Building Nigeria’s Response to Climate Change: Pilot Projects for Community-Based Adaptation in Nigeria

Abstract

Throughout history, human societies have had to effectively devise ways and means to adapt to climate variability by altering their lifestyles, agriculture, settlements and other critical aspects of their economies and livelihoods. The capacity to adapt enables societies to deal with a range of uncertainties. Coping and adaptation is a way of life in Nigeria, where climate variability is the norm and where planting cycles in a largely rain-fed agricultural system are affected by reoccurring droughts, floods and other extreme weather events. Climate change scenarios for Nigeria suggest a warmer climate and projected changes in precipitation suggest it will be wetter in the south along the coast and drier in the northeast. The climate models also suggest more extreme heat events will occur. Resource dependent people, such as farmers, hunters and fishers, who depend directly on the productivity of natural resources around them for their livelihoods, are the first to be impacted by these changes in local environmental conditions. The Government of Nigeria is a signatory to the UNFCCC and there is an initiative underway to develop a national strategy for community-based climate change adaptation. Since 2007, the Nigerian Environmental Study/Action Team (NEST) is an NGO has been implementing the project Building Nigeria’s Response to Climate Change (BNRCC). Pilot Projects are one component of BNRCC, and are designed to test adaptation options on a small scale in order to strengthen the resilience of communities to climate change, increase their adaptive capacity and provide recommendations based on lessons learned from community-based adaptation projects to the national strategy. The projects involve seven partner organizations who are working directly with 15 vulnerable communities spanning Nigeria from the Sahel in the north east to the Coastal/Rainforest in the south east. The projects include but are not restricted to: increasing food security by introducing improved crop varieties; testing alternative livelihood options such as aquaculture in order to provide a means of income and decrease reliance on dwindling forest resources; providing fuel efficient wood stoves; improving access to water sources to deal with water scarcity; and tree planting for ecosystem rehabilitation.

Appendices

Appendix 1

Adaptation needs and options in the pilot project communities and the pilot project partners involved in implementation

Adaptation needs	Options	Local implementing partners
Water availability and use	Rainwater harvesting	Catholic Rural/Irban Development Programme (CARUDEP) in Jos, Plateau State
	Tapping of shallow aquifers (wash wells) for small scale irrigation	Greenwatch Initiative, Makurdi, Benue State
	Rehabilitation of boreholes	University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID), Borno State
	Building of dykes to retain and store water
Food security	Drought resistant and/or early maturing crops	CARUDEP
	Adoption of conservation farming methods, e.g. use of organic manure, mulching and cover crops	UNIMAID
	Natural pest control methods	Greenwatch Initiative
	Food preservation and drying to provide increased security and varieties of food	Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi, Bauchi State
	Poultry production	Coastal live in Nigeria (COLIN), Calabar, Cross River State
	Snail production	Development in Nigeria (DIN) Obudu, Cross River State
	Fish production
Ecosystem rehabilitation	Tree planting (using local varieties of fruit and forest trees)	CARUDEP
	Sand dune rehabilitation	UNIMAID
	Domestication of non-timber forest products to reduce over exploitation of forest	Greenwatch Initiative
	Switching from hunting to animal husbandry	ATBU
		COLIN
		DIN
Health	Simple sand filtration system to improve the quality of drinking water and reduce incidences of water borne diseases	CARUDEP
	Cloth filters on well water to reduce water borne disease	UNIMAID
Energy	Use of alternative types of energy such as livestock dung (biogas) and crop residue	UNIMAID, Greenwatch Initiative
	Increasing energy efficiency by using fuel efficient wood stoves and reducing negative health impacts	ATBU, COLIN, DIN
Income	Bee keeping	Greenwatch Initiative
	Snail farming	DIN
	Poultry production	CERCOPAN
	Aquaculture	COLIN
	Gari processing	DIN
	Spaghetti production	Greenwatch Initiative
	Millet grinding	UNIMAID
	Dry season farming	UNIMAID
Early warning systems	Drought decision support tool	ATBU
	Simple weather forecasting tools	ATBU
	Formation of disaster risk management committees	DIN
Institutional development/strengthening	Formation of project implementation committees in all project sites	All partners
	Inclusion of women in decision making at management levels of committees
	Establishment of linkages between committees and local councils, relevant ministries and parastatals
	Employing the peer learning tools to share information and build capacities of local population

Conclusions, Lessons Learned and Recommendations

In all 15 pilot project communities, there is reported variability in rainfall, decline in crop yields and loss of biodiversity in local ecosystems. Livelihoods are impacted in all communities and in some, more than others, basic needs such as ample clean drinking water are simply not being met. Some projects aim to increase adaptive capacity by establishing alternative livelihood options, while some projects tackle the climate change impacts directly, by introducing drought resistant crop varieties and setting up water supply options.

There are lessons learned from the pilot projects after 18 months of implementation. One of the overarching lessons learned is the importance of time—essential in any community-based project. While pilot projects are, by their nature, small in scale, they ultimately require time in order to measure impacts. Only the most immediate outcomes can be assessed after a year and a half.

