Toward Climate-Resilient Development in Nigeria


Book Description

If not addressed in time, climate change is expected to exacerbate Nigeria’s current vulnerability to weather swings and limit its ability to achieve and sustain the objectives of Vision 20:2020 [as defined in http://www.npc.gov.ng /home/doc.aspx?mCatID=68253]. The likely impacts include: • A long-term reduction in crop yields of 20–30 percent • Declining productivity of livestock, with adverse consequences on livelihoods • Increase in food imports (up to 40 percent for rice long term) • Worsening prospects for food security, particularly in the north and the southwest • A long-term decline in GDP of up to 4.5 percent The impacts may be worse if the economy diversifies away from agriculture more slowly than Vision 20:2020 anticipates, or if there is too little irrigation to counter the effects of rising temperatures on rain-fed yields. Equally important, investment decisions made on the basis of historical climate may be wrong: projects ignoring climate change might be either under- or over-designed, with losses (in terms of excess capital costs or foregone revenues) of 20–40 percent of initial capital in the case of irrigation or hydropower. Fortunately, there is a range of technological and management options that make sense, both to better handle current climate variability and to build resilience against a harsher climate: • By 2020 sustainable land management practices applied to 1 million hectares can offset most of the expected shorter-term yield decline; gradual extension of these practices to 50 percent of cropland, possibly combined with extra irrigation, can also counter-balance longer-term climate change impacts. • Climate-smart planning and design of irrigation and hydropower can more than halve the risks and related costs of making the wrong investment decision. The Federal Government could consider 10 short-term priority responses to build resilience to both current climate variability and future change through actions to improve climate governance across sectors, research and extension in agriculture, hydro-meteorological systems; integration of climate factors into the design of irrigation and hydropower projects, and mainstreaming climate concerns into priority programs, such as the Agriculture Transformation Agenda.




Enhancing climate resilience in Nigerian agriculture: Implications for sustainable adaptation and livelihood diversification


Book Description

Key Highlights: Changes in temperature, measured in harmful degree days (HDDs), and precipitation have a significant negative impact on agricultural productivity in Nigeria, which highlights the adverse effects of extreme weather on crop yields. Climate changes affect income sources for farming households. We found that an increase in HDDs reduces households’ income share from crops and nonfarm self-employment, implying threats to household food security for smallholders whose livelihoods depend on subsistence farming and food consumption from own sources. In response to the risks posed by climate change, farmers adopt changes in crop mixes (for example, reducing the share of land allocated to cereals) and input use decisions (for example, reducing fertilizer use and purchased seeds) as an adaptation strategy. Adaption strategies that lead to low use of yield-enhancing modern inputs could worsen agricultural productivity and household food insecurity. However, we found that farmers in Nigeria respond to extreme climate by switching to drought tolerant root or tuber crops. Such strategies could partially offset the adverse effects of climatic shocks on households’ welfare. Climate changes negatively impact agricultural productivity for both poor and non-poor households, but the effects are more pronounced among poorer households, according to our heterogenous effects analysis on household’s initial endowments (based on wealth indicators measured in asset and livestock holdings). This implies low adaptive capacity on the part of poor households and thus their high vulnerability to climate-related shocks. Suggested policy recommendations include interventions to incentivize adoption of climate-resilient agriculture, targeted pro-poor interventions such as low-cost financing options for improving smallholders’ access to climate-proof agricultural inputs and technologies, and policy measures to reduce the inequality of access to livelihood capital, such as land and other productive assets.




