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Advocacy case study: Nigeria Advocating for the improvement of climate change legislation

Challenge
Every country in the world is being affected by climate change, some more obviously than others. Nigeria is particularly vulnerable to these changes; with a desert encroaching from the north and sea level rising on its southern coast, environmental instability is pronounced. Climate change has the potential to threaten all development sectors – food insecurity will affect health, whilst water insecurity will mean children and women walk further to wells. Fishing and agricultural livelihoods are also threatened. Climate change will therefore exacerbate existing problems and affect the poor the most.

Catalyst VSO Nigeria has been working on this issue for several years under its secure livelihoods programme. Together with the Nigeria Climate Action Network (NCAN), VSO has advocated with government officials that Nigeria confronts the threat of climate change and mitigates its impact through research and forward planning. NCAN highlighted the need for a government body that would have legislative influence and be provided with budget allocation to champion climate change issues and promote cross‐department work. The advocacy work by NCAN and the International Centre for Energy, Environment and Development resulted in a bill being introduced to both houses of the Nigerian National Assembly. This, however, resulted in the passing of the bill in two different formats; one house creating an agency from the bill and the other creating a commission. These results, although a fantastic achievement, were unworkable without harmonisation, and thus a new phase of advocacy work began. VSO provided parliamentarian volunteer (PolVol) Jo Swinson MP. During her placement in Abuja she was able to help the Nigerian Climate Action Network plan their strategy by sharing successful UK strategies, especially those used by campaigners for the 2008 Climate Change Act. She then ran a training workshop on proactive campaigning and showed how social media campaigns such as Facebook could help spread the word — and potentially communicate directly with Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, a registered user. With VSO and NCAN Jo Swinson encouraged youth campaigners to engage with the climate change issue and to strengthen their campaigns. In doing so they influenced the British High Commissioner to raise the issue with those at the heart of the Nigerian administration, which led to meetings being held with the governor of Cross River State and officials of the Nigerian government.

Results This VSO placement built on the hard work of VSO partners, staff and volunteers in previous years. It resulted in the building of advocacy capacity amongst Nigerian climate change civil society. NCAN was able to drive the harmonisation of the Climate Change Bill which resulted in the passage of the bill establishing a Nigeria Climate Change Commission by the National Assembly. The Commission is hugely important for the future of Nigeria’s work on combating climate change and should allow it to keep to its international commitments. The bill is now awaiting the President’s assent. Undoubtedly further lobbying by Nigerian civil society will be important to follow up the gains and to ensure that the work of the Commission is beneficial.

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