Nigerian Land Resources and Conservation Strategies: A Critical Analysis of Economic and Non-Economic Issues

Abstract

Land is an indispensable resource for all of man’s activities, and being an asset with zero elasticity in its physical supply requires adequate sustainability and conservation. Over the years, various strategies have been generated and adopted to ensure conservative management of land resources. This paper examines Nigerian land resources and conservation strategies, critically analyzing the economic and non-economic issues. Land resources conservation in Nigeria indulges economic issues from agriculture, urbanization and industrialization which affect the availability and accessibility of land for various uses, while the non-economic issues from cultural, social and environmental factors and policies are basically concerned with the determination and control of the use of land resources. These have to be considered with emanating challenges and surmounted to ensure land resources conservation for sustainability considering future generations. Policymakers, researchers and stakeholders in the environmental field have to work and operate in synergy, evaluating workable and favourable conservation strategies: balancing economic and non-economic land related issues to achieve overcoming emanating issues, thereby sustaining the goal of Land resources conservation in Nigeria.