Improving public compliance with modern environmental laws in Nigeria: looking to traditional African norms and practices

Abstract

Over the years, the Nigerian environment, once rich in biodiversity with a healthy conservation status, has been witnessing increasing degradation. This situation broadly suggests that, among other factors, there is low public compliance with the existing state-based environmental regulatory instruments which presently dominate the environmental governance landscape in the country. However, there was, and still is, better public compliance with traditional African norms and practices on environmental governance which – especially when these norms held sway in the pre-colonial era – provided better protection for the environment. This paper provides evidence to support this assertion and ultimately seeks to unravel the qualities of traditional environmental governance – including effective public access to information, decision-making processes and justice in environmental matters – that ensured meaningful public compliance with environmental standards. It further seeks to demonstrate how those qualities of traditional environmental governance systems might be adapted and applied to improve compliance with the contemporary environmental regulatory regime in Nigeria.