Minister Makes Case for Carbon Credit Market

Lagos — The Minster of Environment, John Odey said since Nigeria now controls over 40 percent of the certified emission reduction in Africa, it can leverage on it to generate ingestible funds.

Speaking at the Lagos State Carbon Credit Awareness Campaign and Capacity Development Programme, Odey said, Nigeria's capture of over 40 percent of Africa's Certified Emission Reduction units from three registered Clean Development projects, would help in the battle to eradicating poverty.

This would also put the nation at vantage position to reap from opportunities inherent in Carbon Credit Mechanism (CDM) towards the attainment of the objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, he said.

Represented by the Head Special Climate Change Unit of the Ministry of Environment, Dr. He called on the Lagos government to build a national back up plan that would help Nigeria and Africa have a better negotiation strategy and implementation procedures for future international and regional climate change summits' submissions.

Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, represented by his commissioner for justice, Olasupo Sasore, declared that the state was prepared to imbibe the carbon credit mechanism which would eventually see Nigeria competing with the Peoples Republic of China.