Achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals on Biological Diversity in Nigeria: Current Issues and Future Directions

The aim of this article is to examine the application of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs) on biological diversity in Nigeria, emphasizing the preconditions for implementation and the barriers and difficulties for their realization. Given Nigeria’s faltering attempts and failure to achieve the biodiversity goals in the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs), a predecessor to the sdgs, this article builds a profile of the salient law and institutional barriers to the implementation and attainment of the sdgs on biodiversity in Nigeria and proffers practical and normative solutions to those challenges. The methodology approach is based in an analytical and survey of the scope and status of the implementation of international law norms on biodiversity in Nigeria. The results indicate that archaic legislative provision on biodiversity; lack of coherent post-2015 biodiversity agenda; lack of institutional coordination; absence of political will; and inadequate stakeholder engagement in evolving national biodiversity plans are the main legal barriers that must be addressed if the sdgs are to be attained in Nigeria.