Eco-Sustainable Bridging of Housing Deficit – A Case Study of Nigeria

Keeping the average global temperature rise below the 1.5oC value over the pre-industrial era requires all hands to be on deck. The energy sector, transportation sector, and the agricultural/land use segment are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming. While there is an ongoing campaign for tree planting to reduce atmospheric CO2 volumes, it is imperative to note that the population explosion in some climes is pushing up the demands for land. The housing deficit in Nigeria is more than twenty million units. Building units are required to bridge the deficit; hence, an attendant forest cover loss. The study aims to propose an eco-sustainable means of bridging the shortfall. Sticking to the practice of a building unit per plot will lead to a CO2 absorption potential loss of about 1.11 billion tonnes over twenty years. However, building more units per plot will be a respite. Ten building units per plot can push down the figures to 0.1115 billion tonnes over the same period and was the best for the considered scenarios. The study showed that the loss of CO2 absorption potential from forest cover loss could be minimized by building more housing units per plot of land.