The Impact of Human Population on Biodiversity Conservation in Nigeria: The Need for Legal Intervention

All over the world, human population size and growth have been forecast as a chief driver of biodiversity loss with no exception to Nigeria. Nigeria is universally known for its biodiversity of national and international importance but at the same time affected by its growing population. The Nigerian population is projected to grow above 195, 905, 783 by the middle of the century. No doubt, the health of the ecosystem has been irreversibly affected by the often quest to exploit the environment to meet the daily needs of the growing population. There is now more pressure on the components of biodiversity than ever before necessitated by the corresponding demand by humans. It is majorly human activities associated with population growth that cause the loss of biodiversity. Nigeria appears to have population control policy regulating the family size as per the number of children a household is expected to have but the policy appears to be voluntary and ineffective. Thus, there is the urgent need to slow down the population not only to reduce the pressure on biodiversity but also to ensure sustainable use of biodiversity for the benefit of the present and future generations. Therefore, this work seeks to examine the links between population growth and biodiversity conservation in Nigeria and the need to have an extant law to control the growing population. It makes far reaching recommendations which include the integration of family planning into biodiversity conservation. It also recommended that a legal regime should be put in place to regulate the family size of individual household with social and economic incentives outside population control policy that has no legal sanction. Keywords: Impact, Population, Biodiversity, Conservation, Legal Intervention DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/92-16 Publication date: December 31st 201