Low-Carbon Development


Book Description

The Federal Government of Nigeria has adopted an ambitious strategy to make Nigeria the world’s 20th largest economy by 2020. Sustaining such a pace of growth will entail rapid expansion of the level of activity in key carbon-emitting sectors, such as power, oil and gas, agriculture and transport. In the absence of policies to accompany economic growth with a reduced carbon foot-print, emissions of greenhouse gases could more than double in the next two decades. This study finds that there are several options for Nigeria to achieve the development objectives of vision 20:2020 and beyond, but stabilizing emissions at 2010 levels, and with domestic benefits in the order of 2 percent of GDP. These benefits include cheaper and more diversified electricity sources; more efficient operation of the oil and gas industry; more productive and climate –resilient agriculture; and better transport services, resulting in fuel economies, better air quality, and reduced congestion. The study outlines several actions that the Federal Government could undertake to facilitate the transition towards a low carbon economy, including enhanced governance for climate action, integration of climate consideration in the Agriculture Transformation Agenda, promotion of energy efficiency programs, scale-up of low carbon technologies in power generation (such as renewables an combined cycle gas turbines), and enhance vehicle fuel efficiency.




Enhancing the Climate Resilience of Africa's Infrastructure


Book Description

To sustain Africa’s growth, and accelerate the eradication of extreme poverty, investment in infrastructure is fundamental. In 2010, the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic found that to enable Africa to fill its infrastructure gap, some US$ 93 billion per year for the next decade will need to be invested. The Program for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), endorsed in 2012 by the continent’s Heads of State and Government, lays out an ambitious long-term plan for closing Africa’s infrastructure including trough step increases in hydroelectric power generation and water storage capacity. Much of this investment will support the construction of long-lived infrastructure (e.g. dams, power stations, irrigation canals), which may be vulnerable to changes in climatic patterns, the direction and magnitude of which remain significantly uncertain. Enhancing the Climate Resilience of Africa 's Infrastructure evaluates -using for the first time a single consistent methodology and the state-of-the-arte climate scenarios-, the impacts of climate change on hydro-power and irrigation expansion plans in Africa’s main rivers basins (Niger, Senegal, Volta, Congo, Nile, Zambezi, Orange); and outlines an approach to reduce climate risks through suitable adjustments to the planning and design process. The book finds that failure to integrate climate change in the planning and design of power and water infrastructure could entail, in scenarios of drying climate conditions, losses of hydropower revenues between 5% and 60% (depending on the basin); and increases in consumer expenditure for energy up to 3 times the corresponding baseline values. In in wet climate scenarios, business-as-usual infrastructure development could lead to foregone revenues in the range of 15% to 130% of the baseline, to the extent that the larger volume of precipitation is not used to expand the production of hydropower. Despite the large uncertainty on whether drier or wetter conditions will prevail in the future in Africa, the book finds that by modifying existing investment plans to explicitly handle the risk of large climate swings, can cut in half or more the cost that would accrue by building infrastructure on the basis of the climate of the past.




Africa’s Right to Development in a Climate-Constrained World


Book Description

This book examines how Africa can secure a ‘just transition’ to low-carbon, climate-resilient economies.




Low-Carbon Development


Book Description

The Federal Government of Nigeria has adopted an ambitious strategy to make Nigeria the world’s 20th largest economy by 2020. Sustaining such a pace of growth will entail rapid expansion of the level of activity in key carbon-emitting sectors, such as power, oil and gas, agriculture and transport. In the absence of policies to accompany economic growth with a reduced carbon foot-print, emissions of greenhouse gases could more than double in the next two decades. This study finds that there are several options for Nigeria to achieve the development objectives of vision 20:2020 and beyond, but stabilizing emissions at 2010 levels, and with domestic benefits in the order of 2 percent of GDP. These benefits include cheaper and more diversified electricity sources; more efficient operation of the oil and gas industry; more productive and climate –resilient agriculture; and better transport services, resulting in fuel economies, better air quality, and reduced congestion. The study outlines several actions that the Federal Government could undertake to facilitate the transition towards a low carbon economy, including enhanced governance for climate action, integration of climate consideration in the Agriculture Transformation Agenda, promotion of energy efficiency programs, scale-up of low carbon technologies in power generation (such as renewables an combined cycle gas turbines), and enhance vehicle fuel efficiency.




