Tropentag 2020, September 9 - 11, virtual conference, Germany "Food and nutrition security and its resilience to global crises"

Evaluating the Relationship Between Solid-Food Waste, Environment and Economic Security among Malnutrition in Nigeria

University of Ibadan, Center for Petroleum, Energy Economics and Law / Amiesol Resources Konsult, Nigeria

Abstract

Solid-food waste generation is estimated at 126.2 million tonnes and 239.8 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equal by 2020 ending. This huge solid-waste costs Nigeria $750 billion annually while millions of Nigerians are hungry and poor. Nigeria also ranks very-low in nutrition with the highest number of malnourished children under 5 years in sub-Saharan-Africa. 37%-of-Nigeria-children are stunted, 18%-wasting and 20% underweight - these stunning figures rank Nigeria as the second highest globally. While developed countries have been able to manage waste properly for increased environment-and-economic-security, this is farfetched in Nigeria. Since solid-food waste can cause health, environment and socioeconomic problems, there is need to investigate the relationship between solid-food waste, environment and economic security. The main objective of this study therefore was to evaluate the relationship between solid-food-waste, environment and economic security among malnutrition in Nigeria.
Data on waste-management-practices were obtained through structured-questionnaires randomly administered on 210 households in Nigeria. Experts'-workshops-and-interviews were organised for key-officials within relevant-industries to elicit technical-and-economic information. The relationship between: waste, environment and economic security in Nigeria was examined for years 1981-to-2017. While waste-management-practices were evaluated using descriptive-and-inferential-statistics, Autoregressive-distributive-lag-(ARDL) was used to determine the relationship between solid-food-waste, environment and economic security.
Pollution/Health-risks (69.1%), limited-resources/funding (44.8%), lack-of-technical-skill (23.8%) and inadequate-management-skill (18.1%) are some identified challenges. 94.3% and 96.2% supported polluters'-pay-principe and dissemination of public-information on food-packaging as-well-as waste-reduction-reuse-recycling as part of waste-management practices respectively. 97.1% of annually-generated-waste are solid-waste, which confirms the Waste-Habit-of-Nigerians as 57%-organic/food-waste, 27%-plastics, 5%-glass, 5%-metal and 4%-others. 126.2 million tonnes food-waste equaling 239.8 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide and $750 billion is generated yearly in Nigeria. 95% are willing-to-pay for waste-management. Hypothesis-test yields a significant result at p-value<0.05 which shows that waste-management-challenges has effect on health issues/pollution in Nigeria. ARDL-model F-statistics of 30.7805 confirms the long-term-relationship between measured variables related to solid-food-waste generation, environment and economic security. ARDL-model also confirms the inverted-correlation between economic-growth and environmental-degradation of Environmental-Kuznet-Curve's hypothesis. At 0.0048 p-value, the estimates enjoy the support of statistical-significance at-5%.
Undertaking established waste-management significantly limits the impacts on health-environment-socioeconomic-wellbeing. The research shows that improved-funding and dissemination of public-information on food-packaging, as-well-as waste-reduction-reuse-recycling enhance social-acceptability of waste-management-practices. This research also shows that solid-food-waste has significant impact on environment-and-economic-security.

Keywords: Environmental quality, health, socioeconomic wellbeing, waste management

Contact Address: Opeyemi Anthony Amusan, University of Ibadan, Center for Petroleum, Energy Economics and Law / Amiesol Resources Konsult, P.O. Box 23039 Post-Office Agbowo, 20012 Ibadan, Nigeria, e-mail: amusanopegmail.com