Carbon Markets and Social Displacement: A Human Rights Critique of Technocratic Climate Governance in Nigeria’s Carbon Economy

Abstract

This paper examines complex relationship between carbon market mechanisms and legal frameworks in Nigeria. Its main focus is on how climate finance instruments intersect with human rights and environmental justice. It examines how emissions trading, carbon offsets, and the REDD+ programme are being implemented as both climate tools as well as regulatory interventions with social and legal consequences. These mechanisms have practically contributed to community displacement, weakened participatory rights, and undermined environmental safeguards. Their operation reveals a deep crisis in climate governance where efficiency is often pursued at the expense of justice. This research make use of doctrinal and interdisciplinary approach to analyze how international human rights norms, investment treaties, corporate accountability regimes, and Nigerian constitutional and administrative law shape the current landscape. It critically highlights the ways and manners in which investor protections, through bilateral investment agreements and the African Continental Free Trade Area, create structural impediment to accountability and therefore, protect powerful actors within carbon markets. The failure of corporate social responsibility in the extractive sector serves as a caution because similar patterns now appear in climate finance. In response to the problem, this research paper proposes a rights-based framework for reforms that are grounded in inclusive participation, equitable outcomes, binding corporate obligations, and regulatory sovereignty. It argues that Nigeria’s legal system must undergo structural transformation to meet the demands of climate justice. True leadership in climate finance will require more than alignment with global models. It will definitely depend on a deliberate and principled effort to advance constitutional reform, institutional accountability, and legal clarity that centres both people and the environment.