Lifelines


Book Description

Infrastructure—electricity, telecommunications, roads, water, and sanitation—are central to people’s lives. Without it, they cannot make a living, stay healthy, and maintain a good quality of life. Access to basic infrastructure is also a key driver of economic development. This report lays out a framework for understanding infrastructure resilience - the ability of infrastructure systems to function and meet users’ needs during and after a natural hazard. It focuses on four infrastructure systems that are essential to economic activity and people’s well-being: power systems, including the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity; water and sanitation—especially water utilities; transport systems—multiple modes such as road, rail, waterway, and airports, and multiple scales, including urban transit and rural access; and telecommunications, including telephone and Internet connections.




Innovation in Climate Change Adaptation


Book Description

This book introduces innovative approaches to pursue climate change adaptation and to support the long-term implementation of climate change policies. Offering new case studies and data, as well as projects and initiatives implemented across the globe, the contributors present new tools, approaches and methods to pursue and facilitate innovation in climate change adaptation.




Assessing Low-Carbon Development in Nigeria


Book Description

The Federal Government of Nigeria has adopted Vision 20: 2020--an ambitious strategy to make Nigeria the world's 20th largest economy by 2020. In the absence of policies to accompany economic growth in key carbon-emitting sectors with a reduced carbon footprint, emission of greenhouse gases could more than double in the next two decades. To evaluate how to achieve the objectives of Vision 20: 2020 with reduced carbon emissions, the Federal Government of Nigeria and the World Bank undertook a multiyear program of analytical work. The summary results of this program are contained in a separate book (published in the World Bank's "Directions in Development" series) entitled Low-Carbon Development: Opportunities for Nigeria, which concludes that Nigeria can achieve its development objectives, while stabilizing emissions at 2010 levels and providing domestic benefi ts on the order of 2 percent of GDP. This volume is a collection of the background technical reports on the four sectors of inquiry: agriculture and land use, oil and gas, power, and transport. It contains details on the data, methodology, and assumptions used throughout the analysis. For agriculture and land use, the study team developed an agriculture production growth model, which permits the evaluation of sector emissions in both a reference and a low-carbon scenario. The study fi nds that low-carbon practices have signifi cant potential to make the sector more productive and more climate-resilient. For the oil and gas sector, the analysis assesses the potential of accelerated phase-put of gas fl aring, reduction of leakages, and increased energy effi ciency in the operation of facilities, to both reduce the sector's emission and contribute to the industry's net revenues and growth. The analysis of the power sector shows how the country can expand power generation and broaden access to electricity while reducing associated emissions, through renewable energy, energy effi ciency, and lower-carbon technologies in thermal power generation. Finally, this analysis assesses the expected growth in CO2 emissions from on-road transport under a normal business development scenario up to the year 2035, and it identifi es actions at national and local levels that would reduce this growth, resulting in fuel economies, better air quality, and reduced congestion. Assessing Low-Carbon Development in Nigeria: An Analysis of Four Sectors outlines several actions that the Nigerian government could undertake to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.




Climate Smart Agriculture


Book Description

This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO license. The book uses an economic lens to identify the main features of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), its likely impact, and the challenges associated with its implementation. Drawing upon theory and concepts from agricultural development, institutional, and resource economics, this book expands and formalizes the conceptual foundations of CSA. Focusing on the adaptation/resilience dimension of CSA, the text embraces a mixture of conceptual analyses, including theory, empirical and policy analysis, and case studies, to look at adaptation and resilience through three possible avenues: ex-ante reduction of vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity, and ex-post risk coping. The book is divided into three sections. The first section provides conceptual framing, giving an overview of the CSA concept and grounding it in core economic principles. The second section is devoted to a set of case studies illustrating the economic basis of CSA in terms of reducing vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity and ex-post risk coping. The final section addresses policy issues related to climate change. Providing information on this new and important field in an approachable way, this book helps make sense of CSA and fills intellectual and policy gaps by defining the concept and placing it within an economic decision-making framework. This book will be of interest to agricultural, environmental, and natural resource economists, development economists, and scholars of development studies, climate change, and agriculture. It will also appeal to policy-makers, development practitioners, and members of governmental and non-governmental organizations interested in agriculture, food security and climate change.