Cooking Energy Nexus in the Policy on Rural-Urban Indices and Climate Change Mitigation in Nigeria

Abstract

Despite the preponderance of solid fuels as a major source of cooking energy in Africa, mainstreaming their contributions to rural-urban inequalities and climate change in scholarly debates and policy advocacy appears incommensurate. This article engages the discursive reconstruction of the interdisciplinary debate about how energy choices shape poverty incidences and climate change. Emphasis is on the conceptualisation of rural-urban inequalities and climate change in relation to cooking energy sources. How may policy advocacy for cooking energy choices in Africa induce poverty alleviation and climate change? What lessons are discernible from national policies on cooking energy and why the tendency for more alternative cooking energy at the urban centres than the rural areas? These questions are analysed mainly from a systematic review of policy literature and quantitative data sourced from key rural and urban informants in the south-western region of Nigeria, the most populous state in Sub-Saharan Africa. The theoretical foundation is hinged on Rational Choice Theory to explain how individual cooking energy choices can interact to generate often surprising aggregate outcome on poverty incidences and climate change. Evidence mainly reveals that cooking energy choices significantly shape rural-urban indices and climate change mitigation. Implications for climate change and development are also discussed.

Keywords: climate change mitigation, urban-rural indices, rational choice, alternative cooking energy, Nigeria, Africa

DOI: 10.7176/JESD/11-8-10

Publication date: April 30^th 2020