migration; biodiversity; and circular economy; there was no specific effort for a detailed assessment of subnational needs and how these can be leveraged to ensure deeper attention on how NDCs 3.0 implementation can address subnational development challenges, climate impacts and the key issue of subnational access to climate finance.

Indeed, with Nigeria’s NDCs 3.0 consciously being aligned with the development plans of the country and its net zero target, there is need to explore ways of mobilizing the subnational to drive up private sector investments that will at once address subnational needs, build resilience, and accelerate the country’s climate response and sustainable development.

Thankfully, there is still time to do this since our draft NDCs 3.0 projects the development of an investment strategy for NDCs 3.0. This investment strategy and its implementation strategy counterpart must be designed to pay extra attention to core subnational needs and how to leverage these to unlock vast investments. It might be that the earlier discussed issue of professionally-led assessment can now come in to determine how best to use these tools to position the subnational appropriately in our climate and sustainable development plans.

One thing is certain, climate action is development action and there is no way a multilayered country like Nigeria can attain either without taking into strong consideration subnational foundations. We must always proceed with this mindset.

*Rep. Kama Nkemkanma is the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Climate Change and Security.

As a Party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Nigeria has shown commitment to meeting its obligations by submitting its first and second Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). The NDC is not merely a bureaucratic exercise; it is the benchmark by which the world collates and tracks its commitment to tackling the climate crisis and in delivering sustainable development. Once again Nigeria is showing leadership by working hard to submit its third Nationally Determined Contribution (a.k.a. NDC 3.0).

While our commitment to developing our Nationally Determined Contribution is commendable, it is important that we also work hard to avoid the some of the mistakes of the past. In 2021, Nigeria submitted its NDCs 2.0 where she committed to an unconditional reduction of emissions by 20% and a conditional target (contingent on international support) of 47% below BAU by 2030. This target was hailed by both international and experts as ambitious.

However, there was no clear implementation and funding plan which compromise action on the ground. Furthermore, the voices of subnational governments, which comprise the states and local governments that bear the brunt of climate impacts, were largely excluded. This is a profound misstep, as climate action is lived and felt at the community level, not just in Abuja boardrooms.

In Niger State, we are not waiting for direction from the centre before acting. We have launched community-based afforestation programmes, expanded climate-smart agriculture initiatives to build resilience among farmers, and developed early warning systems for floods and landslides that are saving lives in vulnerable communities.

These efforts, including the development of our green economy plan, while they are modest, equally demonstrate that subnational governments are ready to lead if given the recognition and support within national frameworks.

The process of developing NDC 3.0 has shown committed efforts to course-correct and be inclusive and people-centered. State governments were given the opportunity to provide input which we gladly participated in. We therefore hold the process in high esteem to reflect clarity and transparency in its targets, policies and measures and on cross-cutting issues and actions and it must therefore go beyond the rituals of getting input without an ounce of them reflected in the final document.

This next NDC must set clear ambition that reflects leadership, embed stronger adaptation strategies, and ensure financing is both practical and accessible to states. As the September submission deadline approaches, it must also align ambition with implementation, setting clear targets that are not just impressive on paper but actionable on the ground.

Above all, it must be ambitious, inclusive, and credible, it must reflect the important contributions of the subnational as the burden bearer of climate change vulnerabilities. Anything less would betray our people’s yearnings and squander our chance to lead Africa toward a climate-resilient future.

By Yakubu kolo, Commissioner for Environment and Climate Change, Niger State, Nigeria

From September 1 to 10, 2025, leaders from Africa, experts in climate change, practitioners from the private sector, members of civil society, youth leaders, donors and development partners, as well as representatives from UN bodies and various multilateral organizations will convene in the historic Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa for the Africa Climate Action Week and the Africa Climate Summit with the theme “Accelerating Global Climate Solutions: Financing for Africa’s Resilient and Green Development”

The theme of the summit evokes the need for Africa’s drive for resilience to be aligned with the continent’s dire need for infrastructural development in order to meet its many nagging needs. Incidentally these gatherings carries the burden of being either a set of glorious climate fanfares, or a chance for deep conversations on the way forward for Africa in terms of climate action aligned with sustainable development. It is explicitly a matter of choice and the only pathway to attaining the latter is by holding honest and inclusive conversations that would lead to commitments which must be backed by sincere action.

As most experts would avow, Africa’s problems have never been about policies or gatherings to hold conversations. With the support of the West, we have never fallen short of policies, and even attendances at international fora. Nonetheless, the continent’s key problem has always been about the implementation of policies. The reasons for this range from weak governance systems, lack of people-centered political leadership, capacity gaps, improper enunciation of the pathways to success, a top-to-bottom approach as against a bottom-to-top approach, lack of financial support, etc.

At the end of the first summit, African leaders adopted landmark “Nairobi Declaration”, calling for a global carbon tax on fossil fuels, aviation, and shipping; reform of international financial systems; and fast-tracking the Loss and Damage Fund, ahead of COP28.

If we must be fair to ourselves as Africans, we must take stock of these demands as we prepare for the second summit. The ACS and ACW therefore can offer important platforms for honest conversations that will be backed by implementable plans as we journey to COP30, and dangerously come close to missing the cut-off point for Mission 1.5 or 2.0.

Already, the ACS2 has listed critical focus areas including: redefining Africa’s climate aspirations; highlighting Africa-led solutions; shifting from aid to investment; nature-based solutions and technology; climate finance and adaptation; and building partnerships.

The focus areas assume of Africa as a single climatically and ecologically uniform entity centralised at a specific point, and thus every action is one-for-all. Consequently, there is a failure of understanding that climate impacts and actions vary across Africa and even within the nations that make up the continent. While these focus areas are commendable, we must recognize that without multi-level action Africa cannot fully achieve resilience and climate goals, including the continent’s sustainable development agenda.

But, it is not too late. In the series of meetings, high-level sessions, and bilaterals that will take place in Addis Ababa, conscious effort must be made to integrate the opinions, needs, and suggestions of indigenous people, communities, women and children, and most especially, Africa’s subnational. It highly imperative that discussions and plans at the regional summit must reflect this to galvanise increased actions at the subnational levels.

Undoubtedly, there is no question as to the fact that climate impacts are felt at the lowest of levels- the subnational-which then reflects differently at the national, regional, and continental level. For instance, in Nigeria, the climate impacts in Sokoto State would be land degradation, desertification, drought, etc. while for a subnational State like Enugu State, or Ekiti State, it would be soil erosion, excessive rainfall, etc. Subnational entities play a crucial role in climate change action due to their capacity for localised policy implementation, innovation, and community engagement. They can tailor solutions to specific regional challenges, enhance accountability, and mobilize resources effectively.

Africa is a climatically and ecologically diverse place covering approximately 30.3 million km2 of the earth. Therefore, its various sub-parts must have different climate challenges. Hence, it is critically important that this climatic and ecological diversity must be foregrounded whenever conversations on climate action and sustainable development in the continent are held. One therefore hopes and strongly urges that urgent efforts must be made to ensure that the ACS and ACW are leveraged to reflect this. This is the only way to engender equity, justness, and indeed impactful actions.

By Professor Sam Ugwu, Commissioner for Environment and Climate Change, Enugu State, Nigeria