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Illegal and poorly regulated small-scale gold mining, known locally as “Galamsey,” continues to inflict severe environmental damage across Ghana. In the Ashanti, Western, Eastern, and Central regions, operations have turned major rivers, such as the Pra, Ankobra, Birim, and Offin, into toxic waterways. The mercury and cyanide used in extraction flow directly into water sources that communities rely on for drinking, fishing, and irrigation.

A former senior official at Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency, George Manful, noted that the “mercury can remain in water for up to 1,000 years,” and that the water in the rivers become so turbid that it is undrinkable. In Samreboi, it is not uncommon to see farmers break down in tears after surveying their lands and realizing it is dotted with cyanide-tainted pools. Around 60% of Ghana’s water bodies are now significantly polluted. In the Western Region’s Prestea-Huni Valley and Tarkwa areas, rivers run murky brown with sediment and chemicals. Even the cocoa farmlands have suffered heavily. In fact, the Ghana Cocoa Board has recorded losses of thousands of hectares, with one farmers’ association reporting close to 1.2 million hectares of farmlands destroyed nationwide.

Bismark Owusu Nortey, Executive Director of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, stated last year that they worked on a report that showed “that close to 1.2 million hectares of farmlands have already been destroyed due to Galamsey.” He added that due to the practice, “over 500,000 individual farmers and their dependents have been denied the opportunity to use farming as an economic tool to improve their livelihoods.”

Deforestation to establish mines is equally alarming. Over 4,700 hectares of land have been lost across seven regions, damaging 34 of Ghana’s 288 forest reserves. A 2025 government-backed study found mercury in soils at Konongo Zongo averaging 56.4 ppm, well above the WHO’s 10 ppm safety threshold, with peaks hitting 1,342 ppm. The health impacts of rising kidney failure, skin diseases, and respiratory problems are mounting in such mining communities.

Government Approaches and Their Limitations

The good news about the situation is that the government of Ghana has not stood idle, as successive administrations have declared nationwide bans on small-scale mining, deployed military task forces, and created the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Illegal Mining. Despite all efforts, Galamsey has continued to worsen. In March earlier this year, the Ghana Coalition Against Galamsey (GCAG) issued a press release calling for President Mahama to address “weak enforcement, political interference, and widespread impunity” driving the practice. In the release, the commission highlighted the increasing destruction of forest reserves “now affecting over 50 sites, and the continued pollution of major rivers, posing significant risks to public health, biodiversity, and water security.”

What followed was that legislation was toughened. There were amendments to the Minerals and Mining Act that increased penalties to 15–25 years imprisonment and massive fines. Equipment has been seized and destroyed in raids, and mining in forest reserves has been prohibited. President Nana Akufo-Addo once declared he was “prepared to put my presidency on the line” to tackle Galamsey. In February earlier this year, President John Dramani Mahama, during the State of the Nation Address, noted that his government is intensifying prosecution “with a renewed focus on dismantling organized criminal networks behind Galamsey operations rather than targeting only the little fish low-level offenders.”

These top-down measures have shown very clear limitations. Firstly, enforcement is inconsistent and often politically influenced. Operations frequently rebound once security forces withdraw. Corruption allegations continue to persist, with reports of bribes to officials allowing miners to resume work. The bureaucratic licensing process for legal small-scale mining remains slow and costly for rural operators, pushing many toward illegality.

Martin Ayisi, head of the Minerals Commission, the mining industry regulator, acknowledged that most Galamsey gold is smuggled out, depriving the state of revenue while environmental costs mount.

The centralized approaches that have been adopted by the authorities struggle with the mobile nature of artisanal operations spread across remote areas. The military raids can provide temporary relief but rarely address the root causes of poverty, unemployment, and lack of viable alternatives in many Ghanaian rural communities.

The Case for Grassroots Regulation

What must change is the balance of power. Ghana needs a hybrid model that strengthens grassroots regulation while maintaining national standards. Traditional authorities and local communities, who hold deep knowledge of the land and customary influence, should play a formal role in licensing, monitoring, and enforcement at the district level.

