Building a Resilient Climate Regulatory Ecosystem for Nigeria

Abstract

Terrestrial ecosystems, which store more carbon than the atmosphere, are vital to influencing carbon dioxide-driven climate change. Climate and land-use change are critical and interlinked components of the Carbon budget in human-dominated landscape, using the InVEST model maps of land use and stocks in four Carbon pools (aboveground biomass, belowground biomass, soil, dead organic matter) are used to estimate the amount of Carbon currently stored in the landscape and the amount of carbon sequestered over time. This was integrated with remote sensing; Geographic Information System (GIS) and statistical techniques to building a resilience climate regulatory terrestrial ecosystem for Nigeria based on REDD policy scenario. The result reveals that there is a drastic reduction in forest land by 68% in 1984, 52% in 2003, and 48% in 2035. The effect of Carbon emission in Nigeria reveal that between 1984 and 2035, a total Carbon of 887,287,616 Mg ha-1yr-1 for the baseline scenario(in 1984), 1,599,485,568 Mg ha-1yr-1 for current scenario (in 2003) and 1,766,186,368 Mg ha-1yr-1 for projected scenario (in 2035) was emitted for Nigeria. Also, the impact of Carbon in altering the Radiative Forcings in the earth-atmospheric system of Nigeria is high and it has a positively strong influence on the climate (with an R2value of 0.999), an observed value of 4.29 W/m2 recorded in 1984, 4.86 W/m2 in 2003 and a projected increase of 4.94 W/m2 for 2035, this implies that climate change is fast encroaching into Nigeria. This has increased the mean Greenhouse Gases (Carbon) atmospheric concentration threshold value of 2.90C to a predicted range value between 3.4 and 3.90C change in global average temperature between 1984 and 2035. The REDD project between 2003 and 2035 (future scenario) if implemented will increase Carbon storage credits in all land use /land cover through sustained forest protection and enhancement of forest Carbon stocks, the following can be achieved 5,343.96 Mg ha-1yr-1  (and a total of 11,968,108,544 Mg ha-1yr-1) of Carbon will be stored for forest area and 785.09Mg ha-1yr-1 for non- forest area (and a total of 1,599,485,568 Mg ha-1yr-1) and a greater resilient is achieved because Carbon stored is great than Carbon emitted; this implies a Carbon cut down of 87% per year will be achieved for forest and 13% per year for non-forest area.

Keywords: Carbon Stored; Carbon Sequestered; InVEST model; REDD Policy; Nigeria.

Cite this Article
Ibeabuchi Uwadiegwu. Building A Resilient Climate Regulatory Ecosystem for Nigeria. Journal of Alternate Energy Sources & Technologies. 2020; 11(2): 46–62p.