In a bid to support the United Nations (UN) initiative to end hunger on the African continent, Nigeria recently launched an Inter-Ministerial Task Force under the United Nations Environment-Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA).
Speaking at the meeting of the task force recently held at the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, Abuja, national president of EBAFOSA-Nigeria, Mr. James Oyesola, said the inauguration became necessary to ensure that Nigeria aligned with the UN programme aimed at ensuring food security in the country and its sustainability.
He said that, before now, ministries worked individually, and this has been militating against holistic and inclusive solutions to the task at hand.
According to him, “To break the ministerial and operational silos working against an holistic and inclusive solution to unemployment, food insecurity, poverty, land degradation and climate change, there should be an urgent need to foster collaborative, cross-cutting enabling policy processes, hence the need to establish inter-agency policy task forces to convene these multiple stakeholders for coordinated policy processes in Nigeria.
“Addressing climate change challenges, implementing SDGs and our nationally determined contributions, among others, can’t be implemented in ‘silos’, we need to bridge policy gaps by bringing together relevant line ministries, environment, agriculture, industry, energy, forestry, lands, trade, finance etc., as well as non-state actors in private sector, academia, civil society and development partners, policy research, etc., for collaborative policy processes.”
Emphasising the purpose and terms of reference of the task force, Oyesola said cross-cutting enabling policies are required to actualise the objective of climate action as a solution to socio-economic development.
He said, “For instance, agriculture ministry will need to work with environment to ensure that the climate solutions strategy EBAFOSA Nigeria is championing like agro-forestry (Ecosystem System Based Driven Agriculture) are integrated into mainstream agriculture policies. Also, to catalyse investment in clean energy powered agro-industrialisation, agriculture policies will need to reconcile with industry policies, energy policies, lands policies and private investors to ensure relevant-cross cutting policies.
“Infrastructure policies need to be synchronized to ensure prioritised investments in rural roads for efficient connection of production areas or these agro-industrial zones to market areas. Lands policies will need to be synchronised to facilitate setting aside appropriate areas as “special agro-industrial zones/enterprise zones” to incentivise investors targeting setting up clean energy plants, or putting up agro-processing plants.
“Trade policies will need to be in sync and facilitate access of both fresh and processed agriculture goods from these zones to both local and export markets,” he said.
He maintained that policy is the biggest driver of change, adding that members of the task force will also work together to strengthen capacity for adaptation to climate change, extreme weather, drought, flooding and other disasters.
In her contribution, the Acting Director, Social Development, Ministry of Budget and Planning, Mrs. Elizabeth Echarevba, said the setting up of the task force was one of the important steps towards the implementation to ensure the achievement of the objective of food security using ecosystem based adaptation.
She said EBAFOSA seeks to combat food insecurity, climate change, ecosystems degradation and poverty reduction in Africa using innovative approaches, with the objective of facilitating inter-policymakers interaction by linking up policymakers to Ecosystem Based Adaptation as well as to academia and researchers.