Between Climate Reliance and Climate Resilience: Empirical Analysis of Climate Variability and Impact on Nigerian Agricultural Production

Climate change and environmental security are ongoing challenges in Nigeria. This literature review explores the dynamics of climate change and environmental security alongside proposed solutions. The study employs qualitative research, primarily drawing on reports from international NGOs that address climate change and ecological security in Nigeria. It also utilizes content analysis based on literature, additional bibliographies, and published academic works. The results indicate that the issue of climate change in Nigeria still requires further exploration, as no reports provide in-depth investigations. However, they also show the emergence of debates concerning the problem in both the political and academic spheres. Regarding official documentation, they highlight that Nigeria has adopted policies aimed at significant domestic adaptations to international agreements and treaties to mitigate the effects of climate change. However, research indicates that these efforts have not effectively addressed the consequences of climate change, resulting in more significant environmental degradation. The article highlights the shortcomings in the ways government agencies and other institutions have addressed climate change in Nigeria, including legal and institutional limitations, corruption, and governance deficiencies.

Climate change is a global phenomenon with multifarious unique regional consequences. Contemporary studies have established Climate change as a product of anthropogenic activities. Studies have linked extreme weather events, heat waves, increase pollution, crop failure as some of the many discernable effects of climate change. Hence, the spatial temporal effects of Climate change are of concern to policy makers, researchers, innovators and the entire public to develop veritable mitigation strategies. This paper examines climate change in Nigeria as a case study; the research adopted desk research method to collect secondary data from literature about hazards caused by climate change and potential adaptation strategies in Nigeria. The findings revealed that a potential environmental hazard caused by climate change in Nigeria includes that of biological, chemical, physical, mechanical and psycho-social. Moreover, this review further showed adaptation technologies that can be used in adapting and mitigating climate change in Nigeria.

The world's climate is changing and will continue to change in the coming century at rates projected to be unprecedented in recent human history. The risks associated with these changes are real but highly uncertain. Societal vulnerability to the risks associated with climate change may exacerbate ongoing social and economic challenges, particularly for those parts of society dependent on resources that are sensitive to cha nges in climate. The main thrust of this paper is on the risk management and challenges of climate change in Nigeria. It reviews the incidence of climatic change in Nigeria, the vulnerability of Nigeria as a nation to climate change, and the consequences of climate change in Nigeria. The research design approach adopted in this work is the survey research technique. The findings provided the following insights: first, that industrial releases, deforestation, improper sewage disposals are human activities responsible for climate change; secondly, that flooding, drought, erosion, make up the challenges resulting from climate change, and lastly that government/agencies in charge do not really help to reduce the risk associated with climate change in Nigeria. Based on findings obtained , it can be concluded that bush burning, over grazing, gas flaring, CO2 are responsible for Nigeria climate change while creation of environmental/climate refugees, threats to the future of children, reduction in economic growth, increases in diseases, immediate setback on agriculture, loss of biodiversity are some of the challenges as a result of change in climate. Essentially, Nigerian Government should provide solutions to manage the associated risk with climate change in Nigeria like, afforestation programme, good policies, development of biotechnology, integrated climate risk management, and technology that can capture at least 80% of carbon emitted by industries.

Oil and gas exploration in Nigeria has contributed to global warming and climate change. The growing global impact of climate change and the need for resilience demand action to reform the impact thereof. This article reviews policy responses to reform climate change and global warming in Nigeria in light of oil exploration and gas flaring in the Niger Delta region. A desktop study of related literature, drawn from repositories such as SCOPUS, Google Scholar, and Web of Science, provided policy responses such as the Climate Change Act 2021, the implementation of the Nigeria Gas Flare Commercialisation Programme, and other gas utilisation programmes by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, the Petroleum Industry Act 2021, and other global commitments to end gas flaring by 2030. The article reviews the provisions of climate change mitigation in these policy responses and how it was implemented in Nigeria. The review revealed the need for more commitment from Nigeria to various international agreements on climate change. It, therefore, recommends, among others, a better utilisation of gas from its oil-rich regions to meet the nation’s power-generation need and other needs.

