Climate Crisis and Green Transition in Nigeria: Trade Unions in Policy and Practical Response.

Nigeria is an emerging market and lower-middle-income economy. It has the largest population, a young demographic profile, and is one of the richest in Africa. Its economy is highly concentrated in the oil and gas industry. That sector, while crucial to Nigeria’s development to date, is responsible for contributing to far-reaching ecological and environmental degradation in Nigeria, and global climate change crises. Gas flaring and increased CO2 emissions, destruction of agricultural and marine ecosystems from oil spillage, and exposure of people to poisonous gas and resultant chronic illnesses, are significant among the negative impacts of the oil and gas industry to Nigerians and neighbouring populations.

These well-documented concerns and their crisis-deepening implications have met with mixed policy response and variable efforts for change. The Nigerian government endorses international climate change response initiatives and strives to develop and implement national initiatives. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), one of the largest unions in Africa (ITUC, 2021), pursues its Climate Change Policy issued in 2015. However, even as NLC leaders acknowledge that Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change and global heating, with severe effects on populations portended, and demand a “just transition” to a more sustainable economy, their policy strategies and actions toward a just transition appear to date to be fragmented.

Utilising the duo of ILO guidelines on just transition and the holistic framework for evaluating policy mixes for just transition (Kaljonen et al., 2024), this paper evaluates the policies and practices of labour actors in Nigeria in responding to climate change and pursuing a just transition for workers and the poor. By so doing, it uncovers the policy interventions points of the Nigerian trade union movement, and the reactive, active and emancipatory practical responses aimed at distributive and procedural justices in their efforts at seeking a just transition.