The chief executive officer of Ecologistics Integrated Services Ltd, Dr. Paul Abolo, has made a case for an effective payment for environmental pollution as a fiscal policy to support the huge financial requirement for climate adaptation initiatives in Lagos State.
He stated this at the climate finance session at the eighth international climate change summit in Lagos, noting that the macroeconomic cost of climate change in the three major areas of adaptation, mitigation and residual cost are capital intensive.
“Climate change adaptation cost competes with scarce resources for other developmental activities. So the polluter should pay for the pollution and proceeds would be used by the state government in managing the cost of climate change adaptation,” he said.
He further said the cost for the use of the environment lay in the huge profits declared by corporations and advised that the corporations should be asked to share that profit to cover services rendered by the environment which would in turn be used by the state government to develop climate-resilient social amenities.
The expert said the amenities would assist in reducing the current and future impacts of climate change to the environment, especially where the corporations are doing business.
Abolo listed financial sources for expanding climate-resilient financial policies as targeted lending; green bond policy; loan guaranty programs; weather indexed insurance; feed-in-traffic; green banks; tax credits; disclosure policies; and national climate funds, adding the summit revalidated Lagos State as a national leader in developing a climate action plan (CAP) towards an emission-neutral city by 2050.
He used the opportunity to call on other subnational entities to follow the example of Lagos State, seeing that the CAPs contribute towards the national targets as contained in the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).
“For effective implementation of CAP, the process should encourage simplicity, stability, transparency, consistency and coordinator,” he added.
