In a season Nigeria faces the sore impact of climatic change challenges, leading data journalism platform, Dataphyte, has launched the first climate data platform in Africa’s biggest economy.
Nigeria’s vulnerability to global warming and climate change is glaring. Although the country has made commendable commitments to reducing its carbon emissions and tackling the impacts of climate change, analysts and experts are wondering how the country intends to move forward.
In order to bridge the knowledge gap, Dataphyte is launching an initiative aimed at supporting journalists and civil society organisations with access to country-specific climate data and policy information.
According to pioneers of the initiative, this development comes in response to crucial climate issues of nature, food, water, industry decarbonisation, and climate adaptation.
Many parts of Nigeria, especially the coastal areas usually experience flooding yearly, but this year’s floods have been described as the worst in more than a decade as authorities race to provide relief to hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced.
For experts familiar with climate change topics, three critical challenges have been identified by stakeholders to have compounded the level of damages, losses and displaced livelihood experienced by the flooding across Nigeria.
First, the gap in climate change and early warning information flow from government institutions to citizens and groups. The gap has sustained conventional practices by citizens that cost them their lives and livelihoods; but also aggravated the effect of climate change on their communities.
Second is the lack of aggregated and on-the-ground data about climate change and resultant issues like agriculture, energy, health, transportation and water. Thirdly, various incidents such as flooding, desertification, sea level rise, gas flaring and oil spill are rocking the country, and solving these problems required data-backed decisions.
Access to data and data-driven insights are essential for finding quick flood solutions, building climate-resilient food systems that can meet the growing global food crisis, and reaching a sustainable and resilient net-zero future.
The climate data hub will give citizens a chance to contribute through climate reporting to urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience and adapting to the inevitable impacts of climate change, and holding the Nigerian government accountable for fulfilling its commitments to climate action in the face of the increasingly extreme weather events and other effects of climate change.
The launch of the Climate Data Hub is in line with Dataphyte’s mission to provide access to data and information to support advocacy and demand for accountability that transforms socioeconomic data into usable data-driven insights and analyses that aid citizen groups and policymakers in making informed decisions, thereby promoting the development of Nigeria and Africa.
Dataphyte founder, Joshua Olufemi said the platform will house data, research publications, situation reports and analyses, maps and other visualisation to support various users with information to understand climate change in Nigeria better.
“Likewise, the platform will present conversations from the ongoing COP 27 conference in Egypt this month, relevant social media updates and conversations on the 2023 Floodings in Nigeria,” he said.
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