Economic and Food Security Impacts of Climate Disasters and Mitigation Policies: Insights from Nigeria

Environmental and Resource Economics https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-025-00981-3 Economic and Food Security Impacts of Climate Disasters and Mitigation Policies: Insights from Nigeria Luis Escalante1 · Pierre Mamboundou2 · Carine Meyimdjui3 · Oluwasola E. Omoju4 Accepted: 6 March 2025 © The Author(s) 2025 Abstract Climate disasters, exacerbated by climate change, are becoming more frequent and severe, leading to significant socioeconomic and food system implications. Using econometrics and a dynamic general equilibrium model, this study examines the economic impact of climate disasters in Nigeria and evaluates the effect of mitigation strategies. The results show that the direct effects of climate disaster shocks on crop production spill over to other sectors of the economy, resulting in an overall 2.11% fall in real GDP. The analysis also highlights the substantial influence of climate disasters on Nigeria’s food systems and the consequent increase in food insecurity, particularly in the northern region, where the likelihood of food shortages increases by 6.50%. The analysis of mitigation measures suggests that a mix of policies is more efficient than stand-alone policies. Specifically, we found that a combined strategy of cash transfers for rural households and tax reductions for urban households is the best option, as it improves consumption and employment. However, it also leads to increased food imports and vulnerability. Complementing this strategy with targeted investments and subsidies is key to strengthening crop resilience and mitigating disaster impacts. Keywords Climate disasters · Economic impacts · Mitigation policies · Food security · Nigeria 1 Introduction Global warming has increased the incidence of extreme natural phenomena such as cyclones, droughts, and floods. These events negatively affect developing economies, weakening them socially and economically through disruptions in productive activities, job losses, price fluctuations, and increased poverty (Mavume et al. 2009; Banholzer et al. 2014; Anttila-Hughes and Hsiang 2013; Zander et al. 2020). Moreover, their effects are heterogeneous, exacerbating social inequalities (Botzen et al. 2019). Nigeria, with an average of 1.6 climate disasters annually over the past 45 years, serves as a critical case study. Floods account for 77% of these events, severely affecting subsistence Extended author information available on the last page of the article 13 L. Escalante et al. agriculture, a key driver of food security in the country (EM-DAT; NEMA 2022). Nigeria is already one of the most food insecure countries in the world (Thomas and Turk 2023). Rural food insecurity is almost 52% compared to 18% in urban areas (Mekonnen et al. 2021). Moreover, most food-insecure people are concentrated in the North-East and NorthWest regions, and those include internally displaced persons and refugees. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, food imports bills increased by 62% in 2021 year-on-year. Increased droughts and erratic rainfall across the country, disrupting rain-fed agriculture (Ologeh et al. 2018). Projections indicate worsening conditions, with arid regions facing prolonged droughts and humid areas experiencing intensified rainfall, leading to more flooding incidents (Oguntunde et al. 2017; Olaniyi et al. 2013). In 2022, floods destroyed over 676,000 hectares of farmland, while food prices rose by 24.3% in 2023 due to a combination of climatic events and global disruptions such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict (UNICEF 2023). In this context, food insecurity could be further exacerbated by climate disasters, making it essential to link and analyze the implications of climate disasters, food security, and household welfare in Nigeria. In existing literature, econometric models have been widely used to assess the direct and indirect impacts of climate disasters, although they often fail to fully capture sectoral heterogeneities or consider the effects of mitigation policies (Anttila-Hughes and Hsiang 2013; Estrada et al. 2015). On the other hand, economywide models have proven valuable for capturing economic impacts across sectors using destruction coefficients and supply shocks (Bosello et al. 2007; Liu et al. 2020; Wu and Guo, 2021). Previous applications of this type of studies, mainly on a global scale, analyze the repercussions of climatic shocks on the economy and livelihoods (Bosello et al. 2007; Darwin and Tol 2001; Deke et al. 2001), as well as food security (Golub et al. 2013; Peña-Lévano et al. 2019). Nevertheless, only a few studies focus on specific countries and conduct in-depth analysis using single-country models. In this study, we build a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model for Nigeria to examine the socio-economic and food security impacts of climate disasters in detail. Recent CGE studies have analyze events such as floods (Avelino and Dall’erba, 2019), droughts (Wittwer and Griffith 2011), and cyclones (Washida et al. 2014), identifying two key transmission channels: reduced productive capacity and increased prices. On the one hand, the first channel, characterized by drastic reductions in production capacity (Carrera et al. 2015; Borgomeo et al. 2018), lead to a decrease in income and demand, which negatively affects production across sectors. On the other hand, the second channel relates to prices, as natural disasters tend to increase prices for intermediate and final goods, thereby weakening final demand (Carrera et al. 2015; Borgomeo et al. 2018). However, those studies follow conventional approaches and have limitations as they do not integrate food security indicators or allow for a detailed analysis of the distributional effects on households. This study addresses these gaps through an innovative approach that combines econometric analysis with a dynamic CGE model enhanced with food security indicators and a microsimulation module. This approach enables the evaluation of not only economic and sectoral impacts but also the effects on household well-being and food poverty in Nigeria. The primary contribution of this study lies in linking climate disasters to agri-food systems and mitigation policies by integrating macro- and microeconomic analyses into a unified framework. This approach provides a robust analytical tool for designing more effective public policies that strengthen resilience and mitigate the effects of climate disasters on food security. 13 Economic and Food Security Impacts of Climate Disasters and Mitigation… The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Sect. 2 describes the data and the methodological framework. Section 3 discusses the simulations and results. Section 4 outlines the policy implications of the findings and Sect. 5 concludes the paper. 2 Data and Methodological Framework The methodological framework uses a top-down macro-micro modeling approach to determine the changes in the economy and food security due to climate d (...truncated)