To make it clearer, the infamous pest attacks in 2016 that caused an 80% loss in tomato production, and a shortage of raw materials resulting in closure of the iconic $20 million tomato processing factory, and a loss of thousands of jobs and incomes for farmers, could not have happened if Nigeria’s tomato value chain was adequately climate-proofed. 

Devising incentives to power adaptation and mitigation actions against climate change is urgently imperative. Application of solar driers and solar fridges could enable earlier harvesting to prevent total loss while use of best practices like organic & environmentally sustainable approaches could improve the resistance of the tomato plants against pest. Left unaddressed, climate change is set to exacerbate these losses. Cumulatively, climate change is projected to cost 6 – 30% of Nigeria’s GDP by 2050, translating to $100 billion – $460 billion in losses, that threaten realisation of shared socioeconomic development aims as enshrined in the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) & Vision 2020.

It is against this back drop that the meeting with the Nigeria Standards of Organization (SON) was held to evaluate feedback on the integration of climate and environmental benchmarks  market incentives for the tomato value chain called “Tomato Stakeholders meeting with the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON): operationalising the United Nations Environment – Ecosystem Based Adaptation For Food Security Assembly (EBAFOSA) Compliance Market Incentives”,  to inspire and mobilize actions  in a way that drives low emissions development and create opportunities for the youth.

The work of every state agency including the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), cascades up to drive the shared economy-wide objectives. This is an undoubtful reality that must be responded to and UNEP through EBAFOSA is facilitating support through technical backstopping to assist Nigeria in achieving its objectives in the tomato value chain as well as other crops including cassava which many youth are now engaged leveraging on the spirit of Innovative volunteerism. This guide which serves to help compliance through innovative implementation of the standards, would proffer enduring solutions against all these losses and open economic acceleration opportunities in a market enterprise driven paradigm that guarantees longevity. Actualising this is the essence in which UNEP through EBAFOSA seeks to collaborate with SON to support the stakeholders by operationalising this guide to maximise production with attendant huge economic benefits.

This guide will inform non-state actor engagements organised by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) towards implementing National Standards in a paradigm that incentivises climate action. UN Environment has been guiding the SON in restructuring implementation of Nigeria’s National Standards to ensure they provide market incentives for non-state actors to engage in climate action enterprises. The end product has been a technical guide informing on the specifics of this restructuring. Accordingly, the guide will assist non-state actors in the tomato sub-sector on how they will leverage this market incentives guide developed with UN Environment technical backstopping to open wider market opportunities for their enterprises among health, climate and quality conscious consumers. Application of the guide through these enterprises is to upscale climate solutions of clean energy and Ecosystems Based Adaptation (EBA) through a market driven paradigm that ensures longevity of Nigeria’s climate actions while driving realisation of leading socioeconomic development aims of the Economic Recovery & Growth Plan (ERGP).

EBAFOSA will continue and expand engagement of ground actors along the entire tomato value chain continuum on adoption of climate resilient approaches and collect feed-back from upstream on-farm actions in order to midstream processing & value addition and on to downstream product promotion and connection to markets. This ground information will be collated to inform relevant revisions and refinements of the standards to optimise their implementation.

The discussions yielded the following results; expand test runs and collating more test results, for sharing with stakeholders along the tomato value chain across Nigeria. UN Environment will continue and expand engagement of ground actors along the entire tomato value chain continuum on adoption of climate resilient approaches and collect more feed-back to enrich recommendations as these guidelines continue to be rolled out. This will be from upstream on-farm actions; to midstream processing & value addition; and on to downstream product promotion and connection to markets. This ground information will form a permanent feedback loop for SON to inform relevant revisions and refinements of the standards to optimise implementation for climate action.

Tomato value chain enterprise actors engaged at the working session will be used to mobilise counterparts  from farm level and on to value addition and processing  so they can be guided on production process restructuring to manage and stabilize their supply chain and guarantee the supply of quality, non-chemicalized, environmentally sustainable tomato products to markets. These innovative volunteerism actors will mobilise beyond their current network. With technical backstopping from UN Environment EBAFOSA, they will use the guide to train more tomato growers on the approaches to use to ensure quality and environmental compliance as per existing SON standards.

SON will lead in certifying tomato products of enterprises engaged above to enable promotion among health, climate, environment and quality conscious consumer niche markets. It will also review progress and integrate lessons to refine National Standards and replicate these incentives for other value chains across Nigeria with feedback lessons from ground enterprise actions to inform policy amendments and refine implementation to enable further scaling of climate action enterprises.

EBAFOSA shall therefore work with SON to organise future stakeholder meetings aimed at discussing the expanded test results from the decisions arrived at the meeting, to accelerate uptake and expand the lessons to other agro-value chains. Lessons from the tomato value chain will be replicated in other crucial value chains across Nigeria and shared with colleagues across Africa

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