Achieving food security and climate change mitigation through entrepreneurship development in rural Nigeria: Gender perspective

Globally, problem of food security and climate change demands innovative strategies that seek to promote an integrated approach of supporting the full continuum of production, processing and marketing of food to be done. For this reason this paper contends that rural entrepreneurial development could serve as panacea to achieving food security and climate change mitigation. Gender perspective is viewed as significant to achieving this goal since there are more females engaged in rural entrepreneurial practices than male. In 2008, agriculture contributed about 42% to the GDP with a growth rate of 6.54%. Of the 66% of the populace engaged in agriculture, 92% is male and 8% is female. Further, data shows that there are over 75 million females, both adults and children, amongst the about 150 million Nigerians. The population of people living in rural Nigeria is estimated at about 48% as at 2007, meaning that over 72 million persons live there, made up of approximately 35 million females and 37 million males. Agricultural practices through food and livestock production contribute to climate change. As at 2002, arable land in the country was about 34% of the total land mass of about 910,768 km2. As 2003 livestock and poultry inventory was estimated at about 290 million. In addition, the competing uses of the various food and cash crops, as well as grain from Nigeria’s agricultural farmland have added pressure to the need for more land for food and cash crop as well as grain production. Desert encroachment and reduced rainfall have also affected livestock production. These factors have created food security challenges, with threats of hunger and poverty: 70% of the population lives on less than N100 (US $ 0.7) per day, about 60.8% of the population is malnourished; even though smallholder farmers constitute 80% of all farm holdings their production system is inefficient and it always results in regular shortfall in national domestic production; this makes food importation a common feature in the country. Secondary data were sourced to analyze the current situation and to proffer recommendations for achieving food security and climate change mitigation. Inventory of greenhouse gases emission from agricultural practices and livestock production in the country was assessed using Inter-governmental panel of climate change (IPCC) methodology. Cost-benefit analysis was then conducted for identified options that enabled informed suggested recommendations for entrepreneurship development in rural Nigeria viewed with gender perspective.Key words: Food security, climate change mitigation, rural entrepreneurship development, gender perspective

Carbon flow pattern in the forest zones of Nigeria as influenced by land use change

Forest in Nigeria plays a much wider role in the overall balance of issues affecting the country than those of climate change alone. Nigeria’s tropical forest is depleting fast, due largely to uncontrolled human activities. Poverty, urbanization, population growth and insecurity are the major causes of this trend. Tracking carbon flow in these forest life zones will help account for the effect of these activities on the environment. COPATH, an acronym for Total Carbon Flow from Conversion to Agriculture, Pasture, Harvest and OTHER land-uses including construction of dams, roads, forest fires and human settlement, etc., was used for tracking carbon flow in the forest zones. From the five forest life zones, total carbon stored was estimated to be 2.55 TgC. The four activities of agriculture, harvest, pasture and bush burning were pronounced in contributions to land use changes, particularly to forest depletion. In this paper it is shown that carbon emission was highest from harvesting activity in year 2000, principally from clear-cutting activity in the lowland rainforest as against that of 1990 study, which showed agricultural activity as the major anthropogenic activity leading to carbon release into the atmosphere. Further, it is shown that the value of carbon emission is on the increase as compared to the earlier study with 1990 as the base year. During the two periods of study, it was however, observed that the relative contribution of each of the activities that are responsible for deforestation and affects carbon flow pattern in the forest zones and invariably causes carbon emission had not changed. Though a look at the fractional contribution of each of these activities in 2000 as against that of 1990 estimates shows a marked change. The study also concludes that if there is no change in the estimated deforestation rate of 2.23% per annum of the forest formations, lowland rainforest and riparian forests are likely to disappear by 2040.Key words: Carbon flow pattern, forest life zone, land use, human activities, deforestation

Adapting gender budgeting support framework in Nigeria: Policy issues and options

Gender relevance in national planning and development cannot be overemphasized. In Nigeria, women are responsible for about 50% of the labour force in Agriculture and over 70% of the nation.s food supply, yet their contributions to the economy are rarely acknowledged. Studies indicate that there is need for governments at national level tomake efforts to systematically review how women benefit from public sector expenditure and adjust budgets to ensure equality of access especially inrural areas. This paper therefore attempts to examine policy issues and options needed to adapt a comprehensive easy accounting system forgender budgeting framework to measure implementation of national budgets for national development agenda. Being a perspective paper,various approaches of mainstreaming gender issues, where they exist; into national development programmes were reviewed. In order to properlydirect national resources to the achievement of equity and gender specific programme in the country, the process of .engendering budget. orgender mainstreaming was employed. Preliminary findings indicate that despite the involvement of Nigeria in four international conventions, Nigeria is yet to adequately mainstream issues of gender into her national budgeting framework. It was also observed that challenges of adapting an easy accounting framework is more of a political will of those in government and the implementing agencies involved. The paper concludes that further studies need to be initiated and advocacy groups have to enlighten policy makers of the relevance of allowing easy to measure accounting framework to track implementation and/or lapsesof yearly budgetary provisions viewed with gender perspective

Low-carbon development strategy for the West African electricity system: preliminary assessment using System dynamics approach

BACKGROUND: Policy makers seek to understand the trade-offs needed between economic growth and climate change. This provides the context to explore low-carbon development (LCD) pathways for the West African electricity system. METHODS: The study relied on both primary and secondary sources to elicit required information. These data were elicited from relevant authorities in the West African electricity system, namely, West African Power Pool and ECOWAS Regional Electricity Regulatory Authority. The objectives were to evaluate the planning processes in the West African Power Pool electricity system vis-a-vis low-carbon development strategy (LCDS), develop a System dynamics (SD) model, and assess the relevance of the developed model to examine the nonlinear relationship between generation adequacy and greenhouse gas emission (GHG) reduction. The SD model examined the tension between providing adequate supply capacity against reducing emission from the generation technologies in the West Africa electricity system. This model arranged the complexities in the system and established the basic interconnecting structure to conduct the analysis. High leverage points were identified. RESULTS: Four high leverage points were identified: capacity factor (CF), emission factor (EF), time to adjust capacity, and expectation formation. CF and EF improvement increased efficiency in the system. The expectation formation periods were determined at 7.5 years for the base case scenario and 7 years for the low-carbon development option scenario. Time to adjust capacity was located at 21 and 20 years respectively; deduced from the average time, it will take to construct a combined cycle gas power plant (3 years) and an allowance of 2 years for delays and its decommissioning time. Between 2011 and 2012, in LCD option scenario, emission of GHG to the atmosphere dropped as generation did but began a steady rise for the simulation period to a value of 6.154 billion tCO2 in 2060. CONCLUSIONS: Electricity Planning-Low-Carbon Development (EP-LCD) model—with three modules, was developed for assessing WAPP in low carbon economy. High leverage points identified in the model simulation situate three policy options for overcoming poverty and mitigation targets as regards resource mix, investment cost recovery, and technical factors to reduce system’s environmental footprint