Nigeria faces a number of climate change challenges; in the north drought and desertification is advancing southwards with resultant communal clashes between herdsmen and farmers over grazing resources; in the South-East soil and gully erosion causing frequent landslides with attendant displacement of communities and forced migration; in the South-West, rise in sea- levels from the 850km-long coastline causing frequent over flooding with resultant disappearance of communal lands and forced migration from ancestral homes.

To address these impacts, Nigeria will need to develop a significant number of overarching, as well as sector specific, approach to policies, plans, and strategies which are relevant to climate actions in Nigeria, in Energy, Oil & Gas, Agriculture & Land use, Power and Transport. However, the underlisted challenges prevent the country from kickstarting its climate protection ambitions, hence the need for the readiness funds. They are;

a)  Thecountryhaslowlevelofreadinessforclimatefinance.

b)  Lack of -human, technical and institutional- capacity leading to the inability of the NDA to coordinate and effectively engage with the GCF (Following official and informal conversations with people that have worked with the National Council on Climate Change, there is a general consensus that there are noticeable gaps in technical, human and institutional capacity of the NDA).

c)  Absence of policies and frameworks such as the no- objection procedure and sound coordination mechanism.

d)  Absence of Framework and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation of the Fund’s project and program.

e)  No communication strategy to track GCF engagements to mark our commitment to take action on climate change locally.

f)  Nigeria has not yet developed a Country Program to guide GCF investment in complementarity with other climate financiers; as well as lack capacity to implement on-going climate-related projects and programme and has no pipeline of projects for the GCF.

g)  Lack of a gender and sound inclusive Coordination Mechanism.

h)  Underfunding of climate related activities: No concept note has been submitted to the GCF.