“If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family [nation]” is a well-known saying attributed to the Ghanaian scholar Dr James Kwegyir-Aggrey [1875-1927], who used the proverb to convince African parents who were more willing to allow their male children to attend missionary schools than their daughters. Today, after a century, this wise maxim still reverberates the spirit of the age. Women are critical drivers of climate action at all levels – as farmers, workers, consumers, household managers, activists, leaders, and entrepreneurs.
Indubitably, the world recognises that women should have equal access to climate knowledge and equal space at the table where decisions affecting our climate are made. Thus, one of the outcomes of the just-concluded United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s 30th Conference of the Parties, popularly known as COP30, which took place from November 10 to 21 in Belem, Brazil, is the adoption of the Belem Gender Action Plan as a blueprint for action in the next nine years.
The GAP is a guidance document that outlines activities across five priority areas – capacity-building, knowledge management and communication; gender balance, participation and women’s leadership; coherence; gender-responsive implementation and means of implementation; and monitoring and reporting – and serves as a framework for implementing gender-responsive climate action and its coherent mainstreaming at all levels. It recognises that climate change impacts are not gender neutral and that inclusive, equitable responses are essential for effective climate governance – ensuring policies designed for climate mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology, capacity-building and transparency all serve to promote women’s full, meaningful and equal participation and leadership.
But to me, there is no better illustration of the fundamental contribution of women to climate solutions than the one demonstrated by Nigerian customs officers’ wives at COP30. In a multiracial audience-packed side event at the Nigerian Pavilion at Belem on November 17, the women under the umbrella of Customs Officers’ Wives Association, led by its National President, Mrs Kikelomo Adeniyi, communicated homegrown sustainability concepts and action to the world. It was a moment of pride, not just because they were women, but because they blazed the green-white-green ensigns of a country heavily burdened with climate emergencies but perceptibly determined to break free from the shackles of climate ennui.
They explained their project, COWA Green Borders Sustainability Initiative, a project that seeks to draw practicable climate actions to erase collective carbon footprints, connecting the grassroots ecosystem at the nation’s border communities to the wider global sustainability community. They showed how they created and implemented the first-ever Green Border Day celebration, launched at Seme Border, Lagos State. They showed how, through the CGBSI, they are planting 5,000 trees and training more than 1,000 women and youths in recycling and green enterprise, and establishing solar-powered eco-hubs across Nigeria’s border regions.
The COWA President, Mrs Adeniyi, shared how they plan on running a 12-month national programme, scaling from Seme and Idiroko to other major towns such as Jibia, Maigatari, Mfum and Calabar, in a bid to transform customs communities into clean, climate-resilient and smart environments. These events and the Green Borders Day will continue nationwide over the next year, culminating in the presentation of a National Green Borders Impact Report.
However, the most daring is the creation of the COWA Sustainability and Innovation Centre in Abuja – a pioneering hub that will promote renewable energy, recycling technology, and sustainable trade practices. The Centre will house a Green Skills Academy to train women and youth in solar technology, waste management, and eco-enterprise; an Innovation and Research Lab to support start-ups and universities working on circular economy solutions; and a Policy and Leadership Institute linking customs reforms with global best practices in sustainability. It will also host a Green Enterprise Hub for small-scale recycling ventures and a Sustainability Knowledge Centre—a hybrid digital and physical library for climate data, environmental research, and policy evaluation.
Envisioned as a solar-powered, eco-friendly complex, the Centre will connect the Nigeria Customs Service with key ministries and international partners such as UNDP, UNEP, and the World Customs Organisation to drive a national model for green customs training and community-led innovation.
To be sure, Nigeria, as the current chair of the World Customs Organisation Council, bears a global responsibility to model sustainability in border governance. This will consolidate our status as a regional trailblazer. As the Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, recently noted, “Green customs is already a strategic priority within the WCO framework, making it imperative for Nigeria to demonstrate leadership through tangible, community-based action.” Hence, COWA’s ingenuity represents “a move from awareness to action, and from policy to practice”, aligning the association’s goals with the Nigeria Customs Service’s modernisation drive and the World Customs Organisation’s global sustainability agenda.
Border towns must transit from crime and waste-encumbered hotspots to sustainability hubs. The quality of life of people on all sides of borders depends on the same things—healthy ecosystems, clean air and water, and the participation of everyone is key.
There are many reasons why Nigerian officers’ wives deserve global support.
The first is that our country’s border communities are, due to geographical and cultural placement, vulnerable to environmental degradation, deforestation and pollution. Indeed, they are the eco-criminals’ first point of call. As a matter of fact, the Koko port town of Delta State became a reference of environmental stewardship when it witnessed such an invasion. In 1988, the town drew international attention after it was discovered that it was one of several West African ports being used by waste brokers to dump toxic waste. To date, the Koko community has not recovered from the incident, which eventually led to the establishment of the country’s Ministry of Environment.
Secondly, as border communities are mostly populated by rural dwellers and indigenous peoples, the CGBSI has automatically created a sector-specific value chain, which would create hubs of climate action, eco-innovation and sustainable livelihoods. On the same hand, it directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – 5, 7, 11, 12 and 13 – and supports the country’s Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement.
Thirdly, and most importantly, this could become a sustainable source of global climate and biodiversity finance, and technology transfer for Nigeria. On November 8, 2022, the new Africa Carbon Markets Initiative was inaugurated at COP27, Egypt, with an objective to scale the production of carbon credits across the continent. Just a couple of months ago, Nigeria launched its own National Carbon Market Framework, signalling the activation of a robust local carbon market ecosystem. These marketplace instruments cannot translate to national wealth without such green projects as the CGBSI. What is more, the border communities are not only eligible for carbon credits; they are also the most qualified to benefit from the emerging biodiversity credits market. They are, in fact, biodiversity hotspots.
Fourthly, it could spark off new conservation ideas, including practical governance and diplomatic collaborations and partnerships. This is because cross-border or transboundary conservation happens when countries sharing natural resources, plants and animals work together to research and manage these valuable resources. Cross-border conservation is relevant on a huge scale because Nigeria does not just share a lot of land and water along those 4,047km; we share some very important ecoregions, too.
So, what Nigerian customs officers’ wives have done is open up a new knowledge base to create biodiversity hotspots, research hubs and legislative baselines. While there are formidable challenges to cross-border collaboration, such as differing policies, languages, governance and resources, we all know the resilience and improvising abilities of these our ‘customs mothers’, who are telling us – Yes, you can!
