Climate Change, Human Rights, and Nigeria’s Constitutional Obligations: Toward an Environmental Constitutionalism Framework

This doctoral research develops an environmental constitutionalism framework for Nigeria, arguing that climate change impacts constitute justiciable violations of constitutional human rights and that Nigeria bears binding obligations to both mitigate and adapt to climate change as a matter of constitutional law. Nigeria is simultaneously a major greenhouse gas emitter through its oil and gas sector and one of the African countries most severely affected by climate change impacts, including flooding, desertification, drought, and sea-level rise affecting coastal and riverine communities. The study engages critically with the nascent global jurisprudence on climate human rights litigation, including the Urgenda Foundation v. Netherlands decision, the Torres Strait Islander Petition to the UN Human Rights Committee, and emerging African constitutional climate cases. An original theoretical synthesis draws on environmental constitutionalism theory, the rights of nature scholarship, intergenerational equity doctrine, and Nigeria's constitutional right to a clean environment jurisprudence. The doctrinal methodology systematically examines Nigerian constitutional provisions, environmental legislation, and the Climate Change Act 2021 against the developing international standard of human rights-based climate obligations. The dissertation proposes a constitutional amendment inserting a justiciable right to a stable climate, a constitutional duty on the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the Paris Agreement, and an intergenerational equity clause. An original contribution is the theory of climate constitutional default, applied to Nigeria's extractive-dependent development model. Keywords: climate change, environmental constitutionalism, human rights, Nigeria, Paris Agreement.