Nigeria prioritizes climate action to mitigate natural disasters.

In 2022 alone, flooding killed at least 662 people, injured 3,174, displaced about 2.5 million, and destroyed 200,000 houses individuals.

Early success in lessening the effects

As far back as 2012, the World Bank reported that erosion was affecting over 6,000 square kilometres of land in the country, with about 3,400 square kilometres highly exposed. Back then, gully erosion was doing an estimated $100 million worth of damage each year, according to the team behind the Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP).

Under the NEWMAP, the country began working with the World Bank to rehabilitate degraded lands and reduce erosion and climate vulnerability in 23 states. The project had four work streams:

1. Investing in erosion and watershed management infrastructure to reduce land degradation,

2. Developing information services to strengthen erosion and watershed monitoring and disaster risk management,

3. Strengthening Nigeria's strategic framework for climate action to promote low carbon development, and

4. Supporting project management at federal and state levels with financial, social and environmental safeguards and oversight, outreach, and project monitoring and evaluation.

The outcomes reported in 2021 were positive: the project benefitted 35,000 people directly and more than 100,000 indirectly through small grants to community interest groups. The team trained 185,058 persons, 42 percent of them women.

On the first work stream, the project more than doubled the land under sustainable management, completed nearly five dozen participatory surface water management plans and reduced gully erosion considerably.

On the second, it made drafted environmental impact assessment guidelines and launched over a hundred automated hydrology and meteorology and flood early warning systems in the region.

On the third, the country issued green bonds to spark private investment in climate smart projects, such as distributing fuel-efficient cookstoves and developing solar-based electricity generators for rural health centers.

On the fourth, the team tested the use of remote sensing, geographic information system techniques, and 360-degree cameras and drones for remote supervision and grievance resolution.

Overall, NEWMAP showed Nigeria's appetite for action and results.

Calls for accelerated action

Currently, about 178 local government areas (LGAs) in 32 of 36 states in Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory fall within the highly probable...