- At COP30, Nigeria urged the world to fund nature protection and restoration, treating forests, oceans, and landscapes as shared resources.
- VP Shettima highlighted climate programs and called for grants, debt-for-nature swaps, and Blue Carbon Markets.
Nigeria has urged the international community to scale up financing for nature protection and restoration through predictable, equitable, and accessible mechanisms.
Vice President Kashim Shettima, representing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at a high-level session on “Climate and Nature: Forests and Oceans” at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), stressed that forests, landscapes, and oceans are shared resources that require global solidarity.
“While nature is probably the most critical infrastructure in the world, we have long treated it as a commodity to exploit rather than an asset to invest in,” Shettima said, adding that Nigeria is integrating nature-positive investments into its climate finance architecture.
Through its National Carbon Market Framework and Climate Change Fund, Nigeria aims to mobilise up to $3 billion annually for community-led reforestation, blue carbon projects, and sustainable agriculture. Shettima called on global partners to recognise the economic value of nature and channel significant finance toward its protection and restoration.
Furthermore, he highlighted that countries in the Global South, which contributed least to the climate crisis, are paying the highest price. “Nations that have benefited most from centuries of extraction must now lead in restoration,” Shettima said, urging grant-based finance, debt-for-nature swaps, and operationalisation of Blue Carbon Markets.
Shettima also detailed Nigeria’s domestic actions, including the Great Green Wall Initiative, planting over ten million trees, restoring more than two million hectares of degraded land by 2030, and launching a Marine and Blue Economy Policy to promote climate-smart fisheries, coastal protection, and marine biodiversity.
In addition, he emphasised that Nigeria sees COP30 as an opportunity to forge a new global compact recognising Africa’s ecosystems as global assets and invited partners to join the African Nature Finance Framework to mobilise private capital for reforestation, ecosystem restoration, and blue economy development.
Shettima rejected narratives portraying Africa as a climate victim, highlighting the continent’s untapped carbon sinks and the innovation potential of its youth as key to global climate solutions.