Environmental Management and Sustainable Development Goal Achievement in Nigeria: Causal Mechanisms and Policy Implications

This dissertation investigates the causal mechanisms through which environmental management quality influences the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in Nigeria, developing an original analytical framework that connects environmental management to SDG outcomes across the full portfolio of goals rather than limiting attention to the explicitly environmental SDGs. The relationship between environmental management and sustainable development is complex and multi-directional, with environmental quality affecting health, food, water, economic, and governance outcomes in ways that the SDG framework acknowledges but does not adequately theorise at the national scale. The theoretical contribution is an Environmental Management-SDG Causal Pathways Framework that maps the causal chains from specific environmental management interventions to SDG outcomes across the 17 goals and 169 targets, using a theory-based evaluation approach informed by comparative qualitative analysis. The framework is developed through three complementary analyses: a systematic literature review of 280 studies on environment-development linkages in sub-Saharan Africa that identifies the most evidence-based causal mechanisms; a quantitative analysis of environmental management quality proxies and SDG indicator performance across Nigeria's 36 states and FCT using the most recent available data and path analysis; and a qualitative comparative analysis of six cases where specific environmental management investments have been tracked against SDG outcome changes at state level. The dissertation maps the strongest positive causal pathways, identifies the critical intervention complementarities required for SDG co-benefits, and characterises the trade-offs between environmental management investments and other development priorities. Keywords: sustainable development goals, environmental management, Nigeria, causal mechanisms, development policy.