Abuja, Nigeria — As Nigeria prepares to submit its third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) under the Paris Agreement, Dr. Umar Saleh Anka, Director of Climate Change at the Kano State Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, has emphasised that subnational governments hold the key to its effective implementation.
Dr. Anka noted that 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, which mandates Parties to develop and implement NDCs as statutory commitments to combat climate change.
While Nigeria missed the initial deadline, the federal government has commenced stakeholder engagements, consultations, and workshops to ensure submission of NDC 3.0 by the new deadline of September 2025.
He stressed that Nigeria’s past NDCs, particularly NDC 2.0, which committed to reducing emissions by 20% unconditionally and 47% conditionally by 2030, were bold steps.
However, he said the new NDC must go further by embedding resilience planning, energy transition, and loss and damage frameworks, with states at the heart of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) processes.
“In the past, subnational inputs were often tokenistic and ignored in final documents. This cannot continue.
“The success of NDC 3.0 depends on states being empowered to align their data, projects, and policies with national targets,” Dr. Anka stated.
He highlighted Kano State’s climate leadership with the launch of a historic climate policy and action plan, readiness framework for climate finance, and two new legal instruments—the Environmental Pollution Control Law and the Environmental Pollution and Waste Control Regulations 2025.
The state has also distributed five million geo-tagged trees for the 2025 planting season as part of its contribution to Nigeria’s mitigation targets.
Dr. Anka further called for NDC 3.0 to set ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, aligning climate action with biodiversity protection, halting deforestation, transforming food systems, and accelerating just and affordable energy access for Nigerians.
“Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 must be bold, people-centered, and subnational-driven. Only through inclusive accountability and genuine collaboration can we ensure lasting climate resilience and sustainable development,” he concluded.
