Agriculture Sector Expert – Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 Implementation and Investment plans, Paris, France

## Agriculture Sector Expert – Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 Implementation and Investment plans, Paris, France - Organization:UNEP - United Nations Environment Programme The expert delivers government-validated technical inputs to the agriculture substantial component of Nigeria’s NDC 3.0 Implementation Strategy and Action Plan, and a prioritized, investment-ready agriculture pipeline, screened from the full set of NDC 3.0 agriculture measures and narrowed to the priority key categories and investment archetypes selected through the screening gate, comprising: a screened long-list, a government-validated short-list, pre-feasibility and business-model analyses, and investor-ready concept notes/project profiles for three (3) priority agriculture projects, subject to an agreed investment-readiness threshold, prepared and delivered jointly with the Financial Engineering, Structuring and Modelling Expert. Home-based, with missions to Abuja, Nigeria From 25 September 2026 to 25 September 2027 (120 working days over 12 months) Duties and Responsibilities The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the United Nations system's designated entity for addressing environmental issues at the global and regional level. Its mandate is to coordinate the development of environmental policy consensus by keeping the global environment under review and bringing emerging issues to the attention of governments and the international community for action. The NDC Act & Invest is a global project led by UNEP and currently funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) and the NDC Partnership’s Partnership Action Fund (PAF) multi-donor trust fund. It is designed to support countries raise their climate ambition and translate their new Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs 3.0) submitted in 2025 into actionable, investable plans. Structured around three interconnected workstreams: 1/fostering G20+ ambition and action, 2/piloting policy and planning alignment, and 3/providing deep-dive support to enhance NDCs 3.0 investability, the project aims to bridge the gap between climate commitments and tangible implementation. By aligning national strategies, strengthening enabling environments, and working collaboratively with key partners, including the NDC Partnership, GIZ, UNDP’s Climate Promise, UNFCCC, multilateral development banks (MDBs), development finance institutions (DFIs), and private sector actors, NDC Act & Invest aims to make the next generation of NDCs both more ambitious and more achievable, accelerating progress toward the 1.5°C goal and enhancing global resilience. The NDC Act & Invest team, based within the Mitigation Branch in Paris, is responsible for the global management and overall coordination of the project across partner countries, in line with UNEP’s delivery model. The team also acts as the main liaison between UNEP and the NDC Partnership, coordinating UNEP’s responses to country support requests shared through the Partnership, identifying and applying for additional funding where appropriate, and consolidating implementation and progress reporting. In addition, the team maintains close coordination with related projects under the IKI framework to ensure coherence and synergies across initiatives. Nigeria submitted its Third Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0) to the UNFCCC in September 2025, committing to economy-wide absolute emissions reductions of 29% by 2030 and 32.2% by 2035 relative to the recalculated 2018 baseline of 573.5 Mt CO2e, on a pathway to net-zero emissions by 2060. Nigeria estimates that US$337 billion will be required over 2026–2035 to implement the NDC 3.0 (US$195 billion for mitigation and US$141.5 billion for adaptation), with 80 per cent conditional on international support. The NDC 3.0 foresees the preparation of an Implementation Strategy and Action Plan (ISAP) and an NDC Investment Plan, while the Net Zero Investment Plan (NZIP, endorsed in May 2026), prepared under the auspices of the National Council on Climate Change (NCCC), estimates total investment needs of approximately US$2.04 trillion to 2060, around US$38 billion per year to 2030, against tracked climate finance flows of only about US$2.5 billion per year in 2021/2022. Following the Government of Nigeria’s request channeled through the NDC Partnership, UNEP, through Workstream 3 of NDC Act & Invest project, has agreed with the NCCC to provide support structured around two complementary components: (i) technical assistance to the development of a comprehensive, inclusive and actionable Implementation Strategy and Action Plan (ISAP) for NDC 3.0, translating NDC targets into costed, monitorable and implementation-ready interventions; and (ii) targeted deep-dive support to advance priority measures towards investability and bankability, through feasibility work, business model design, financial structuring and investor engagement, in the two priority sectors confirmed with the NCCC: agriculture and transport. The implementation timeline for this support was validated by the NCCC in June 2026. Institutional ownership, coordination and decision-making rest with the NCCC and the relevant federal and state Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs); UNEP and its experts mobilized for Nigeria provide technical inputs and analysis in support of this Government-led process. The support is delivered by a team of three experts: an agriculture sector expert, a transport sector expert, and a financial engineering, structuring and modelling expert, working under UNEP’s coordination and in close collaboration with each other. Agriculture is central to Nigeria’s NDC 3.0, primarily as an adaptation agenda and with a smaller but strategically important mitigation component (agriculture measures account for under 1% of the 2035 reductions, with additional soil-carbon gains accounted under LULUCF, while the 2019 National SLCP Action Plan sets more ambitious agriculture methane targets not yet carried into the NDC): 1/mitigation measures include upscaling ranching to 15% of the cattle population by 2035, improved manure management for biogas production, Systems of Rice Intensification on 40% of irrigated rice production, and circular-economy climate-smart agriculture practices on 20% of cropland, while 2/adaptation measures and actions include expanding climate-resilient crops and climate-smart agriculture by 1,000,000 ha each, agroforestry through the planting of 5 million trees annually, adoption of improved climate-resilient livestock breeds by 370,000 farmers, development of 3,700 integrated livestock farms, improved production facilities across the 114 grazing reserves, a 50% reduction of pre- and post-harvest food losses, and the establishment of 3,000 fisheries clusters. The Net Zero Investment Plan estimates AFOLU investment needs at roughly 6% of the national total, with the sector currently around 60% publicly financed, implying a deliberate effort to crowd in private capital, for which climate-smart agriculture value chains show the strongest commercial interest. The NDC 3.0 itself provides no agriculture or AFOLU breakdown of the US$337 billion finance need and its adaptation targets remain uncosted, while a partner-financed pipeline of well over US$4 billion (World Bank ACReSAL, L-PRES, AGROW and SPIN, AfDB SAPZ and NAGS-AP, IFAD VCN, EU/EIB credit lines, GIZ TASRED) carries climate-smart components that map onto the NDC adaptation targets but is not tagged or tracked against the NDC. Linking this pipeline and the NASIP to the NDC measures, costing the residual gap, and embedding the available agriculture methane evidence (CCAC-supported Tier 2 inventory) in measure design and MRV are therefore the principal gaps this support is positioned to address. The expert will map and build on the dense landscape of ongoing programmes and reforms, including the National Agri-Food Systems Investment Plan (NASIP 2026–2035) under the CAADP Kampala Declaration, the Nationa