International Post Corporation (IPC) has added the Nigerian postal operator (NIPOST) as a newparticipant in its global postal carbon reduction programme after Brazil’s Correios joined last
month and South Africa Post Office in November last year.The Nigerian Postal Service is Africa’s second postal operator after South Africa to join IPC’sEnvironmental Measurement and Monitoring System (EMMS). The participation agreement was signed onthe occasion of the Pan-African Postal Union (PAPU) Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, by NIPOSTPostmaster General Ibrahim Mori Baba and IPC’s Sustainability Manager Pieter Reitsma.
The EMMS programme now includes 25 posts from Africa, the Americas, Australasia and Europe, as akey driver of collaboration between postal operators across both developing and developedeconomies, working together to tackle a common, global problem, IPC explained.
IPC’s CEO Herbert-Michael Zapf said: “With NIPOST’s participation in the EMMS, IPC isdemonstrating its engagement with the wider developing world, beyond the group of emergingeconomies known as the BRICS, to which Brazil and South Africa belong. Nigeria’s strong regionalrole and its participation in the sustainability programme will be an example to other developingpostal operators.”
“NIPOST is fully committed to sustainable development and hopes to play a leading role insocietal issues, carbon emissions reduction and other related topics,” Baba said.
As the most populous African country, Nigeria has one of the largest economies on the continent,with NIPOST being one of the leading posts in western Africa. It has 1,200 post offices and over3,000 postal agencies spread over the 36 states of the country.
IPC’s EMMS programme, the first sector-wide carbon reduction initiative for a services industry,was launched in 2009 with a target of reducing CO2 emissions within the postal sector by 20% by2020, based on 2008 figures. To date, the sector has already achieved more than half of that targetwith over 11% and over 926,000 tonnes of carbon emissions cut by the participating postscollectively in 2011.
