Climate Change And The Uneven Geography of Vulnerability In Nigeria

A Regional And Sectoral Assessment

Abstract

Climate change is widely treated in Nigerian scholarship as a single, undifferentiated national crisis, yet its lived effects diverge sharply by region and sector. This article draws on Climate Change Vulnerability Theory to examine how exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity combine to produce markedly different climate risk profiles in northern Nigeria (drought, desertification, farmer-herder conflict) and the Niger Delta in the south (sea-level rise, flooding, oil-pollution-compounded degradation). Using doctrinal and literature-based analysis, the article maps these regional impacts onto four cross-cutting socio-economic consequences — agriculture and food security, poverty, public health, and energy supply — to show that Nigeria’s climate burden is not evenly distributed but concentrated among specific, identifiable populations. It argues that Nigeria’s largely uniform national adaptation architecture is poorly matched to this differentiated vulnerability profile, and proposes region-specific adaptation measures as a corrective. The article contributes a vulnerability-mapped account of climate impact differentials in Nigeria that can inform more targeted adaptation planning.