Urban Vulnerability and Adaptation Strategies Against Recurrent Climate Risks in Lagos State, Nigeria: A Systematic Review

Lagos State, the coastal economic engine of Nigeria, faces intensifying and recurrent climate risks, yet the evidence on how vulnerability is produced and how adaptation has responded remains fragmented across disciplines. This review synthesises the peer-reviewed evidence on urban vulnerability and adaptation to recurrent climate risks in Lagos and develops an integrative framework linking hazard drivers, differential vulnerability, and adaptation pathways. Following the PRISMA 2020 statement, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were searched for peer-reviewed studies published between January 2010 and June 2026. Fifteen studies met the inclusion criteria, were appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool, and were synthesised thematically. Five themes emerged from the review. The evidence documents three compounding hazard drivers, namely relative sea-level rise coupled with land subsidence, intensifying extreme rainfall, and a growing urban heat island, amplified by rapid land-use change that has stripped natural flood buffers. Vulnerability is socially produced, concentrating in low-income informal settlements through poverty, insecure tenure, and weak governance. Geospatial assessments converge on consistent flood hotspots. Adaptation remains dominated by fragmented structural works, with flagship engineering such as Eko Atlantic City critiqued as maladaptive, while ecosystem-based, institutional, and community-led measures are under-resourced but promising. The review shows that effective adaptation in Lagos requires moving beyond protective grey infrastructure toward integrated, equity-centred, and transformative pathways, and it offers a conceptual framework to guide such integration and to direct future research.

Urban Vulnerability, Climate Adaptation, Recurrent Flooding, Sea-Level Rise

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