The federal government says Nigeria is ready to fulfil the Paris Agreement on climate change to ensure effective gender inclusion.

Labour minister Chris Ngige stated this during the inauguration and inception workshop of the project in Abuja on Thursday.

The project is tagged ‘The Nigeria Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT), Just and Gender Inclusive Transition (JGIT) Project’.

The project is aimed at helping countries better assess the impacts of their climate policies and actions and fulfil their transparency commitments.

Mr Ngige said the objective of the inception meeting was to launch the ICAT Just Transition project and increase awareness among the national stakeholders for a better understanding of its implementation.

He said ICAT, an international multi-stakeholder partnership of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), was supporting Nigeria to set up Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of a Just and Gender Inclusive Transition(JGIT).

The minister said Nigeria had signed a Project Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with the UNOPS, represented by the ICAT management.

According to him, the PCA is to firm up the process leading to the take-off and implementation of the project over 12 months.

“The objectives of the project, among others include, to develop JGIT monitoring, MRV and ensure it links with the sectoral MRV system. Another objective is to Enhance Transparency Framework (ETF) implemented by the Federal Ministry of Environment to achieve synergy, institutional memory and stakeholder inclusion and cooperation,” stated the minister.

Mr Ngige added, “It will further enable a tripartite cooperation between government, labour and employer associations to achieve a Just and Gender Inclusive Transition going forward with the implementation of the Paris agreement.”

The minister said a team of national experts and international ICAT consultants under the labour ministry’s supervision would implement the ICAT project.

(NAN)