JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Nigeria is facing an escalating water-biodiversity crisis driven by infrastructure decay, climate variability, and ecosystem degradation, with disproportionate impacts on women and girls who provide the majority of household water. Approximately 40% of rural water infrastructure fails within two years of installation, intensifying water scarcity, time poverty, and gendered vulnerability.

Objective:

This policy brief examines the intersection of water insecurity, biodiversity loss, and gender inequality in Nigeria, and proposes integrated governance reforms to strengthen water security, ecosystem resilience, and gender equity.

Methods:

A structured policy synthesis was conducted using peer-reviewed literature, national datasets, and institutional reports on WaSH systems, gendered labour patterns, and biodiversity governance in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence was triangulated across environmental science, public health, and feminist political ecology perspectives to generate integrated policy insights.

Results:

Women and girls account for approximately 40% of household water-collection labour in Nigeria, with over one million households relying on child-based water collection exceeding 30 minutes per trip. Water-collection burdens are associated with musculoskeletal injury, chronic fatigue, reduced productivity, and constrained economic participation. Inadequate WaSH infrastructure significantly increases menstruation-related school absenteeism, undermining educational attainment for adolescent girls. Concurrently, biodiversity loss reduces ecosystem services such as water regulation, soil stability, and food security, while weakening indigenous ecological knowledge systems essential for climate adaptation. Despite existing policy frameworks, implementation gaps persist due to weak institutional coordination, insufficient financing, and limited integration of sex-disaggregated and indigenous knowledge data into planning systems.

Conclusions:

Water insecurity and biodiversity loss in Nigeria are structurally interlinked through governance failure and entrenched gendered labour inequalities, generating reinforcing cycles of socio-ecological vulnerability. Integrated reforms are required, including gender-responsive WaSH infrastructure investment, institutionalisation of indigenous ecological knowledge systems, and strengthened intersectoral governance and accountability mechanisms. Thus, without embedding gender equity, infrastructure resilience, and biodiversity governance within a unified policy framework, Nigeria’s environmental sustainability and development goals will remain unattainable.