Chukwumerije Okereke, an expert with the Deep Decarbonisation Pathways (DDP) project, says Nigeria requires clear, quantifiable policies to achieve 50 per cent emission reduction by 2050.

Mr Okereke said this on the sidelines of a webinar on Nigeria’s Long–Term Low Emission Development Strategy (LT-LEDS).

The theme of the webinar was ‘Understanding Nigeria’s Long-Term Vision 2050 (LTV 2050) and the Elaboration of the Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy (LT-LEDS).

Mr Okereke explained that the LT-LEDS were strategies used by countries all over the world to plan how they can achieve economic development, thereby reducing emissions across all sectors of the economy.

According to him, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) talks about emission reduction up to 2030.

“Generally, the LT-LEDS thinks about emission reduction up on to 2050. The Nigerian Government wanted to do an LT-LEDS, but because they did not have the modelling tools and capabilities and because of the brevity of time, decided to do a Long Term Vision (LTV),” he stressed.

Mr Okereke added, “The LTV describes the future whereby 2050/2060, Nigeria will be a circular economy, well developed and will have a robust climate resilience systems, where emissions will be very low, down by 50 per cent.”

He added that the LE-LEDS provided a clearly defined, quantifiable, measurable, analytically robust and rigorous pathway through which the LTV could be achieved in 2050.

Speaking on ways to key into the vision of the LTV, Mr Okereke noted that climate change affects everyone, and people could play a part in all sorts of different ways.

“If you recycle waste, if you reuse, if you plant trees, if you use solar panels, if you walk instead of driving; all of these things are ways of minimising the generation of emissions by individuals,” he stressed. “If you switch off your generators when you don’t need them, practise organic farming; they all reduce wastes and emissions, so these are the things that individuals can do.”

(NAN)