Evaluating environmental legislation on disaster resilience: Data insights from Nigeria and the USA

The study investigates how environmental legislation contributes to disaster resilience in two contrasting contexts—Nigeria and the USA. It situates the research within the growing frequency and severity of natural disasters driven by climate change, urbanization, and environmental degradation. Environmental legislation is presented as a key tool for risk reduction, preparedness, and response. Nigeria faces significant environmental challenges (deforestation, pollution, erosion, inadequate waste management) and constrained institutional capacity, intensifying disaster vulnerability. The USA has a more robust regulatory framework and institutional resources but still faces major disasters (e.g., Katrina, Sandy, California wildfires). The purpose is a comparative analysis of each country’s legislative frameworks, their implementation, strengths and weaknesses, and impacts on resilience, to identify best practices and improvement opportunities with practical implications for policy and disaster risk reduction.

The literature emphasizes proactive environmental governance—land-use planning, zoning, building codes, and environmental impact assessments—as central to reducing hazard vulnerability and enhancing adaptive capacity. Integrated approaches that address environmental and socio-economic factors and strong enforcement, stakeholder engagement, and inter-agency coordination are recurrent themes. Comparative studies show effectiveness depends on governance structures, enforcement capacity, participation, and socio-economic dynamics. In Nigeria, key laws include the NESREA Act, EIA Act, Harmful Waste Act, and Oil Pollution Act, but implementation is hindered by institutional weaknesses, corruption, and limited resources. In the USA, a comprehensive legal system (NEPA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, NFIP) is supported by established agencies and monitoring systems, generally yielding higher compliance and resilience despite occasional setbacks. Gaps persist in assessing the effectiveness of specific laws and in understanding complex interactions among legislation, resilience, and sustainable development, underscoring the need for more comparative and context-sensitive analyses.

Comparative review approach examining environmental legislative frameworks and their implementation in Nigeria and the USA. The study synthesizes existing laws, policies, regulatory mechanisms, and documented practices, and evaluates their contributions to disaster resilience. Key analytical factors include regulatory compliance, enforcement mechanisms, stakeholder engagement, institutional capacity, proactive risk management, and evidence of preparedness, response, and recovery outcomes. Data insights are drawn from secondary sources, including statutes, policy documents, case experiences from major disasters, and academic and policy literature.

- Nigeria: Although multiple environmental laws exist (e.g., NESREA Act, EIA Act, Oil Pollution Act), effectiveness is limited by institutional weaknesses, overlapping mandates, inadequate funding, corruption, and uneven subnational capacity. Weak enforcement increases vulnerability to disasters (e.g., oil pollution, flooding, erosion), with communities in sensitive regions (such as the Niger Delta) facing health risks, displacement, and livelihood losses. - USA: A comprehensive legislative and regulatory system (NEPA, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, ESA, NFIP) with established agencies, monitoring, and enforcement supports proactive risk management. Evidence includes successful floodplain management, early warning systems, and resilient building codes, contributing to improved preparedness, response, and recovery. - Cross-cutting: Both countries share challenges, including governance deficits, socio-economic disparities, funding limits, and emerging threats from climate change and extreme events. Common improvement areas: strengthen institutional capacity, enhance public awareness/participation, promote sustainable practices and nature-based solutions, and foster international cooperation. - Overall: Strong, well-enforced environmental legislation correlates with higher disaster resilience; gaps in enforcement and capacity undermine legal effectiveness and exacerbate vulnerabilities.

The comparative results directly address the research question by showing how the strength, scope, and enforcement of environmental legislation shape disaster resilience outcomes. In the USA, strong regulatory standards, clear agency roles, rigorous monitoring, and robust enforcement translate into tangible resilience benefits (risk reduction, resilient infrastructure, effective preparedness/response). In Nigeria, legal frameworks exist but systemic enforcement challenges and limited resources blunt their impact, leaving communities exposed. The findings underscore the importance of governance quality, institutional capacity, and stakeholder engagement for translating laws into resilience. They are relevant to environmental governance and disaster risk management by identifying operational levers (capacity building, anti-corruption, inter-agency coordination, community-based approaches, green infrastructure) that can improve resilience in different socio-economic contexts.

The study concludes that environmental legislation is fundamental to disaster resilience but its effectiveness hinges on implementation quality. Nigeria’s resilience is constrained by weak enforcement and institutional deficits despite having relevant laws, whereas the USA’s stronger enforcement and governance enable higher adaptive capacity. Both countries, however, face shared pressures such as climate change and socio-economic disparities. Contributions include a synthesis of legal frameworks, comparative insights on enforcement and governance, and actionable recommendations (capacity building, transparency, community engagement, resilient and nature-based infrastructure, and international cooperation). Future work should integrate climate adaptation into legislation, advance community-based resilience, and leverage technologies (remote sensing, GIS, AI) for early warning, risk mapping, and decision support, alongside longitudinal evaluations of policy effectiveness.

The review highlights limitations in the current evidence base: gaps remain in understanding the complex interactions among environmental legislation, disaster resilience, and sustainable development; limited assessments of the effectiveness of specific laws and policies in reducing risk and improving preparedness and recovery; and a need for more comparative, context-sensitive analyses across regions. These constraints may affect the generalizability and precision of conclusions and point to the importance of ongoing monitoring, evaluation, and longitudinal studies.