Niger's Historic Contribution to Global Warming Since 1850

Key Insights

Moderate Per Capita Contribution

Niger's impact from historic emissions is around 4,200 megatonnes CO2‑equivalent-about a tenth of a percent of the global total. On a population‑weighted basis this equates to about 4.7 tonnes per capita per year, a Moderate rating on our scale. This reflects a long history of relatively low industrial emissions alongside a growing population.

Agriculture And Land Use Dominate

Around half of Niger's warming impact stems from methane, just over two‑fifths from land‑use CO2, and roughly a tenth from nitrous oxide; fossil CO2 and fluorinated gases are minor. Methane emissions rose gradually through the 20th century, climbed more quickly from the mid‑1990s, and accelerated since the 2010s to around 30 megatonnes a year, driven mainly by livestock. Land‑use CO2 has been highly variable: it increased through the post‑war era, then fell sharply from the 1960s to late 1980s, at times dipping below zero, before easing down again since around 1990 to only single‑digit megatonnes in recent years. Nitrous oxide stayed low for decades, then increased steadily after the late 1990s.

Priorities For Low-Emission Growth

Given this profile, the biggest opportunities lie in agriculture and landscapes. Slowing the rise of livestock methane-through productivity gains and better land and herd management-would temper its temperature effect relatively quickly. Protecting and restoring forests and woody landscapes, and improving land stewardship, can keep land‑use CO2 low or net‑absorbing. Smarter nutrient use and soil practices in agriculture can curb nitrous oxide. With a small global share and moderate per capita impact, Niger can pursue development pathways that avoid locking in high‑emission patterns while strengthening rural resilience.

Background

Historic Per Capita Emissions

Historic per capita emissions are a crucial long-period (since 1850), population-weighted (accounting for changing population size) indicator. It shows the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions of a nation per capita per year to the current warming.

The rating scale is:

Extremely High: above 10 tonnes per capita per year
Very High: above 7.5 tonnes
High: above 5 tonnes
Moderate: above 2.5 tonnes
Low: above 0 tonnes
Negative Emissions: under 0

Historically, we don't expect any nation to reach negative emissions. Current warming, or warming targets, like 1.5 °C and 1.7 °C are all based on the fact that there have been human-induced greenhouse gas emissions and there will be some more. It is clear, however, that some nations have had incredibly high historic contributions per capita.

Total Historic Impact

This is the total amount of CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, and F-Gases emissions of a nation from 1850 till 2023 (last available year in the data) expressed in megatonnes of CO₂-equivalents. The gases have different atmospheric lifetimes (decay) and warming effects, for this reason we use the GWP100 (100 year time horizon method) to calculate the global warming potential of N₂O and F-Gases to express in CO₂-equivalents. For CH₄, which is a short-term gas, we use the GWP* method to express the historic impact in CO₂-equivalents.

Wikipedia: Global Warming Potential

Total Historic Share

This is a nation's total historic share of global emissions and its contribution to global warming. It is an indicator of historic responsibility. All nations share the responsibility to ensure that developing nations do not copy and repeat the behavior of nations with high historic greenhouse gas emissions, they should not buy into old unsustainable fossil-fuels-based technology, land-use, and infrastructure, rather foster a sustainable and cleaner development.

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About the Data

The last available year in all the emission datasets is 2023. CO₂ emissions data is from the Global Carbon Project. It contains national CO₂ emissions from fossil sources and land-use change. Emissions from CH₄, N₂O and F-gases come from the PRIMAP-Hist dataset. It is a rich dataset that combines several published sources to create a historical emissions time series for various greenhouse gases. Population data are also from Global Carbon Project where available, however, for many nations it doesn't have historic population going back to 1850. Those historic gaps are filled with population data from Our World in Data.

The Key Insights paragraph was created using a large language model (LLM) in combination with our data, historic events, and a structured approach for best accuracy by separating the context generation from the interpretation and narrative.

Data Sources

Global Carbon Budget 2024 Global Carbon Budget
Update cycle: yearlyDelay: ~ 10 months after the end of the year. Current year values are estimated and published in November.Credits: Friedlingstein et al., 2024, ESSD. Friedlingstein, P., O'Sullivan, M., Jones, M. W., Andrew, R. M., Hauck, J., Landschützer, P., Le Quéré, C., Li, H., Luijkx, I. T., Olsen, A., Peters, G. P., Peters, W., Pongratz, J., Schwingshackl, C., Sitch, S., Canadell, J. G., Ciais, P., Jackson, R. B., Alin, S. R., Arneth, A., Arora, V., Bates, N. R., Becker, M., Bellouin, N., Berghoff, C. F., Bittig, H. C., Bopp, L., Cadule, P., Campbell, K., Chamberlain, M. A., Chandra, N., Chevallier, F., Chini, L. P., Colligan, T., Decayeux, J., Djeutchouang, L., Dou, X., Duran Rojas, C., Enyo, K., Evans, W., Fay, A., Feely, R. A., Ford, D. J., Foster, A., Gasser, T., Gehlen, M., Gkritzalis, T., Grassi, G., Gregor, L., Gruber, N., Gürses, Ö., Harris, I., Hefner, M., Heinke, J., Hurtt, G. C., Iida, Y., Ilyina, T., Jacobson, A. R., Jain, A., Jarníková, T., Jersild, A., Jiang, F., Jin, Z., Kato, E., Keeling, R. F., Klein Goldewijk, K., Knauer, J., Korsbakken, J. I., Lauvset, S. K., Lefèvre, N., Liu, Z., Liu, J., Ma, L., Maksyutov, S., Marland, G., Mayot, N., McGuire, P., Metzl, N., Monacci, N. M., Morgan, E. J., Nakaoka, S.-I., Neill, C., Niwa, Y., Nützel, T., Olivier, L., Ono, T., Palmer, P. I., Pierrot, D., Qin, Z., Resplandy, L., Roobaert, A., Rosan, T. M., Rödenbeck, C., Schwinger, J., Smallman, T. L., Smith, S., Sospedra-Alfonso, R., Steinhoff, T., Sun, Q., Sutton, A. J., Séférian, R., Takao, S., Tatebe, H., Tian, H., Tilbrook, B., Torres, O., Tourigny, E., Tsujino, H., Tubiello, F., van der Werf, G., Wanninkhof, R., Wang, X., Yang, D., Yang, X., Yu, Z., Yuan, W., Yue, X., Zaehle, S., Zeng, N., and Zeng, J.: Global Carbon Budget 2024, Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2024-519, in review, 2024.

PRIMAP-hist The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023)
Update cycle: Every few monthsDelay: Less than 1 yearCredits: Gütschow, Johannes; Busch, Daniel; Pflüger, Mika (2024): The PRIMAP-hist national historical emissions time series (1750-2023) v2.6. Zenodo.

Our World in Data Population - Our World in Data
Update cycle: YearlyDelay: 7 monthsCredits: HYDE (2023); Gapminder (2022); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data