Most solutions dealing with climate change in rural Nigeria are biased in favour of a modern or Western worldview. Local indigenous knowledge of forest management and of adaptation to climate change is seen as irrelevant.

This paper reviews the current issues that involve environmental changes in Nigeria and environmental threats within the country. The fundamental aim of scientific knowledge in environmental studies is to reconcile climate change and environmental sustainability with developmental goals. Therefore, information on impact adaptation to climate change and vulnerability research is required to develop specific, action-oriented, interdisciplinary, successful, sociopolitical and democratic reform for the entire population of a country. This condition requires large inclusion of environmental researchers, institutions, re-inventing of research structures and ideas to dominate the global environmental change research and the critical analysis of present decision making, power, structure and related information structures. This review presents the effect of climate change in Nigeria and encourages adaptation research with challenging innovation, such as the use of energy-efficient renewable energy sources to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper also highlighted the need for researchers to become detailed, action oriented and multiscalar and to attend communications structure problems in enhancing the environmental activity.

Energy consumption and agricultural production are major emitters of greenhouse gasesGreenhouse gases that cause climate change. This climate change in turn affects energy sustainabilitySustainability and food security for both present and future generations. In this chapter, the Auto-Regressive Distributive Lag modelAuto-Regressive Distributive Lag Model (ARDL) and the Granger Causality testGranger causality test were used to examine the connection between climate change, energy consumption, and agricultural output in NigeriaNigeria for a duration of 28 years (1990–2017), using carbon dioxide gas as a proxy for climate change. According to the short-run ARDLAuto-Regressive Distributive Lag Model calculation, increasing energy consumption increases carbon dioxide gas emissions, whereas increasing agricultural output decreases carbon dioxide gas emissions. The long-run estimate, on the other hand, demonstrates that increasing energy usage reduces carbon dioxide emissions while increasing agricultural production does not catalyze any significant change in carbon dioxide emissions. The Granger Causality testGranger causality test results revealed that there is a bidirectional relationship between energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, but there is a unidirectional relationship between agricultural output and energy consumption. This implies that in order to reduce greenhouse gasesGreenhouse gases, agricultural production and energy consumption should be increased and decreased, respectively. The results of this study show that NigeriaNigeria consumes large amounts of energy, which is mainly dominated by non-renewable energy sources, which consequently results in high emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of emissions from the energy sector. In accordance with the research results, this paper puts forward a series of policy recommendations to help promote sustainable developmentSustainable development.

Nigerians are facing a serious global environmental problem and there is a widespread concern that the ozone layer which is bringing out terrible deterioration thus contributes to climatic change and global warming. This study made use of relevant already published data of the nature and effect of climate change in Nigeria. The objective of this paper is to review and examine how ozone layer depletion and climate change acts as a threat to Nigerians and strategies that should be elucidated to reduce this phenomenon. The review established the fact that climate change has adverse effect in Nigeria especially in gas flaring region, Nigeria Delta area. Nigeria generally is known as a highly industrialised country and a recent study reports that Nigeria have over one hundred and twenty three (123) gas flaring sites making her one of the highest emitters greenhouse gases in Africa. The World Bank (2008) revealed that Nigeria accounts for roughly one-sixth of worldwide gas flaring. There are sparse rainfall thereby making food production difficult in Northern part of Nigeria, Uncontrolled logging, people in Niger Delta region are experiencing oil exploration and exploration, deforestation and bush burning in the southern Nigeria leading to acid rain, urbanization with increasing risk of disease and rising cost of extreme weather damage. The impacts of which are already felt all over the country.