Community mine consultative committees, as piloted in places like Chirano and Prestea, have already shown promise in resolving conflicts and pushing for remediation. These should be scaled up with legal authority, training, and funding. The royalties and taxes from regulated mining could flow directly into community environmental funds for mercury-free technology, land reclamation, and provision of alternative livelihoods, such as sustainable agriculture or agroforestry, for community members.

Local watch groups should be supported but not replaced by national forces, because their constant on-the-ground design could assist in reporting violations in real time. Education on safer mining techniques, including retorts and gravimetric methods, should be delivered by trusted community members, which would likely achieve higher adoption rates than any top-down campaigns. Lastly, streamlining district-level licensing and reducing associated fees would bring more operators into the formal system.

What Should Change

Ghanaian national policy must devolve real decision-making power and resources downward while setting clear environmental boundaries for the participating communities. The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, acknowledged in October last year that “decentralising the mining permitting processes will deter people from engaging in illegal mining activities.” However, this talk must translate into consistent action for viable results.

Penalties should continue to remain strong for large-scale violators and repeat offenders, but the emphasis must shift toward prevention, formalization, and restoration. There has to be greater transparency in revenue sharing to reduce incentives for illegality. Women and other marginalized voices, who often suffer the heaviest health and livelihood burdens in these conditions, need guaranteed seats in local governance structures. The human cost is visible and urgent.

Grassroots regulation here does not mean that the state should abandon its responsibility. It means recognizing that the gap between the central state and local communities will not allow them to effectively manage a problem rooted in local landscapes and livelihoods. So, by empowering communities with authority, tools, and economic alternatives, Ghana can indeed move from the cycles of crackdown and relapse it has experienced in the previous years toward lasting recovery of its rivers, forests, and farmlands.

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Following the conclusion of the Eighth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly on June 5, Nigeria is seeking to align its GEF-9 project proposals with new priorities on livelihoods and people-centered development, while incorporating Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) recommendations on hydrological patterns. STAP is an independent scientific advisory body to the GEF.

The Nigeria Climate Adaptation–Erosion and Watershed Project (NEWMAP-EIB), a five-year initiative designed to tackle soil erosion, land degradation, and climate vulnerability, will submit proposals to the Federal Ministry of Environment for evaluation. The initiative aims to tap into GEF funding to enhance its livelihoods component. Speaking on this, the national project coordinator of NEWMAP-EIB, Anda Ayuba Yalaks, noted that livelihood development has always been central to the project since the World Bank-supported NEWMAP phase. He expressed hope that the livelihoods and climate change response components would be reinvigorated to better address poverty among women and youths.

GEF-funded projects focusing on livelihood development under the seventh funding cycle (GEF-7) have been particularly beneficial to communities across Ondo, Delta, Ogun, and Edo states. “GEF has assisted the National Park Service in no small way,” recalled the conservator-general of the Nigerian National Park Service, Ibrahim Goni, when asked about livelihood development projects facilitated by GEF. “They are also supporting the National Park Service and the Ogun, Delta, Ondo, and Edo State Governments in the ecological restoration of degraded areas like Omo Forest Reserve, Gelegele Forest Reserve, and in the J4 Area. These are being done under GEF-7,” he added.

The GEF-7 project that the conservator-general was referring to is a five-year initiative aimed at conserving biodiversity, promoting sustainable use, and restoring lowland forest landscapes in Ogun, Edo, Delta, and Ondo States. The project was approved in December 2023 and is expected to run until 2028. Implemented by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in collaboration with the National Park Service, it has received a GEF grant of US$3.5 million, with expected co-financing of approximately US$33 million. The project seeks to improve sustainable management of forest resources and strengthen the livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in the target areas.

Some milestones of the initiative were completed and commissioned on June 9 by the minister of environment, Balarabe Abbas Lawal. Goni explained that the commissioned projects include the construction and furnishing of accommodation facilities for rangers and forest guards. According to him, GEF, through the FAO, also supported the training of personnel and supplied sophisticated kits, including ICT equipment, GPS devices, patrol kits, sleeping bags, and camping tents. Goni added that he looks forward to greater support for training and livelihood programmes under GEF-9.

