Impacts of Climate Change and Population Growth on Food Security in Nigeria

Abstract

Food production in Nigeria has not matched with the rate of population growth leading to reduction of national food independence and self-reliance. As a result, Nigeria is facing serious food insecurity. Therefore, this study examined the impacts of climate change and population growth on food security in Nigeria. Annual time-series of food security (proxy of food production index), annual rainfall, annual temperature, population growth rate, urban population rate and agricultural land used from 1980 to 2019 were used. The study used Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test, Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model, Johansen Cointegration test and Vector Error Correlation Models (VECM) were used to analyze the data. ADF unit root test result shows that all variables were completely stationary at the first different orders I(1) at both at intercept and intercept with trend at level of significance of 1%. Three (3) lags were conclusively selects as the optimum lag in the VAR model. The result of the estimation indicates that the Johansen cointegration shows an existence of long-run relationship among the variables used in the study. The result of the VECM estimation shows that rainfall, temperatures, population growth rate and agricultural land used were negatively significantly related to food security at various levels of significance (1%, 5% and 10%). At the long-run all the variables were adversely related to food security in Nigeria. The coefficient of multiple determination (R2) indicates about 91%, the adjusted R2 of 0.86 was obtained and Durbin-Watson of 2.1 was obtained which implies that the tools were good fit to estimates the data. Decomposition of variance shows dwindling in food security. The study therefore recommends public enlightenment campaign on birth control; and appropriate climate change adaptation methods should be adopted to enhance food security in Nigeria among others.