The aim and objective of this study is to examine the factors influencing sustainable energy transition and climate change in Nigeria and recommend ways to promote sustainable energy transition for policy decisions in Nigeria. There has been a general call for the decarbonization of the global environment. This has necessitated the need for renewable energy and other forms of sustainable energy in developing countries. African governments are passionately disposed to finding a balance between energy transition and energy trilemma. The balance is with respect to energy equity, sustainability, and security However, the African nation of the world are lagging in terms of energy transition and several factors are responsible for the slow speed in energy transition in the Africa. The study adopted qualitative research methodology using literature review. Based on the analysis of literature review in energy transition it has been shown that technically 100 % renewable energy systems have been verified. In order to achieve carbon neutrality, current energy system need to be transformed towards a sustainable energy system or at best quasi sustainable development of petroleum resources. The study findings revealed that there are some barriers to carbon neutrality that presently constrain sustainable energy transition. The study highlighted on the development of an enabling framework that act as counter strategies to overcome the existing barriers and facilitate energy transition to be sustainable. The underlying factors behind sustainable energy transition and de-carbonization are: Financial, technical, energy market and energy policy, support infrastructure, environment/ ecological, legal and regulatory requirements. In conclusion, it is imperative that for a sustainable energy transition and mitigation of climate change in Nigeria, the enabling frame work needed to be reformed.

Climate change and its associated extreme climate and extreme events are threat to man and his environment. Over the years, climatic parameters have been used as climate change indicators to study climate change. In order to access extreme climate due to climate change in Nigeria, this paper attempt to evaluate spatial distribution and temporal trends of temperature and its extremes over Nigeria for 35 years (1979 - 2013). Daily temperature data used were obtained from the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET), Lagos. The data was subjected to quality checked and homogenization. Climate extreme indices developed by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) was adopted in this study. The data were analysed employing Sen’s slope estimator and Mann-Kendall test. Results revealed that spatial distribution of temperature and its extremes over Nigeria varied across the country, increasing/decreasing mostly towards the northern or the coastal regions. Significant increase was observed at p < 0.05 in the temporal trends of averages of yearly maximum and minimum temperature and hot temperature indices in all the regions in line with the global warming trend. The increase in warm days and warm nights doubled the rate at which cold days and cold nights decreased in most of the study areas. The annual and decadal changes in temperature and its extremes as well as the period under investigation (35 years) were determined. Our findings depict that the country is trending towards a drier and warmer climate which are clear evidence of climate change. The results further suggest that the Atlantic Ocean and the Sahara Desert which control the atmospheric condition of the country may be promoter of the observed extreme events caused by climate change in Nigeria. This study discussed contemporary issues in our society which are useful to the general populace, researchers, and policy makers among others.
 HIGHLIGHTS
 
 Spatial distribution of temperature and its extremes over Nigeria varied across the country from one region to another
 Maximum and minimum temperature and hot temperature indices increased significantly (p < 0.05) in all the regions in line with the global warming trend
 The increase in warm days/nights doubled the rate at which cold days/cold nights decreased in most of the regions
 Our findings suggest that Atlantic Ocean and Sahara Desert which control the atmospheric conditions of Nigeria may promote extreme events caused by climate change in Nigeria
 
 GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Human activities have continued to increase the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases resulting in additional warming of the earth’s surface and the general atmosphere. One of the major threats to the global order in the present century is climate change. Climate change is one of the most important menaces to earth’s biodiversity, natural resources, poverty eradication etc., posing a threat to livelihoods and poverty reduction. The abounding evidence of global climate change can no longer be ignored. There is therefore the need to reinforce the management of risk as well as proactive actions in addressing climate change issues. Considering the negative impact of the menace of climate change on development, the ecosystem and mankind, this work appraises those measures put in place to checkmate the rising tide of greenhouse gas emission. To this end, this paper will study Nigeria’s environmental legal framework which will enable Nigeria’s ecosystem to naturally adapt to climate change that will lead to sustainable economic development. This paper found that Nigeria is ill-prepared to combat the challenges of climate change. Existing legal and institutional frameworks for the regulation of climate change in Nigeria are in fragmented forms while laws and implementation strategies for environmental protection concerning climate change in Nigeria are incoherent. This paper also found that there are no effective infrastructures to monitor and enforce climate change issues and that indigenous people are not well acquainted with the threats posed by climate change as a result of lack of effective communication posed by language barrier. This poses a challenge to the slogan of “acting for the long-term in a short-term world.” This paper concludes that there is an urgent need for a comprehensive framework that will create adequate awareness of the challenges of climate change, inclusively, to ensure proper understanding of citizens, so as to effectively regulate climate change in Nigeria. Hence, the indigenous language approach of this paper.