The livelihood component is strongly emphasized by the GEF, and projects will now be assessed using a new metric, according to approved Council documents. The GEF-9 Results Management Framework will introduce new indicators that track how projects contribute to improved livelihoods, women’s empowerment and participation in environmental and natural resource management, and the creation of an enabling policy environment for environmental sustainability. This framework will be applied during the project approval process. Therefore, when Nigerian implementing and executing agencies submit projects through the Project Identification Form (PIF), they must clearly demonstrate the expected results using the specific indicators across GEF thematic areas, with particular emphasis on livelihood improvements.

The Role of Green Water Dynamics in GEF-9 Projects

Another important area of assessment for Nigerian projects will be the integration of green water dynamics. Green water refers to rainwater stored in the soil and available to plants, as opposed to blue water found as rivers, lakes, and oceans. This was highlighted by Sunday Leonard, secretary of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel.

“Blue water is not the complete hydrological side. The hydrological cycle also includes water that is in the soil that gets evaporated in the atmosphere, and the uniqueness of that is that there’s transboundary relationship in that kind of water, because as the water vapor flows, it influences whether it’s going to rain somewhere else, and so on. Our governments currently only focus on blue water that looks more tangible than green water, and our advice is that you have to incorporate all of that water when you think of how you manage water, so that’s basically what we mean by the global hydrological cycle,” Leonard explained.

STAP’s guidance for the GEF-9 cycle strongly emphasizes hydrological influences on environmental degradation, an area the Panel will scrutinize closely in project submissions. At the PIF or concept stage, STAP reviews projects and, for GEF-9, will particularly look for those projects with indicators that show that they integrate green water dynamics with blue water, ensure forest sustainability, and incorporate water-conserving agricultural and agroforestry practices.

Challenges to GEF Projects in Nigeria and the Way Forward

Some state governments have previously failed to fulfil their counterpart funding obligations for certain GEF projects, and this has stalled implementation and even threatened the renewal of some projects, Goni admitted. He observed that this has remained a persistent challenge to project sustainability at the state level and is only now being resolved under the current federal administration.

“[GEF and its implementing agencies] will expect that where they are working, the country should be able to pay the salaries and allowances of the staff. That to them is counterpart funding,” he said.

“But in most of the states, salaries and allowances sometimes [are not paid to the project staff], except for this new government that is seriously assisting governors to pay salaries. But in the past we have had this kind of challenge, where counterpart funding does not come from the states or is being delayed.”

He added that GEF-funded projects must be properly maintained after restoration. According to him, while implementing agencies often quantify restoration achievements in monetary terms, many projects eventually become moribund due to a lack of local ownership. On the part of the National Park Service, he said the agency continues to conduct sensitization and awareness programmes to ensure that communities take ownership of the projects in their areas and do not reject them, as has happened several times in the past.

Poor monitoring and evaluation continue to plague some GEF-financed projects in Nigeria, including the Great Green Wall initiative. The lack of effective monitoring of the initiative by the National Agency for the Great Green Wall (NAGGW) that is meant to benefit the 11 frontline states of Sokoto, Kebbi, Kastina, Zamfara, Kano, Jigawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa has resulted in many tree-planting sites being abandoned and converted into farmlands, high mortality of planted seedlings, and the collapse of boreholes meant to supply water to the plantations.

Speaking on the issue of poor monitoring and evaluation of environmental projects, Babagana Bukar, Nigeria’s GEF Operational Focal Point, acknowledged that the problem is a persistent one in the country. He attributed the solution to building staff capacity and strengthening knowledge management. Bukar stated that the Federal Ministry of Environment will pursue capacity building and training programmes across the ministry. He also emphasized the importance of knowledge transfer from senior to middle-level management so that expertise and project information are retained for continuous implementation. He added that such information should be accessible through the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.

However, Domoina Rakotobe, senior programme officer for technical assistance and capacity building at the High Ambition Coalition (HAC), of which Nigeria is a member, argued that transparency is more important. She noted that information and knowledge on projects should be readily available to the public without having to resort to the FOI Act.

Nigeria’s success in meeting its environmental targets under the GEF-9 cycle (which ends in 2030) will depend on how well its projects benefit local communities, integrate sustainable green water management, and achieve genuine local ownership.

