Please refer to the attached file. RISK ANALYSIS AND EARLY ACTION SELECTION Prioritized hazard and its historical impact. Nigeria is experiencing ecological disasters exacerbated by Climate Change with negative impacts on the welfare of millions of people. Drought and Desertification is one of the ecological disasters currently plaguing the country with a negative impact on ecosystem functions, reduce social, political and economic stability and can increase vulnerability to other natural disasters, such as heat waves and floods. The impact and incidence of droughts differ over space and time. While it is incontrovertible that droughts occur over the entire Nigerian littoral, the degree of vulnerability differs with the semi-arid regions in the north being more vulnerable to drought than the more humid regions in the south. Drought impacts on lives and livelihoods are more severe in the northern part of the country, spreading across the frontline states; Adamawa, Borno, Bauchi, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi. Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara. The droughts in Nigeria have a 30 year and 10-year cycle. The 30-year cycle droughts are usually regional, while the 10-year drought cycles are usually localized. Drought has occurred in Nigeria in 1883, 1903/1905, 1913/1915, 1923/1924, 1942/1944, 1954/1956, 1972/1973, 1982/1983 and 1991/1995 (FME- NDP, 2018). The impacts of drought can be extremely severe for the most vulnerable groups in the society (women, children and aged). The impacts may be grouped into Physical and ecological impacts; and socioeconomic impacts Since the 1970s, the term ‘the Sahel’ has been used as indicating those parts of West Africa where drought was followed by famine and where such a disaster could happen again. Drought is also precipitated with the issues of shortage of water and drying up of Nigeria’s climate has shown a very rapid variability in recent decades, particularly in the Sahel region (Ogunrinde et al. 2019). Drought events in this region are becoming more frequent due to increase in the evaporative demand of the climate, and this is very evident in the last few decades (Ogunrinde et al. 2020d). The long-term drought events in the Sahel region of Nigeria (SRN) started around the 1970s and have since become a recurring decadal event and there are projections of it becoming more intense and frequent as the twenty-first century progress (Ogunrinde et al. 2020d; Brooks 2004; Agnew and Chappell 1999). Several studies on drought show that there has been an increase in the occurrence of extreme weather events, such as decrease in precipitation in the range of about 3–4% per decade from the mid to the end of the twentieth century. Notably, as a result of the reduction in precipitation, some monumental drought events were recorded between 1971 and 1972, 1983 and 1984, 1993, 2007, and 2011. According to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (2022), Nigeria ranks 154th place out of 185 countries reflects high vulnerability to climate change and extremely low readiness – 14th-worst in the world, to confront the threat. In Nigeria, the direct and indirect impacts of droughts have been very enormous with respect to environmental degradation, large scale crop failure and loss of livestock, as well as human displacement and migration, diseases outbreak and death. The cumulative effects of drought gave been expressed in increasing levels of poverty and environmental degradation which will retard the country’s ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (FME NDP, 2018). Droughts exacerbate poverty, undermine economic development, and can lead to conflicts over scarce resources. Droughts accelerate desertification and soil degradation, making land unsuitable for agriculture and grazing.
Nigeria | Drought: Simplified early action protocol (sEAP №: EAP2025NG02)
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