NIPOST signs up to IPC’s carbon monitoring programme

The International Postal Corporation has extended its environmental monitoring programme further within Africa, with the Nigerian Postal Service signing up. The IPC’s Environmental Measurement and Monitoring System (EMMS), launched in 2009, now includes 25 postal operators reporting their annual climate change emissions and sharing best practice information on how best to reduce their carbon footprint.

NIPOST signed up to the programme today at the Pan-African Postal Union (PAPU) Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The post is the second from Africa to join up, after the South African Post Office joined last November.

By joining, NIPOST pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 20% before 2020, going from a 2008 baseline.

Ibrahim Mori Baba, Nigeria’s postmaster general, said: “NIPOST is fully committed to sustainable development and hope to play a leading role in societal issues, carbon emissions reduction and other related topics.”

NIPOST

NIPOST operates in the most populous country in Africa and the seventh most populous country in the world – Nigeria has a population of around 170m. The postal service runs a network of 1,200 post offices and more than 3,000 postal agencies through the country’s 30 states.

The Brussels-based IPC said it was building its EMMS programme participation to enable it to push postal operators in both developing and developed economies to work together to tackle climate change.

Last month saw Brazil Post joining the programme, which claimed to have helped its members cut their emissions by 926,000 in 2011.

Herbert-Michael Zapf, the IPC chief executive, said: “With NIPOST’s participation in the EMMS, IPC is demonstrating its engagement with the wider developing world, beyond the group of emerging economies known as the BRICS, to which Brazil and South Africa belong.

“Nigeria’s strong regional role and its participation in the sustainability programme will be an example to other developing postal operators.”