This story was produced as part of a reporting fellowship to the Eighth GEF Assembly supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Read the article on The Habibat Project website

As the world edges toward the 2030 deadline for the Global Biodiversity Framework’s “30x30” target, representatives of vulnerable island states are delivering a consistent and sobering message, which is that ambition is not the problem, resources are. In recent presentations at the side events of the Eighth Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, senior environment officials from the Maldives, Madagascar, and the Cook Islands laid bare the gap between policy progress and the financial firepower needed to confront rapid environmental degradation, coastal threats, and biodiversity loss.

Their accounts revealed sophisticated legal and planning frameworks colliding with underfunding, capacity constraints, and the overwhelming pressure of local realities as a pattern familiar across Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and islands part of Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

Madagascar’s GEF Operational Focal Point, Hery Rakotondravony, spoke candidly about the domestic headwinds. With population growth nearing 3% annually and the national population swelling from roughly 22.5 million to 30 million in a decade, demand for agricultural land has driven “very huge” deforestation and conversion of primary ecosystems. “Every scale per liter of primary habitats in Madagascar has a huge value in terms of biodiversity conservation,” Rakotondravony noted, “but the challenge is that there is the population growth, there’s high demands on lands, mining, fisheries, and agriculture.”

Legal tools to protect the environment are advancing in the African island nation. An updated protected areas code is overdue, a new integrated coastal zone management framework is under review, and a Blue Economy Trust Fund has been created. Yet the Focal Point, who is also the technical collaborator of climate change at the Ministry of Environment in Madagascar, repeatedly circled back to the same constraint, that “one of the last and the biggest challenges is resource availability.” International mechanisms exist on paper, but operationalizing them through funding remains elusive.

The Maldives, a nation of low-lying atolls exposed to sea-level rise, has made measurable progress. It maintains 93 protected areas, including three biosphere reserves, and aims to double the latter while establishing nature parks by 2028, according to the Minister of Climate Change, Environment and Energy of the Republic of Maldives, Ali Shareef. The country submitted protected area management effectiveness data to global databases, one of the first to do so, and is advancing a national 30x30 roadmap. Shareef, however, highlighted the same structural barrier. “The main hurdle... is unavailability of the funds, and conservation is an area where leverage in private sector financing is challenging,” he said.

Even in a tourism-dependent economy, attracting sustained private capital requires visible government commitment and “grant-based financing” as seed money. Without reliable international support, protection will remain patchy and management effectiveness will always lag. The minister stressed that financing must become “largely grant-based, accessible, and sustainable” if private sector engagement is to scale.

Half an ocean away, the Cook Islands, via their Director of National Environment Service, Halatoa Fue, described an integrated marine spatial planning (MSP) process underway to reach the remaining share of the 30x30 target. Their approach incorporates traditional knowledge, biodiversity hotspots, fisheries, and climate resilience. The Cook Islands has a minuscule land mass but a vast Exclusive Economic Zone of about two million square kilometres, according to Fue, and the country has used its 2017 Marae Moana Act to legally protect 14.8% of its waters through 50-nautical-mile no-take zones around each island. In his speech, the director also spoke frankly about their capacity needs, including technical assistance for GIS, spatial analysis, monitoring, surveillance, and satellite tools.

Finance looms large, so the Cook Islands are developing an ocean finance framework and eyeing the Bezos Earth Fund and other sources to establish sustainable financing mechanisms for the additional marine protected areas required. “In small islands, we have capacity and technical assistance gaps,” Fue noted, underscoring that legal architecture alone cannot deliver results without money and expertise.

All these testimonies illuminate the structural challenges facing SIDS and island LDCs. Many possess enormous marine territories relative to land, making their ocean governance central to 30x30 ambitions. They face disproportionate climate impacts, including coral bleaching, coastal erosion, and salinization that accelerate biodiversity loss while their economies remain narrow and debt-vulnerable. In places like Madagascar, demographic pressures additionally compound habitat conversion, and their geographic isolation raises the cost of technology transfer and data management.

International funding streams, including the Global Environment Facility, Green Climate Fund, and various biodiversity funds, have grown, yet access by small bureaucracies can sometimes remain cumbersome. They struggle with the complex application processes, co-financing requirements, and short project cycles that fail to match the long-term nature of conservation. Private finance is also often reluctant to enter high-risk and low-volume island contexts without de-risking instruments, so the result is always often an implementation gap.

