Climate extremes and housing rights: A political ecology of impacts, early warning and adaptation constraints in Lagos slum communities

Slum communities in Lagos, Nigeria, are vulnerable to contemporary flooding and to the potential impacts of climate change. Such vulnerabilities have been linked to rapid urbanization, environmental degradation and weak disaster response, but little attention is paid to the factors that engender these problems in the first place or to why the poor have persistently been at greater risk. Poverty does not always mean vulnerability. Often several elements come into play to exacerbate conditions of impoverishment and susceptibility to risks. By using a political ecology framework, this paper shows that limited access to housing and weak housing rights are two crucial factors that have pushed the urban poor not only to encroach on hazardous landscapes but also to adopt environmentally intolerable coping and livelihood strategies which undermine the biophysical integrity of land and human settlements and also erode natural resilience against flooding. This relationship between housing rights and flooding is explored by a historical review of land and housing policy in Nigeria and its links to slum development and expansion. A mixed method approach involving a household survey, interviews, and focus group discussions, was employed to generate primary data. The results show that conventional approaches to flood prevention have masked structural inequality and social stigma contributing to high vulnerability and low adaptive capacity in slum communities. To boost adaptation, a number of actions are required including eliminating marginalization in housing and land use, promoting good urban governance, and fostering participatory environmental management.