Global Land-use Change and Sugarcane Production in Nigeria: Understanding the Ecological Consequences

Abstract

Global investments in large-scale land deals which intensified from 2007, appeared to have increased land use change, leading to inequalities among rural people and countries of the global south. A significant proportion in the world's unfolding investments is the manufacture of biofuels, in Nigeria, sugarcane has become an important raw material for the production of biofuels, which has been entrenched in the Nigeria biofuels policy document. Little attention has been paid to sugarcane production models and to the historical social use in relation to land in the country, given the environmental consequences of biofuel development, in particular, the ecosystem. Though the effect of biofuels proliferation varies among regions, some rural communities in the southern hemisphere are already taking advantage of the development, scholarly works have so far indicated that societies of the countryside are always at the receiving end of this trending advancement of biofuels feedstock, in particular for biofuels derived from plants, specifically production systems from sugar cane. The evolving use of sugarcane-based biofuel in Nigeria is underpinning developments and organisations that intensify heavy gravities against environment and further grasp control of land and water resources from rural poor. This paper will scrutinise this issues through a political economy perspective, and examining the magnitudes of increasing sugarcane biofuel production in Nigeria, because biofuel appeared fervidly in dislodging the means of living of people and underpin waves of adversity, particularly for marginalized rural country farmers.