Carbon emissions and food production: why climate change is a threat to Nigeria’s food security

The dependency of Nigeria on the importation of food will likely be accentuated by changing climate thereby necessitating the existing focus on climate-food production nexus. Hence, the impact of carbon dioxide emissions on food production is examined in Nigeria’s context. With the use of autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and vector error correction mechanism (VECM), results show that carbon emissions (CO2) serve as a significant determinant of food production. Findings reveal that an increase in CO2 is expected to bring more acute food shortages, indicating that the impact of climate change on the production of food is adverse. Bidirectional causality found between carbon emissions and food production suggests that both indicators affect each other in the long-run. It is therefore posited that the prevalence of unsustainable agricultural practices in the country would possibly induce a rise in CO2 in the long-term. On the other hand, a rapidly changing climate could further worsen insufficient food production. Thus, policy measures that enhance sustainable agricultural practices and food security and ensure climatic resilience are considered central.