Agricultural and Climate Change Adaptation Law in Africa: Reflections from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa

This book presents an analysis of climate change and agricultural laws in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa in order to determine whether they adequately addressed the concept of agricultural adaptation.

Agriculture is one of the sectors of the economy that is contributing to climate change, and at the same time the sector is heavily impacted by climate change. Therefore agricultural adaptation is required. Focusing on three countries, this book provides a novel, comparative examination of how and to what extent the law promotes agriculture-focused adaptation in these countries. The role of the law in addressing issues such as water management strategies, soil conservation methods, and crop production methods is discussed. This book identifies gaps in the regulatory frameworks for agricultural adaptation and highlights the lack of adaptive capacity of African agriculture due to weak or non-existing legal frameworks. It discusses ways to remedy these gaps through specific on-farm adaptation strategies, legislative amendments to consolidate all relevant national climate change-related policies and laws with agricultural policies and laws that have relevant provisions on adaptation as medium-term solutions, and the development of a specific framework law for agriculture-focused adaptation, incorporating essential agricultural adaptation strategies, could perhaps be enacted as long-term solutions to the regulatory gaps.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of law, climate change, food and agriculture, sustainable development, and African studies.

Habib Sani Usman is an Assistant Professor at the School of Law, American University of Nigeria, and a visiting researcher at the Centre of African Legal Studies, Bayreuth University, Germany, and has twenty years experience as Solicitor and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. He holds a doctorate degree (LLD) in International Aspects of law, with specialization in agricultural and climate change adaptation laws, from the North West University, Potchefstroom-South Africa.