 Let me begin by thanking our friends and colleagues here at the Queen's University for being such generous and gracious hosts, and in particular Dr. Terry Scherer, Provost and Vice Principal, academic, Dr. Sandra Den Otter, Vice Provost International, Dr. Jane Philpott, Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences, and so many others who have made coming here today so worthwhile and who have been great collaborators and friends, as we've heard, for years now, and especially in the very recent months. We've just had some conversations on some of the incredible work that Queen's, through the Faculty of Education, the Center for Social Impact, and one million teachers' program is doing in Nigeria with various Nigerian entities, for which we are, of course, deeply grateful. And we're also excited about the prospects of deepening existing and future collaboration. And you've heard a lot already about what has been done, and frankly, it's just a tip of the iceberg. If you actually look at what achievements have been made, it's really quite something to talk about. But today I'm going to speak briefly on another subject, which is Africa and Climate Justice. Perhaps one should begin really by stating the obvious, which is that climate change is perhaps the most significant global existential threat today, and will be so for a while to come. And the frightening signals are everywhere, wildfires, unprecedented heat waves, massive floods, droughts, biodiversity loss, melting polis, caps, desertification, rising water levels, and all of the disastrous socioeconomic implications and impacts of that. So the obvious, if difficult solution to the crisis, is to stop carbon emissions and use green energy. The staple wisdom is that fossil fuels in particular are some of the worst pollutants. So that being the case, it is proposed that countries and corporations should quickly reduce these high pollutants and instead use renewable energy, such as solar, wind, hydro and biofuels, and completely stop the use of these carbon emitters by the agreed dates 2050, and for Nigeria and other countries, we say 2060, Nigeria says 2060, that's our target. Now the second point, and this introduces what some describe as the energy conundrum. It is that developing countries, and especially sub-Saharan Africa, there are two, not one existential threat. Aside from the climate crisis, we have the challenge of extreme poverty and its implications for disease, for malnutrition, and premature mortality. Now energy poverty or lack of access to energy is at the heart of poverty in Africa. So just as the world has made commitments to reduce global warming, the world has also agreed to 17 sustainable development goals that are built on the critical principle of leaving no one behind. In addition, sustainable development and poverty eradication are enshrined in the relevant global treaties, including the Paris agreements, of course the climate agreements. These considerations that I've mentioned are at the heart of what is loosely described as a just and equitable transition, or what some would describe as climate justice, perhaps more broadly. To elaborate on its contours, the notion of climate justice insists that in addition to discussions on greenhouse gas emissions and the need to reduce them, we also recognize that climate change is an inherently social issue with important social justice implications. So then we need to reframe our climate action paradigm from merely a technical effort to cut emissions to an approach that places people and addressing social inequality at the center of our efforts. So this is based on the reality that while climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe, and no place on earth will be immune to its effects by and large, the impact will be different across regions and across groups. In particular, the poor and the vulnerable, largely in developing countries, will be the first to suffer, and of course are already the first to suffer, and the worst hit by the effects of climate change even though they are the least culpable for the climate crisis. So the World Bank estimates, for instance, that high-income countries that are home to 14 percent of the global population today are actually responsible for 44 percent of cumulative CO2 emissions, while Africa, at barely three to four percent of global emissions, contributes the least of any global region to emissions. So Africa is, by current estimates, despite the low contribution warming faster than the global average and experiencing greater increases in sea level rise. The Sahel region, which is a region which covers plenty of most of North Africa and includes northern Nigeria, has recorded vegetation loss leading to a sharp rise in conflicts between farmers and herders. And I'm sure several, perhaps Nigerians who are here, will understand that because there are many conflicts between farmers and herders, and that has led to dislocation of huge numbers of people in the north of Nigeria, in the northwest, in the northeast, and even in the north-central of Nigeria. Southern Madagascar, for instance, is experiencing what the United Nations today describes as the world's first climate change-induced farming. In Nigeria, we're currently also grappling with the catastrophic effects of floods that have affected 34 over 36 states, displacing over 1.4 million people and destroying over 100,000 hectares of farmland and causing close to 600 deaths today. The ADB, the African Development Bank, estimates that African economies are already between 5 to 15 percent smaller because of climate change. Besides, climate change as a threat multiplier is more evident in Africa