The High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People and similar initiatives can play a catalytic role in accessing the funds, and the Maldives minister suggested that in his speech. He noted that this can be done by helping translate grant seed capital into blended finance vehicles that unlock private resources. Without simpler access to funds for SIDS and other island LDCs, and greater flexibility in how they can be used, the risk is that 2030 targets become aspirational rather than realizing the goals of protected landscapes and seascapes.

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The Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) is implementing several GEF-funded projects in Nigeria, including the restoration of Omo Forest in Ogun State and, in partnership with the UNDP, landscape restoration in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands in Yobe State, where it also provides early warning signals to farmers to mitigate desert encroachment impacts in the Majakura community.

At the sidelines of the Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Dr. Joseph Onoja, Director-General of the Nigerian Conservation Foundation and Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) Council member, spoke to The Habibat Project about the organization’s expectations ahead of the ninth GEF funding cycle (GEF-9), which begins in July. He also provided details on ongoing environmental projects as well as future initiatives he hopes will receive priority under GEF-9, such as developing the Nigerian segment of the East Atlantic Flyway for migratory birds and expanding it to cover other species while creating sustainable livelihoods for local communities and still fulfilling the core objective of protecting the birds.

The projects he spoke about address many aspects of the biodiversity conservation and land restoration work that is urgently needed in Nigeria. However, for many of them, seamless knowledge management and transfer, inter-organizational coordination, and even hope are needed to overcome the challenges of implementation they face.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)

You’ve been at the Eighth Assembly and have attended key council meetings. In what capacity are you doing so?

I’m here specifically for the GBFF Council meeting, because I occupy an observer position from the philanthropy and private sector, representing the Nature Positive Initiative, which BirdLife International is a member of. The Nigerian Conservation Foundation is a BirdLife International partner. I am representing BirdLife on the NPI Coalition of the GBFF Council.

What projects might the Nigerian Conservation Foundation be implementing or supporting with GEF Implementing Agencies in Nigeria?

NCF is partnering with FAO on two projects. One is on restoring the forest landscape in Ogun State. It’s a lowland forest landscape across Ogun, Ondo, and Edo States, but NCF is focused on the Ogun component, which is the Omo Forest Reserve. The second is the Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency of the Paris Agreement (CBIT), which involves building the capacity for the five emitting sectors of transport, industrial processing and product use, called IPPU, energy, agriculture, and AFOLU, which is Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Uses, to be able to transparently report their emissions in Nigeria. We work very closely with the Federal Ministry of Environment, Federal Department of Forestry, the National Council on Climate Change, other MDAs that oversee all those areas, the focal points, and sub-nationals to be able to report that. We are also working with the UNDP Small Grants Programme, which is also a GEF-funded program looking at the landscape in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands in Yobe state, where we are working specifically in a community called Majakura to build early warning signals for the local communities and the farmers to fight desert encroachment.

What are some of the key challenges facing these projects that you hope can be resolved in the next GEF cycle?

The initial setup is usually very tough for projects. It involves bringing in partners, selecting who is going to be involved and what expertise they’ll be bringing on board, documentation, and clearly defining the project direction. All the processes have their own bottlenecks and long stages.

Is the government largely responsible for these bottlenecks?

No, I think it’s both ways. It is what we call a necessary evil; it is the normal bureaucracy that has to take place. The MDAs have to commit, and then we need to have an understanding that even if they are going to replace someone (because in the civil service, you don’t see one person continuously), that person has to pass down the knowledge. It shouldn’t be a new person coming in who doesn’t even know what is happening. There should be that institutional knowledge. But sometimes there can be that break, and then you start all over again. That’s why we need commitment from the various MDAs to ensure that even if a new person comes in, that person will have the knowledge to be able to continue from where the old person stopped.

Did you experience this knowledge management problem with any project specifically?

It’s a normal experience. That’s why we are emphasizing it now, so that it doesn’t occur again. Because you don’t want a situation where you’ve trained people for Phase 1, Phase 2, and by the third phase, the person coming in doesn’t even know what happened in Phases 1 and 2. That means you have to start all over again. This happens over time, because ministries are dynamic, the MDAs are dynamic—it’s not only one person, and some people can be moved around. We just want to emphasize that when people are moved around, they should at least pass on that knowledge, that institutional memory, so whoever is coming will not face that kind of issue. Another challenge, which innovatively one can overcome, is the issue of the funding that goes to the TSA (Treasury Single Account). Sometimes, when projects don’t have a dedicated account, it becomes a bit cumbersome to manage the funds. Once money is pumped into the TSA, you require approval of funds from the highest level, probably at the director level, for projects to kick off. If you have to go through that bureaucracy and the TSA for approval, that’s a bottleneck. I will allow the government to talk about it, but that’s something from the outside that we are seeing as a challenge.

