Environmental Management Transition Theory for Emerging Economies: Developing a Nigerian Contextual Framework

This dissertation develops an original environmental management transition theory specifically designed for emerging economies, using Nigeria as the primary empirical grounding, to explain the conditions under which environmental management quality improvements can be triggered, sustained, and accelerated in contexts where conventional environmental Kuznets curve predictions have failed. The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis predicts that environmental management quality improves automatically with rising income levels, but Nigeria's experience shows persistent environmental degradation despite economic growth, challenging this theoretical prediction. The dissertation constructs an alternative Environmental Management Transition Framework that identifies the institutional, political economy, civil society, and technological conditions that must align to trigger genuine environmental management improvement in an emerging economy context. The framework development involves a three-phase research programme: a systematic comparative case analysis of thirteen historical environmental management transitions in middle-income countries that provides the theoretical raw material for framework construction, a qualitative empirical study of two domains in which Nigeria has shown nascent improvement in environmental management quality (urban air quality regulation in Lagos and community-based forest management in Cross River State) and one domain of persistent failure (oil spill governance), and an expert Delphi validation process with thirty environmental management scholars and practitioners. Original concepts introduced include the institutional threshold condition for environmental management transition, the political economy window theory, and the civil society amplifier mechanism. The framework generates specific predictions about the sequencing of interventions required to trigger environmental management transition in Nigerian conditions. Keywords: environmental management transition, emerging economy, Nigeria, institutional change, environmental governance.