than in any other region. Under a three-degree centigrade warming scenario, Africa is expected to lose up to 30 percent of current growing areas for maize and banana and 60 percent for beans by 2050, which would of course mean that many more Africans would suffer from hunger and farming. With the largest number of jobs in Africa being in the agricultural sector, reduced crop productivity will worsen unemployment gaps on the continent and resolve engraved socioeconomic consequences. Parallels of these multiply effects can be drawn in other sectors, health, to shelter, and security. But a prime example, and I want to just focus on this briefly, a prime example of the confluence of many of the themes that are already highlighted is the global energy transition, the global energy transition. Energy consumed for electricity, for heat, and transport is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions. This is over 70 percent of global emissions. So for electricity, heat, and transport, that is 70 percent of global emissions today. So reducing emissions from the energy sector is crucial for limiting warming to the 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, that is the target. But the energy sector is one of the starkest examples of global inequality. In 2020, Sub-Saharan Africa had about 52 percent of its population, that's 568 million people, without access to electricity. On the other hand, most developed countries, of course, have 100 percent energy access. Over 1.3 billion people in Africa have serviced by an installed capacity of 244 gigahertz of power, which is less than the 248 gigahertz system for a Germanist population of 83 million people. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the only region in which the number of people without access to clean cooking fuels and technologies is rising. 19 of the 20 countries with the lowest clean cooking access rates are in Africa. In practical terms, these energy deficits produce staggering effects. Furthermore, gender inequities are exacerbated and millions of women and children suffer from critical health conditions. Again, due to the electricity deficits, half of secondary schools and a quarter of health facilities in Sub-Saharan Africa have no power. In addition, though Africa's current unmet energy needs are huge, future demand will even be greater as populations expand and people move into the middle class and rapid urbanization continues. Mitigation efforts, such as electrification of heating, of cooking, and transportation, as well as adaptation efforts, like keeping people cool and safe in a warming climate, will also require even more energy. So for many gas-rich but energy-poor countries in Africa, such as Nigeria, we recognize the role that natural gas, being a much cleaner fossil fuel, must play as a transition fuel in the short term to facilitate the establishment of base load energy capacity that's for industry and address clean cooking deficits in the form of LPG. But there have been very strong resistance to this. Several global North nations have placed restrictions on the use of development funds for natural gas infrastructure in Africa, with ripple effects, of course, in the private financial sector. While the US and others have created some exceptions in their policies, the intended flexibility is not yet clear, and we have not seen most of that anyway in practice. But many of these same countries include gas as a major pillar of their multi-decade decarbonization strategies. And several others fired up decommissioned coal plants in the wake of the Russian-induced energy crisis this year. So clearly, limiting the development of domestic gas projects, which is a critical energy transition pathway for Africa, violates the enshrined principles of equity and justice, and poses dire challenges for African nations while making an insignificant dent in global emissions. So even if we triple electricity consumption in African countries, aside from South Africa, that is, solely through the use of natural gas, this would add just 0.6% to global emissions. And just recently, an International Energy Agency study just this year shows that more than 5 trillion cubic meters of gas resources have been discovered to date in Africa, which have not yet been approved for development. These resources, they say, could provide an additional 90 BCM of gas by 2030. And this would be vital, of course, for fertilizer, for steel, cement industries, and water desalination. But the cumulative CO2 emissions from the use of all of these gas resources over the next 30 years would be an additional 10 gigatons. And if these emissions are added to Africa's cumulative total today, they will bring a share of global emissions to a mere 3.5%. The EU sub-region alone does 8% today already. So the point that must be made is that it is unfair that while many global North countries recognize the need for a wide range of options and different pathways to net zero for themselves, the same courtesy is not necessarily extended to Africa. In terms of financing, the inequities are also striking. The International Energy Agency reports again that emerging and developing economies currently account for 2 thirds of the world's population, but only one fifth of global investments in clean energy. Africa, which is home to 18% of the global population, only receives barely 3% of global energy investment. So of the $2.8 trillion, that's US dollars, invested in renewable energy from 2000, that's a year 2000, to 2020, only about 2% of that, 60 billion US dollars, came to Africa. The IEA estimates that Africa needs $133 billion annually in clean energy investments to meet our energy, climate