It is fair to say that, at this juncture, the projects were largely successful: the severe hunger that occurs in the months of August and September for the central and northern communities was averted for beneficiaries this year by the early maturing varieties of millet, bean and maize; there were higher yields of improved crops varieties this year in all communities; access to water was greatly improved for 3 of the 4 communities where water supply projects were undertaken; fuel efficient stoves, introduced in all but two communities, were well received, but results are mixed. Also, dry season farming was established in two communities and beneficiaries sold excess produce; efforts to stabilize dunes, restore vegetation along watercourses and conserve valuable trees on farms are well underway. Even ideology is changing: many women, who were initially reluctant to participate, have become more involved in some projects; the youth in one community and farmers in general are more committed to protecting trees, and there is less indiscriminate burning in the two rainforest communities because of increased awareness. Institutions are on the rise: it is anticipated that the newly formed CBOs will oversee the sustainability of the projects, that peer education programs will expand the knowledge of CBA and the workshops will sow the seeds for knowledge transfer between communities and policy makers. It is also at this juncture that communities must sustain the project themselves without the continued support of the BNRCC partners and it is only after some time that the project impacts and sustainability will be measured. At this point in the project cycle some of the key lessons learned are:

• 1. Factors that contribute to vulnerability of communities are complex. The projects illustrate that multiple interacting stressors underpin vulnerability to climate change, but there is a tendency among communities to attribute all negative impacts to climate change. It is essential to understand the range of factors that underlie vulnerability in order to identify solutions and it is important to understand the range of human impact on the environment and biodiversity that sustain us. For example, declining fishing stocks in coastal communities are due, in part, to overharvesting and unsustainable fishing methods; poor crop yields are due in part to declining soil fertility from overuse, and increasing deforestation and overhunting forest species all point to the need to break the “poverty cycle”.

Recommendation:

Efforts to increase adaptive capacity must include complimentary efforts to increase awareness within communities of the importance of local ecological functions for sustaining human life and livelihoods. In order to break the poverty cycle, increased awareness of human impacts together with community ingenuity can work in tandem with projects that build adaptive capacity.

• 2. Communities in the Sahel and Savanna ecozones are more vulnerable with regard to natural capital than communities in the south due to greater water scarcity, high aridity and fewer natural resources, such as forests, which act as a buffer to crop failure.

Recommendation:

Due to the direct impacts of climate change on more vulnerable ecosystems in the north, there should be immediate efforts to increase adaptive capacity of these communities where basic needs are not being met.

• 3. The use of improved crop varieties to avert hunger and improve yields is not without a price. The emphasis on the use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides may not be sustainable, as these inputs need to be purchased year after year to ensure optimal performance of the improved crop varieties and their continued use compromises soil structure and fertility.

Recommendation:

More extension activities are needed to build capacity so that: (1) farmers are encouraged to use organic fertilizers to reduce the dependency on purchased ones, and to ensure good soil structure and fertility in the long term, and (2) farmers develop a savings system so that they can afford to purchase inputs for as long as they are needed.

• 4. The adoption of fuel efficient wood stoves in the communities has met with challenges, pointing to the importance of careful monitoring so the project can quickly respond to results from initial trials. The stoves have been shown to reduce the amount of fuel wood used in all cases and, as a result, women spend less time and money procuring wood, and there is less pressure on local forests. Women beneficiaries also report that food cooks faster and there is less smoke produced, causing fewer respiratory problems. Despite the advantages, the adoption of the stoves is not immediate and widespread. The reasons are that the stoves are too costly and difficult to fabricate, in some cases they were given to men, and that they do not meet the specific cooking needs of the women who use them.

Recommendation:

Women in rural communities, in their multiple roles as caregivers, educators and often farmers need to be included on all technical aspects of project interventions and provisions made so that they can give feedback on the products that they are the beneficiaries of.

• 5. The weather forecasting tools tested in the three communities in the arid central and northern regions were successful, in that the farmers who used them planted only once. Other farmers who did not use them had to plant twice, the first time being unsuccessful to due to lack of rain and germination failure. In this first season of testing, the handheld forecasters used in the field by the farmers supported by the drought decision support software used by the partner organization, helped farmers to have successful yields this year, while minimizing wasted seed and lost labour.

Recommendation:

Based on the early success of the hand held weather forecasters and drought decision support software, there should be greater efforts to forecast weather for and by farmers by any and all means possible, including extension activities, radio programs and awareness, especially for those in the Sudan savanna and the Sahel, where planting times are most critical in a short and increasingly erratic rainy season.

• 6. Livelihood activities that are the emphasis in most of the pilot projects need to have an assured market for products: an increased supply of fish from aquaculture projects, gari from the processing of cassava, snail meat from household snail farms, for example, needs to have market outlets in order for the livelihoods to be successful.

Recommendation:

Training and research in market chain analysis should be provided to back up the introduction of new and alternative livelihood projects to ensure that there is enough demand for the increased supply of these products on the market.

• 7. The development of community institutions and peer to peer education have so far shown to be empowering for community members and effective for increasing awareness within and between communities and to policy makers at local and state governments.

Recommendation:

Community institutions should be encouraged and strengthened in order to ensure project sustainability, to liaise with policy makers to bring in new project support and to build community awareness of climate change impacts and adaptation options.