Nigeria is predisposed to severe negative impacts from climate change due to its fragile economy, weak resilience and low adaptive capacity. Rural livelihoods significantly depend on the performance of climate sensitive natural resources, especially in the agricultural sector. Environmental degradation, extreme weather and long-term climate change that undermine the natural resource stock and productive landscapes pose important challenges to sustainable agriculture, livelihoods and food security. Future climate scenarios project a consistent temperature rise (about 0.02oC per year from 2000 until 2100) and increase in variability and occurrences of extreme events leading to possible dry spells, droughts, floods, recurrence of locust and pests and reductions in yield. Annual flooding from the Niger and Benue Rivers and local tributaries and resource conflicts have heightened loss on agricultural investments and soil fertility and human insecurity.
VCDP AF2019 will step up VCDP environmental and climate change activities under a systematic strategy that includes mainstreaming options for green growth and climate-smart production and processing, improvement of resilience through deepening of insurance and “no regrets” options, and provision of appropriate climate information.