Innocent Onah
Dr. Innocent Onah is a Sustainability Expert with special interest in the intersection between public policy, governance of natural resources, climate change, and green growth. He has over 15 years extensive cross-sectoral experience in policy, strategy, and practice of environmental, climate change and sustainability applications.
He currently works for the African Development Bank as Chief Natural Resources Officer, leading the Bank’s work on Natural Capital in African Development Finance (NC4-ADF), Governing Natural Resource Outflows for Enhanced Economic Resilience in Fragile and Transitional Countries (GONAT), and Debt-for-climate-nature Swaps study in Angola, Congo DRC, Zambia, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe. He was previously AfDB’s Climate Change and Green Growth Consultant at the Nigeria Country Department where he was responsible for managing climate risks and green growth opportunities in a multi-sectoral portfolio of projects worth over USD 2 billion. He represented the Bank in the Nigeria Green Bond Advisory Group (GBAG) and the Nigeria Circular Economy Working Group (NCEWG), where he convened and mobilized resources to support the design of climate-compatible projects, including a proposed Nigeria Circular Economy Programme (NCEP) that supports green economy transition agenda accounting for circular economy, natural capital, net-zero and nature-positive actions.
Prior to joining the African Development Bank, Dr. Onah served as Special Assistant to the Chairman, Senate Committee on Environment and Ecology (2011-2015) and Advisor to the former President of the Senate of Nigeria (2015-2019). ). While at the National Assembly, he supported the development of a $5 million GLOBE-UNEP-GEF Natural Capital & REDD+ multi-year. multi-country Legislative Project for Nigeria, Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo. Dr. Onah is an alumnus of the prestigious Atlas Corps Fellowship Programme with the United Nations Foundation in Washington, DC; and Graduate intern at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP- CMS) in Bonn, Germany. He is a member of the Green Policy Platform of GGKP, Africa Natural Capital Accounting Community of Practice, and International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE). He has recently published academic papers in high impact peer-reviewed journals like Elsevier (World Development, 2021) and Springer (Climatic Change, 2019). He holds a PhD in Environmental Resource Management and have studied in both Nigeria and Germany.