ABSTRACT
This chapter posits that the domestication of Nigeria’s commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 and the Paris Climate Change Agreement of 2015 through Nigeria’s Climate Change Act 2021, could provide the normative compass for robust climate change litigation in Africa and assuage climate change-related harms in Nigeria. The Act obligates Nigeria to achieve a net-zero emission of greenhouse gases between 2050–2070 based on reducing the five-yearly carbon budget in the National Climate Change Action Plan to be adhered to by public and private entities subject to sanctions against defaulters. This comes against the background of failed enforcement of the Gbemre v Shell Petroleum decision which is Nigeria and Africa’s first case to hold transnationals accountable for human rights violations arising from gas flaring – a major precipitator of global warming. The court’s pronouncement that gas flaring “[c]ontributes to adverse climate change as it emits carbon dioxide and methane” and affected the applicants’ health portends hope for climate justice despite being merely obiter without any rigorous legal analysis of causation. Climate change litigation poses complex evidentiary burdens on litigants to establish standing, causation and scientific truths concerning “highly complex socioecological changes” associated with climate change. Interestingly, the Nigerian Supreme Court recently extended standing on environmental issues that can affect unborn generation(s) to public-spirited persons in The COPW v NNPC case. This will bolster the enforcement of the NCCA and Nigeria’s renewed policy and regulatory commitments to eradicate gas flaring by 2030. This chapter synthesises scholarly literature, the international climate change regime, comparative climate laws, and jurisprudence to analyse the potential of the NCCA for human rights-based climate litigation towards climate justice in Nigeria and Africa.
