Population pressure, agricultural land use and environmental sustainability in Nigeria

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the influence of population and agricultural land use on environmental sustainability in Nigeria. This is necessitated by the fact that decisions on the linkages between population, agriculture and environmental sustainability in the country have often been made without empirical underpinnings and thus without sufficient analytic rigor. To achieve the aim, Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) was calculated for each state of the country and multiplicative and mediating variables of agricultural land use were combined with demographic variables using linear regression and STIPART models to determine the coefficients of the variables and the impacts respectively. Thereafter, a cluster analysis was used to group the states on the basis of similarity of the impacts and 3.20a GIS Software used to map the spatial impacts. The results show that the southern states of the country have higher ESI scores, than the northern states, implying that the south will be more likely to be able to preserve valuable environmental resources effectively for the future generations. The results also show that the regression model accounts for 66.7 % of the variation in environmental sustainability in the country while the STIPART model indicates that the south eastern states are experiencing the severest environmental impacts resulting from combined effects agricultural land use and population pressure. The pressure has however been responsible for a number of favourable responses that have enabled the south to reap the economic advantage of rising concentrations of production, and social benefits that result from convergence in consumption. This explains the higher environmental sustainability in south Nigeria. The findings underscore the need for policy commitment and support for population and settlement reorganization and changes in landholdings in order to ensure sustainable development and environment in the country. Appropriate recommendations were made in this regard.