As a GBFF council member, what were some biodiversity projects that Nigeria proposed to the Council that got approved or rejected?

We didn’t see any project from Nigeria that got to the stage of the council for them to approve or reject. It’s not that they rejected them. I think Nigeria’s project — because I’m also in touch with the Operational Focal Point (OFP) of the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) — is still being developed. It has not gotten to the council yet. It is a phased process, where criteria must be met for approval. GEF-9 is just starting in July. I think they’re going to approve submitted Nigerian projects at the next GBFF council meeting in December.

What are some projects that the NCF will be initiating to receive GEF-9 funding?

We’ve been having discussions. I’m sure the Ministry of Environment and the new GEF Focal Point have also discussed this with other entities as well. For us at NCF, one of our interests is the flyways. We are looking at landscapes too.

What are flyways?

Flyways are for migratory birds. There are eight flyways.

Are they migration routes?

Yes. Birds migrate from the North Arctic all the way to South Africa. Some migrate from the Arctic through Europe. They migrate from the Mediterranean, then through the Sahara Desert, through Sub-Saharan Africa, all the way to South Africa. We want to ensure that the flyways are well protected right along these paths. We want to ensure that we have these flyways as part of the cycle in the GEF-9 granting, because when you protect flyways, you are not only protecting them for birds, you are protecting them for every other biodiversity that happens to be on that flyway. We are looking at Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) as well which form part of Target 3 of the KMGBF (Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework), which aims to protect 30 by 30 (30% of the landscape of every country by 2030). Nigeria now has to rank all of these priorities and follow up. I’m yet to discuss with the OFP to know what the priorities are this time.

For those flyways, what funding mechanisms are you targeting? Is it the small grants programme or the actual main financing?

The main financing will be better. Because when you talk about flyways, you’re talking about different components, including livelihoods, habitat restoration, species conservation, and even marine conservation. Flyways encompass a lot of things. For instance, the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands is a major bird stopover site, as we’ve been monitoring the bird population in that landscape for over 20 years. We do that every year. It’s a major stopover for them. Also, we have the East Atlantic Flyway, and all of Nigeria is in that flyway, but we’re also looking at the marine component of it as well. If you talk about marine protected areas, you talk about mangrove conservation, you talk about livelihood improvement — all of these things are part of what will come as different projects, bankable projects under the flyway programme. That’s why we are open as NCF to work closely with the government to prioritize this project.

Has any progress been made so far on this flyway project or are you waiting for financing?

As I said, we have been working with the communities in the Hadejia-Nguru Wetlands. We received a GEF small grant of $50,000, which is what we are implementing with the communities in Majakura for this project. It is part of our flyway. In this northern part of the country, you can develop what we call the shea butter range, where you empower local communities, especially women, to be able to grow shea butter. There, these migratory birds will feed on the insects that lay their moths or their caterpillars on this shea butter. Meanwhile, the shea butter is producing economic value for the women, and then it’s restoring the landscape because it’s fighting the desert encroachment, and also the birds are benefiting from it. You can term it Birds, Bees, Biodiversity, and Business (BBBB) all put together, and local communities are at the heart of such implementation.

What’s your take on Nigeria defaulting on its pledges to the GEF?

In terms of dues, we are owing almost every convention that Nigeria has signed on to. We are owing not just one year, but multiple years, which is sometimes an embarrassment when we come out to participate. Sometimes, for a country to be able to speak at conventions, they don’t even allow you to speak. When you are not at the table, you become the menu. When things are being discussed, and Nigeria is not there to provide that leadership, then you cede your right to other smaller countries, which is not good for Nigeria. There are many advantages that come with occupying such leadership positions.

This story was produced as part of a reporting fellowship to the Eighth GEF Assembly supported by Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

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A version of this story was originally published in Daily Trust.

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