Agriculture and Climate Change: Assessing Carbon Emissions from Diverse Agricultural Activities in Nigeria

This paper examines the effects of diverse agricultural activities -crop production, fishing, livestock production and forestry- on carbon emissions in Nigeria. The study employs time-series data for the period 1990 to 2021 and applies Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) estimation technique. The results reveal that agricultural activities significantly impact carbon emissions (𝐶𝑂2) in Nigeria. The findings further reveal that livestock production and fishing activities increase 𝐶𝑂2 emissions. However, the results show that crop production and forestry activities reduce 𝐶𝑂2 emissions in Nigeria during the reference period. In the long run, a 1% rise in livestock production increases 𝐶𝑂2 emissions by 0.09% and a 1% rise in fishing activities increases 𝐶𝑂2 emissions by 0.57%. In contrast, a 1% expansion in crop production decreases 𝐶𝑂2 emissions by 0.31% while a 1% expansion in forestry decreases 𝐶𝑂2 emissions by 0.2%. Also, the estimates show that energy consumption has positive effect on 𝐶𝑂2 emissions. Further, the results reveal that trade openness and FDI have positive effects on 𝐶𝑂2 emissions while financial development reduces 𝐶𝑂2 emissions in the long run. Thus, agricultural policies and strategies that explicitly combine mitigation of 𝐶𝑂2 emissions with measures to improve food security and environmental outcomes in the agricultural sector should be promoted.