goals, energy and climate goals between 2026 and 2030, that's barely a four-year period. However, annual investments in renewable energy stands at only $9.4 billion on the continent. Additionally, for African countries, the cost of finance and perceived investment risk remains significantly higher than for developed economies, despite the vast improvements in stability and governance. This affects all energy investments, but it is more critical in the case of renewables like solar, like wind and battery storage because these are all heavily weighted towards upfront capital expenditure. In all of this, I think that one should emphasize that developing economies have not shown themselves to seek a free pass when it comes to climate action. There is more than sufficient evidence of their commitment to developing climate sensitive, locally grounded transition pathways, as many of us have done with our NDCs, our national development, our national determined contributions. There are also regional initiatives, like the Great Green Wall Initiative, which is an African initiative. The original vision was to create a wall of trees against desertification in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa and across North Africa. But it has grown into a variety of sustainable land use practices designed to combat climate change and desertification and to address food insecurity and poverty. And recently, Nigeria launched Energy Transition Plan, which outlines pathways to universal energy access by 2030 and net zero by 2060. And one of the programs identified to kickstart our energy transition program is our flagship large-scale decentralized solar program. And we call it the Solar Power Nigeria Project, which seeks to electrify 5 million homes and 25 million people using solar home systems and mini grids. And we estimate that it will create about 250,000 jobs in the process. So far, we've gone some ways with that. We're close to 500,000. But we think that that will be accelerated in the next year. The project builds on the successes from the Nigeria Electrification Project, which also seeks to increase access to electricity services in the country, and has so far provided over 1.7 million people with electricity access. So there's a lot of work going on in solar power, in particular. We're not doing very much yet in wind, but there's a lot of work in solar power. On the data side, the federal government in partnership with SeaForAll and Global Energy Alliance for People on Planet launched integrated energy planning tool earlier this year. The tool is powered by extensive geospatial modeling and optimization, as well as the most recent data to provide actionable intelligence for planning the expansion of least cost access to electricity and clean cooking in our nation. So as a global community, I think it's important that we have to acknowledge the differences between groups in how they experience climate change and ensure that the process for making decisions about the impacts of and the responses to climate change are fair and they are transparent and determine how the costs and benefits of climate action will be equitably shared. And I think a big win for those of us who follow the proceedings in Egypt at COP 27 was the loss and damage fund, which is to compensate poor countries for climate change-related loss and damage, although we're not at the point yet where we're sure of how the funds will come together or how, for that matter, you will determine who has suffered loss and damage and whether it will be adequate for the purpose. But we're happy, at least, that we've made progress because the loss and damage fund, at least, of one that many of us fought very hard for and were able to get it at COP 27. So a just approach, what would be just and fair through the global energy transition, should recognize, in my view, at least the following. One is that developing economies must have universal access, universal energy access at level sufficient for dignified livelihoods and economic growth. Two, that energy transition must place energy access for both consumptive and productive uses, as well as the required policy, flexibility, financial and technical support at the heart of climate action. And we cannot have climate action that does not take these issues into consideration. Three, that making capital available for the build-out of energy systems is central to reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement. And four, that to meet its decarbonization obligations, Africa needs both conventional and both conventional and development and innovative mechanisms like death for climate investments, carbon trading, et cetera. By the way, there's a lot of work going on on voluntary carbon markets. We're collaborating with several African countries and Colombia in trying to deepen our climate finance alternatives. And the voluntary carbon market is one of the very major initiatives, which, again, was announced at COP 27, and which we hope will be a pathway for raising, not just raising, climate finance capital, but also for accelerating decarbonization efforts. And we heard today at our earlier meeting about some of the carbon capture options that have been explored here at Queen's University. And we hope that we'll be able to benefit from all that effort. And five, that we must lift inhibitive development finance restrictions and upscale technology transfers to ensure that development regions have access to the latest energy innovations and can build local industries on fair terms. And finally, that the race to net zero must not leave Africa in the dark. Thank you all very much for your time. Thank you. Thank you.