The promises
In 2009, rich countries promised 100 billion dollars a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020. The target was missed for years, and when the money did flow, much of it arrived as loans rather than grants. A loan to fix damage you did not cause adds debt on top of injury.
Learn the two categories: mitigation money reduces future emissions, adaptation money protects people from warming already locked in. Nigeria needs both, but drainage, early-warning systems and resilient schools are adaptation, and adaptation is the chronically underfunded half.
Loss and damage
Some harm cannot be adapted away: the trader's stock destroyed in a flood, the farmland lost to the 2022 disaster. That category is called loss and damage, and for decades rich countries refused to even discuss paying for it.
At COP27 in 2022, countries finally agreed to create a loss and damage fund. Agreeing to a fund and filling it are different things. Pledges so far are a fraction of a single year's damage from one major flood. The record is public. Check it.
Follow the money
Climate finance flows are tracked in OECD reports and by independent watchdogs, and the recurring finding is distance between what is announced and what arrives. The next question is harder and closer to home: of what reaches Nigeria, how much reaches a drain in Ajegunle or a classroom roof in Mushin?
That last question is the one Nigerian youth are best placed to ask, repeatedly and specifically. Ambassadors ask it with numbers.
Hold on to these
- The 100 billion dollar promise was late, and much of it arrived as loans, not grants.
- Adaptation, the money that protects people now, is the underfunded half.
- A loss and damage fund exists on paper since COP27. Filling it is the fight.
Check yourself
No grades here. If you can answer these out loud, you own the lesson.
- 1.What is the difference between mitigation and adaptation finance, with one Lagos example of each?
- 2.Why do loans as climate finance compound the injustice?
- 3.What specific question would you ask about climate money that reaches Lagos State?