Assessing the Role of Forestry in Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions: Policy Alignment and Implementation Gaps

Nigeria's Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement include ambitious forestry and land use commitments, yet the degree to which domestic forest policy frameworks are actually aligned with these commitments and the practical gaps impeding implementation have not been systematically assessed. This study evaluates the policy alignment between Nigeria's Nationally Determined Contributions forestry targets and existing national and state-level forest governance instruments, and identifies structural implementation gaps through a mixed methods policy analysis. The study combined systematic review of 62 policy documents spanning federal and state levels with semi-structured interviews with 44 forest sector policy actors including federal ministry officials, state forestry directors, development agency staff, and civil society representatives. A policy coherence assessment framework scored alignment between Nationally Determined Contributions forestry targets and existing law, regulation, budgetary allocations, and institutional mandates. Results reveal significant normative alignment at the policy declaration level, with most forest-related Nationally Determined Contributions targets formally reflected in the 2021 National Forest Policy and REDD-plus strategy. However, implementation alignment is critically weak, with budget allocations to forest sector agencies averaging less than 0.4% of state recurrent expenditures, and with eighteen states lacking functional forest management plans. Inter-agency coordination between environment, agriculture, and finance ministries is identified as the most significant structural gap. The study recommends a dedicated Forest Climate Finance Window within the Green Bond programme and mandatory forest management plan requirements linked to conditional budget transfers. Keywords: Nationally Determined Contributions, forest policy, climate finance, Nigeria, policy alignment