The Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), Prof. Charles Anosike, has called on financial regulators and other stakeholders to integrate climate risk management in their financial reporting.
Anosike stated this while speaking Thursday in Abuja at the Regulatory Roundtable on the implementation of International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) sustainability reporting in Nigeria, organised by the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC).
He said: “Climate change has become a top priority for our leaders in financial institutions. Because climate change is a threat multiplier, it calls for a new epistemology of risk that acknowledges not just the uncertainty but also the anthropogenic factors.
“The systemic risk of climate change explains why it is in the interest of regulators to ensure that climate risks, both current and future, are identified and disclosed by institutions.”
Anosike said that due to the strategic importance of climate risk, with regard to transition to net zero, it is clearly evident that the regulators must integrate climate risk management.
He emphasised that it was incumbent for financial regulators to include environmental factors such as accounting for precipitation and temperature variability in addition to water availability and the overall climate science that supports adaptation and mitigation measures.