Nigeria can build a climate resilient economy by adopting climate-smart agricultural practices; low-cost but effective technologies such as water harvesting and small-scale irrigation techniques, land and water conservation and management strategies, and minimum or zero tillage agriculture with high net returns to farmers, the African Development Bank has said.
In its 2022 country focused report Nigeria titled: Supporting Climate Resilience And A Just Energy Transition”, obtained by our correspondent Thursday in Abuja, revealed that Nigeria was moderately resilient as compared to other African countries, with CRI score of 26.8.
According to the development finance institute, although Nigeria suffers from multiple climate change effects, manifested through rising temperatures and periodic droughts and flooding, with implications for agricultural productivity, food security and electricity generation, the country has made some progress in reducing its vulnerability.
“From 2010–2019 Nigeria performed relatively better than other African countries, falling into the category of low vulnerability to climate change and high readiness to respond to climate shocks. Nigeria’s climate vulnerability and readiness indices were estimated at 50.3 and 30.6, respectively, among countries ranked as ‘Low Vulnerability High Readiness’. However, at the country level, climate change effects remain a major source of policy concern, given Nigeria’s dependence on traditional agriculture and fossil fuel energy sources. For instance, the country’s high poverty and dependence on rainfed agriculture makes adaptation efforts to climate change effects more pressing as the country strives to achieve sustainable development goals for the benefit of poor households.”
The report noted that unless the federal government judiciously implements strong adaptation measures, the economic cost of climate change could be much higher in the coming decades.
This, it said, might threaten Nigeria’s achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the country’s efforts towards poverty reduction.
“Therefore, given the above factors, Nigeria needs to build climate resilience. Building climate resilience involves synergies with considerable mitigation co-benefits. As discussed in the African Economic Outlook 2022 main report, examples of building climate resilience include climate-smart agricultural practices and low-cost but effective technologies such as water harvesting and small-scale irrigation techniques, land and water conservation and management strategies, and minimum or zero tillage agriculture with high net returns to farmers — and even higher when farmers adopt complementary technologies. Building resilience also requires transformative changes, with support from the public sector,” it said.
