MITIGATING CLIMATE CHANGE THROUGH GREEN ARCHITECTURE.

Climate change is real and felt globally. Climatic factors such as intense solar radiation, high humidity and condensation, dust and sandstorms and flood affects the comfort of man and safety of built environment. Most of the climatic changes are due to human activities in the environment, particularly the built environment. These suggest that human activities and physical constituents of built environment interact with other climate drivers. These prompt the need for response,and response to climate change falls into two phases- mitigating and adaptation. Therefore, this paper discusses how climate change can be mitigated through green architecture in Nigeria. In this light, the paper will be a conceptual paper.The library research method was used in this study to gather secondary data from textbooks, articles and journals to develop a conceptual framework on how green architectural practices can be used to mitigate climate change in order to sustain built environment in Nigeria. This paper adopts the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) (2015) principles of green building and sustainable site design. It highlights climatic changes and their effects in Nigeria. It further discusses the concept and principles of green architecture. The study concludes that Nigerian built environment is vulnerable to the impact of climate change. Therefore, there is need for architects, builders, engineers and clients to promote and adopt green architectural practices in order to mitigate the effect of climate change for sustainable environment.