Abstract
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.
Highlights
Nigeria’s current development plan is embedded in the Nation’s Vision 20:2020 programme (NPC, 2009)
In the words of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987), this is an indication that growth in Nigeria is not pursued in a sustainable manner that would meet the present needs of the people without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs
This paper examined the role of public expenditure in enhancing climate change adaptation and mitigation in Nigeria
Summary
Nigeria’s current development plan is embedded in the Nation’s Vision 20:2020 programme (NPC, 2009). The MDGs one, three, five and seven are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; promote gender equality and empower women; improve maternal health; and ensure environmental sustainability by 2015 respectively, while the key macroeconomic policy choices of Nigeria’s transformation agenda includes reviewing the budget process to among other things, concentrate on setting allocation priorities; and institutionalizing the culture of development planning at all levels of government and to ensure that annual capital budget allocations take a cue from the medium and long term development plans. As contained in the Nigerian transformation agenda programme reviewing the budget process towards setting allocation priorities and ensuring that annual capital budget allocation are consistent with medium and long-term development plans in Nigeria would help in improving the ability of vulnerable groups and communities to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The paper raises the following research questions: (1) Can public expenditure be used to enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation in Nigeria? In addition (2) what are the experiences from countries that are affected by climate change in Africa? The objectives of the paper are to examine the role of public expenditure on climate change mitigation and adaptation in Nigeria; and to draw experience from South Africa on climate change mitigation and adaptation
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