Nigeria needs $142m to tackle global warming - Minister

dimeji akinloye

September 10, 2016 5:11 PM

Ms Esther Agbarakwe announced the development on Saturday after a stakeholders’ consultation on pilot issuance of green bonds in Nigeria.

Global warming

A statement from the Special Assistant to the Minister of Environment on Communications, Ms Esther Agbarakwe, announced the development on Saturday after a stakeholders’ consultation on pilot issuance of green bonds in Nigeria.

“The resource needed to finance the INDC is put at 142 million dollars between now and 2030.

“The forum is part of a continuing collaboration between the ministry of environment and the ministry of finance to explore and develop a product that can leverage and channel resources toward viable green projects.

“Also, it can contribute to the achievement of the nation’s development objectives,’’ Agbarakwe quoted the Minister of Environment, Mrs Amina Mohammed, as saying.

She said the issuance of green bonds, which had grown from 3 billion dollars per annum since 2012 to an estimated 100 billion dollars for 2016, presented a viable option.

The special assistant also recalled that in May, the minister was presented with a proposal by the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in Lagos on the issuance of green bonds in Nigeria.

Agbarakwe explained that thereafter, several consultations with the NSE, SEC and UNEP had been held to critically look into the potential of financing Nigeria’s INDC implementation through green bonds and other multi-lateral funding mechanisms.

“Green bonds have been the subject of increasing government, investor and media interest and expectations, driven by the prospect of matching large low‑carbon investment requirements with the trillions of dollars in global bond markets held by institutional investors,’’ she said.

Agbarakwe said that participants at the forum were drawn from the federal ministries of finance, budget and national planning, trade and investment, the NSE, the Debt Management Office and the Central Bank of Nigeri.

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Others, she said, were the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Assembly, the Africa Finance Corporation, the World Bank, UNEP, UNDP, McKingsey and Company, Chapel Hill Denham, Stanbic IBTC, DFID/NIAF and other private sector representatives.

dimeji akinloye