Climate Change and Agricultural Productivity in Nigeria: An Econometric Analysis

Abstract

The growing concern over the threat to world food security calls for a re-examination of the factors that affect agricultural productivity. This threat becomes more worrisome because of the high prevalence of diseases associated with hunger and poor nutrition intake. This paper examines the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity in Nigeria. Carbon emission was used to capture the effect of climate change. We examine the effect of climate change on the short-run and long-run productivity using the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL). Our regression result reveals that climate change has a long run impact on agricultural productivity. Other variables that significantly affect agricultural productivity are oil export, subsidy and consumer price index. To ensure food security and sustainable agricultural production in the future, the authors recommend that efforts should be geared towards reducing carbon emission. According to them, this can be achieved by placing disincentives like carbon tax on emission beyond the limits agreed at the Lima 2014 climate summit. Other methods proposed by the authors include: deemphasizing the importance of crude oil in the Nigerian economy, a reduction or an outright removal of agricultural subsidies and shielding farmers from adverse market conditions.