Abstract

Nigeria is crowned the giant of Africa is acclaimed to have one of the world’s highest economic growth rates, averaging 7.4% by the World Bank report, yet over 80 million people (42.4%) are currently living below the poverty line. Instead of eradicating poverty by the year 2030 according to the UN SDG in Nigeria, about 7 people are entering poverty every minute. The average kerosene price per litre in Nigeria is ₦284.03 and the price of cooking gas per 25kg is ₦4000. Charcoal and fuel wood, therefore, becomes the only alternative domestic power source. In fact, Nigeria currently ranks second to Brazil in the production of charcoal and currently exports 380,000 metric tonnes of charcoal annually. This study uses secondary data and remote sensing GIS to analyse the trends of poverty, charcoal and fuel wood production in the country and the loss of vegetal cover in the western region of the country. The result reveals that there is a positive correlation between poverty, fuel wood, charcoal and loss of vegetal cover, and this implies that Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programmes must be intertwine with poverty reduction.