The study investigates the impact of urbanization on climate change in Nigeria in the period 1981 to 2023, utilising the Cobb-Douglas production function as a framework for analysis. The equations were estimated with the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimator. The urban population growth rate was used as a proxy for urbanization (UBAN), whereas carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were used to represent climatic change. Empirical results showed a direct and significant impact of urbanization on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The nonrenewable energy consumption (NREC) variable also had a direct and significant impact on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. While renewable energy consumption (REC) had an indirect and insignificant impact on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, Domestic investment (GFCF) had an indirect and significant impact on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Also, population growth (LAB) rate had a direct and insignificant effect on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Based on the aforementioned results, the government should prioritise urban planning, this can balance the demand for urban growth with the need to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, thereby addressing climate change in Nigeria. Also, there should be strategic investments in green technologies, sustainable infrastructure, and energy-efficient systems in Nigeria. Despite its high cost, it has the potential to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and prevent climate change.

This paper examines the role of public expenditure in enhancing climate change adaptation and mitigation in Nigeria. It examines the trend of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Nigeria alongside those of South Africa and Sub Saharan Africa and investigates the statistical relationship between public expenditure and climate change in Nigeria. The paper hinges on the Climate Public Expenditure and Institutional framework of the Oversee Development Institute (ODI), which argues that climate change, has fiscal implications and can be addressed using national plans and annual budgets. Time series data were then collected for emission, public expenditure, human development index and economic growth from the World Bank and the Central Bank of Nigeria for 1970-2008, while trend analysis and lag regression model were used for data analysis. It was found that public expenditure towards economic services could be used to enhance Nigeria’s climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Though economic growth and human development index were found to be positively related to emission, results imply that economic growth in Nigeria is not pursued in a sustainable manner that accounts for the future generation. The paper recommends that economic growth that is driven by investment in renewable energy, developing human capacity to adapt to climate change and coordinating public expenditure to economic and community services to develop rural communities and vulnerable sectors like agriculture, would be useful for addressing climate change in Nigeria and ensuring sustainable development. A lesson Nigeria can learn from climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in South Africa is to identify and prioritize short term and medium term adaptation interventions to be addressed in sector plans such as water, agriculture and forestry, health, biodiversity and human settlements.

A very important issue that needs to be addressed urgently across the globe is the issue of climate change. Nigeria as a country is not left out in the battle against climate change. One of the major things that results in the change in climate is the low level or inadequate laws governing activities which lead to climate change. The laws available are ineffective as the level of compliance with the existing laws is extremely low; ignorance on the part of Nigerians is another major issue as an average Nigerian is not aware that his/her day-to-day activities might result in a change in climatic condition. The concept of climate change is a concept in Nigeria that has received a bit of recognition but has not been addressed as it ought to be. This paper examines the effects of climate change on Nigerians and the Nigeria environment in its totality; it further makes an overview of the international conventions on climate change while evaluating the adoption of the international conventions by Nigeria. It examines the laws put in place by the Nigeria government in relation to environmental protection generally and further considers their effectiveness. It concludes that there is no solid legal framework to combat climate change in Nigeria and that the laws put in place to govern environmental protection in Nigeria are grossly inadequate. It protection in Nigeria are grossly inadequate. It recommends that new laws should as a matter of urgency be promulgated to tackle the menace of climate change in Nigeria.

This study highlights the various effects climate change has on the availability of food for the teeming populace of Nigeria to ensure food security. Developing countries are plagued by inadequate access to good quality and quantity of food to ensure growth and development, thereby resulting into a lot of challenges like malnutrition, health issues, infant mortality, and migration to other areas. The current practice of Agriculture in Nigeria was taken into consideration, the impact it has on the entire population and the effects climate change has on it. Nigeria, like most other developing countries, is affected in a very important and critical manner by the adverse effects of environmental crises, most of which are direct influences of climate change and this change in the long run has effect on food security. The study recommended that infrastructural facilities, social interventions in the form of food aid, and policies which encourage agricultural production should be put in place in rural areas to help reduce the incidence of rural-urban migration and to encourage agricultural production so as to ensure that all the citizens of the country are food secured.