Nigeria must move quickly from global climate and gender commitments to practical action at state and community levels, with rural women, young people and other marginalised groups given a meaningful role in shaping the country’s climate response, experts and government representatives have said.
The call came during a national webinar on Feminist Climate Justice and Belém Gender Action Plan (GAP) Implementation in Nigeria, organised as part of a wider feminist mobilisation to build public awareness, strengthen government-civil society engagement and push for implementation of the Belém GAP across Nigeria.
The webinar was initiated by a group of organizations including; Centre for 21st Century Issues (C21st), International Law Association Committee on Women, International Law and Development (CWEILD-ILA Nigeria), Gender Inclusive Climate Change Governance (GENCGOV), and the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) of the UNFCCC.
The September programme forms part of the Global Week of Action and Feminist Resistance Gathering scheduled for September 17, 2026, through which feminist organisations and climate advocates globally are seeking to ensure that the Belém GAP is not left as another international policy commitment but becomes a framework for concrete national and subnational action.
The Nigerian engagement is specifically intended to deepen understanding of the Belém GAP, connect its global provisions with Nigeria’s climate and gender realities, engage government on implementation strategies and mobilise collective action around accountability.
At the centre of the discussion was a fundamental question: how can Nigeria translate an international gender-responsive climate framework into changes that women and communities can actually feel?
From Global Commitment to Local Action
Opening the webinar, Executive Director of the Centre for 21st Century Issues (C21st) and Vice Chair of the Women’s Committee of the International Law Association, Barr. Titi Akosa, said the gathering was aimed at moving Nigeria’s gender and climate commitments beyond policy statements and into practical action.
Akosa said women and girls across Nigeria remain on the frontlines of the climate crisis, facing disproportionate impacts while also driving grassroots environmental solutions.
She said the adoption of the Belém Gender Action Plan provides an important global, rights-based framework for embedding gender equality in environmental law, national climate strategies and climate decision-making.
“Today, our goal is clear: to move from global policy commitments to transformative local action,” Akosa said. “Over the course of this webinar, we will explore actionable pathways to operationalise the Belém GAP, enforce human rights standards, and ensure that Nigerian women are not just protected from climate impacts, but empowered as leaders in shaping our sustainable future.”
She said the task now was to translate the global framework into practical measures that reflect the realities of Nigerian women, particularly those at the grassroots, and give them a meaningful role in shaping the country’s climate response.
Climate change is not gender-neutral
Delivering the keynote address, Comrade Yussuf Olatunji Kelani, Special Adviser on Climate Change Matters to Nigeria’s President, said the starting point for implementing the Belém GAP was recognising that climate change does not affect Nigerians equally.
A woman farmer whose harvest depends on increasingly unpredictable rainfall, he noted, faces a different set of risks from someone with access to insurance, finance, technology and alternative livelihoods.
Similarly, women in coastal communities facing flooding, erosion and declining fisheries, and women responsible for securing water, food and energy for their households, experience climate pressures in ways that are often different from those with reliable access to basic resources.
“This is why climate change is not simply an environmental challenge,” Kelani said. “It is a development challenge, an economic challenge, a social justice challenge and a gender justice challenge.”
The Presidential aide said Nigeria’s response must therefore be people-centred and gender-responsive.
But he cautioned against framing women solely as victims of climate change.
Across the country, he said, women are already contributing to climate solutions through climate-smart agriculture, renewable energy, clean cooking, waste management, circular economy initiatives, food systems, ecosystem restoration, community resilience and green entrepreneurship.
The policy challenge, he argued, is to move from asking how women can be protected from climate change to asking how women can be empowered to lead Nigeria’s climate transition.
Why the Belém GAP matters to Nigeria
The webinar came against the backdrop of growing international and national attention to the gender dimensions of climate change.
The Belém Gender Action Plan provides an implementation framework comprising 27 activities and 98 deliverables, addressing areas including capacity building, women’s participation and leadership, gender-responsive implementation, financing, data, monitoring and reporting.
For Nigeria, speakers argued, the significance of the GAP lies in its potential to connect existing national climate policies with the lived realities of women and vulnerable communities.
Kelani said Nigeria must now use the framework as an implementation agenda rather than treat it simply as another international commitment.
He identified five priorities for Nigeria: localisation, finance, participation, measurement and accountability.
“Climate impacts are local. Therefore, implementation must also be local,” he said.
That means taking the GAP beyond Abuja and integrating gender considerations into state policies, budgets and development plans, while ensuring that local governments and communities are involved in implementation.
Nigeria cannot implement the GAP from Abuja alone
The subnational dimension emerged as one of the strongest themes of the discussion.
Kelani pointed out that the climate reality facing a woman in Lagos is not the same as that facing a woman farmer in Katsina, a fisherwoman in the Niger Delta or a displaced woman in the North-East.
This diversity, he said, makes localisation essential.
Associate Professor of Law at the University of Bradford, Dr Pedi Obani, reinforced the point while explaining the development and significance of the Belém GAP.
Dr Obani traced the framework’s evolution through the UN climate process, beginning with the Lima Work Programme on Gender in 2014 and the first Gender Action Plan adopted at COP23 in 2017.
She said the Belém GAP provides a more implementation-focused framework for translating gender commitments into concrete action.
Importantly, she said, it recognises that women are not a homogeneous group.
