Re-Thinking Community Development for Effective Response to Effects of Climate Change on Environmental Sustainability in Nigeria

The world for long has recognized the importance of the environment and the need for man to live harmoniously with the environment. One of the contemporary global environmental challenges is climate change. Experts are on common ground that it is responsible for most serious environmental challenges confronting the Nigerian cities and rural communities. The nature of climate change challenges and its effects on local communities’ environmental sustainability have shown that scientific and technical efforts are not enough in mitigating the effects of climate change on human livelihood and the physical structure of our communities. It then demands that if human contributions to carbon emissions and other greenhouse gasses that are responsible for climate change must be reduced a more people oriented approach like the community development must be adopted and make relevant and responsive to mitigating effects of climate change. This paper therefore focused on issues involved in rethinking community development to make it relevant and responsive to current trends in climate change challenges in Nigeria.