“The experience of a woman in Lagos is different from that of a woman farmer in Katsina,” she said, stressing that climate policy must take account of differences in geography, livelihood, age, disability, economic circumstances and access to resources.
She called for implementation mechanisms to deliberately include state-level organisations, community-based organisations, women leaders, traditional institutions and grassroots networks.
The process, she warned, should not depend exclusively on national organisations located in Abuja or other major cities.
From vulnerability to leadership
The emphasis on women’s agency was also central to the presentation by Emem Okon, an environmental geographer and development practitioner, who connected global climate frameworks to the everyday experiences of Nigerian women.
Okon argued that feminist climate justice begins by asking two fundamental questions: who is most affected by climate change, and who has the power and resources to shape climate solutions?
She said existing gender inequalities in access to land, finance, healthcare, technology, information and decision-making often limit women’s capacity to adapt to climate change.
Water scarcity, food insecurity, flooding, displacement and climate-related conflicts can also increase women’s unpaid care responsibilities, disrupt livelihoods and expose women and girls to additional risks.
For women living in rural and vulnerable communities, she said, climate change is not an abstract policy issue.
It can mean longer journeys to collect water, reduced agricultural production, loss of livelihoods, displacement, disrupted education and increased responsibility for children and dependants.
Okon therefore urged policymakers to ask more specific questions when designing climate interventions:
- Who loses their livelihood?
- Who has access to evacuation information?
- Who has money to relocate?
- Who cares for children during displacement?
- Who has access to land and credit?
- And, crucially, who participates in decisions about rebuilding?
Climate finance: who gets the money?
Financing was identified as one of the critical tests of Nigeria’s ability to implement the Belém GAP.
Kelani said Nigeria’s Climate Change Act provides for a Climate Change Fund and that efforts are continuing to strengthen the country’s climate finance architecture.
He said the Federal Government is also looking at opportunities around renewable energy, climate finance and other areas capable of generating wider economic benefits.
But the key question, speakers and participants noted, is not simply how much climate finance Nigeria can attract. It is who can access it and who ultimately benefits from it.
Kelani said gender-responsive climate finance must address women-led organisations, community groups and enterprises.
He also called for stronger gender-disaggregated data to enable policymakers to track how many women benefit from climate investments, how many women-led enterprises receive financing, how many women gain green jobs and how many women participate meaningfully in climate decision-making.
Without such measurements, he warned, it would be difficult to determine whether climate commitments were actually producing results.
NDC 3.0 and the gender question
The discussion also situated the Belém GAP within Nigeria’s wider climate policy trajectory, including the country’s Third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0).
Kelani said Nigeria’s climate ambition is increasingly being linked to economic development, energy security, investment, job creation and social inclusion.
He noted that NDC 3.0 provides an opportunity to ensure that gender considerations are incorporated into implementation rather than treated as a separate policy concern.
The government representative also linked the country’s climate transition to emerging economic opportunities in renewable energy, clean cooking, electric mobility, sustainable agriculture, waste management, recycling, circular economy, climate-smart infrastructure, carbon markets, ecosystem restoration and green finance.
Women, he said, should not be viewed merely as beneficiaries of such programmes but as investors, entrepreneurs, employers and leaders in the emerging green economy.
Young people must be part of the succession plan
The speakers also stressed the importance of intergenerational climate justice.
Kelani said young Nigerians would inherit the consequences of today’s climate and development decisions and therefore must be treated as co-creators and leaders rather than simply beneficiaries.
He called for greater access for young women and men to climate education, technology, finance, skills, networks, entrepreneurship and leadership opportunities.
For Nigeria’s youthful population, he said, there must be a deliberate succession plan capable of transferring climate knowledge and leadership to the next generation.
The road from September 17
According to organizers, the webinar is part of a broader mobilisation leading into the September 17 Feminist Resistance Gathering, which forms part of the Global Week of Action around implementation of the Belém GAP.
The organisers say the gatherings are intended not merely as symbolic events, but as instruments for movement-building, agenda-setting and public accountability.
The campaign seeks to mobilise support for the full, timely and inclusive implementation of all 27 activities and 98 deliverables of the Belém GAP, with particular attention to the activities and deliverables primarily requiring action at national level.
The organisers are also seeking to identify priority areas for Nigeria, strengthen government-civil society partnerships and create a sustained platform for feminist climate advocacy.
From policy documents to changes on the ground
For the speakers, the ultimate measure of success will not be the number of climate meetings held or policy documents produced.
It will be whether climate action changes people’s lives.
- Can a woman farmer access climate finance?
- Can a young woman establish and grow a renewable energy enterprise?
- Can a fisherwoman participate in decisions affecting her coastal community?
- Can women-led organisations access climate funding without prohibitive barriers?
- Can girls remain in school when climate disasters disrupt communities?
- Can women secure meaningful leadership positions in climate governance?
These are the questions that will determine whether Nigeria has moved from climate commitment to climate delivery.
Kelani summarised the challenge in three propositions:
- There can be no climate justice without gender justice;
- No gender-responsive climate action without implementation; and
- No implementation without accountability.
The Belém GAP, he said, gives Nigeria a framework.
The next challenge, according to participants at the webinar, is ensuring that the framework reaches the states, communities and women whose lives are already being reshaped by climate change.
The objective is no longer simply to discuss what the Belém GAP promises, but to determine how Nigeria will implement it, who will be responsible, how it will be financed and how Nigerians will know whether it is working.
