Abstract
The draining of Lake Chad is today considered by many a symbol of the impacts of climate change in the African continent, and of the nexus between environment and security. Located in the Sahel region, between the mid 1960s and the mid 1980s, Lake Chad lost approximately 90% of its total surface water area. This adversely affected the economic and food security of the basin’s communities, in turn fostering instability, fragility, and violence in the region.
This paper aims at describing the linkages among environmental threats and violence in the Lake Chad Basin, especially stressing how the two are tied together in a vicious circle where violence undermines the capacity to cope with climate change, but at the same time climate change makes it harder to address conflicts and foment violence.
The Nexus between Climate Change and Security
In the past decades, the climate change-security nexus has received significant attention by the academic literature. Notably, the interest in the securitization of environmental factors emerged with the end of the Cold War, when the traditional concept of national security - understood as the protection of territorial integrity and political sovereignty - was expanded to non-conventional threats, including resource scarcity and environmental degradation (Renner, 2004). In the following years, several governments and IOs elevated environmental issues to the forefront of their security agendas, and the academic literature on environment and conflicts started to grow.
Nowadays, although scholars agree on the existence of linkages among environmental challenges and violence, studies and empirical evidence have so far failed to demonstrate that climate change is a direct cause of conflict. Nevertheless, the consensus of the academic literature is growing around the view that if environmental factors do not directly spark conflicts, they act as threat multipliers, interacting and exacerbating existing vulnerabilities. More specifically, climate change has been identified as “a threat to global security” (Lavietes, 2020), “a threat multiplier” (UN, 2019), and an “accelerator of fragility” (UN Development Program, 2017). In general, thus, the core idea is that when climate change converges with other economic, social, and political challenges, it can increase the likelihood of conflict (Nagarajan et al., 2018).
In order to understand the correlation existing between environmental factors and security, three considerations have to be addressed. First of all, environmental challenges can threaten human security by reducing the access or the quality of vital natural resources, such as freshwater, arable lands, forests and fisheries. It is indeed widely acknowledged that the impacts of climate change, coupled with rapid demographic growth, undermine the access to vital resources needed to sustain human livelihood. This in turn heavily affects food, water, health, and economic security of the population. Second of all, by adversely affecting human security, the impacts of climate change increase fragility, violence and, in the worst cases, may lead to conflict. As a matter of fact, insecurity leads to social discontent, instability, insurrections, and local rivalry for the access to limited resources. Lastly, it is important to consider that climate change can also undermine the capacity of states to act in ways that promote development and peace. As a matter of fact, the fragility and conflicts fomented by environmental threats affect states and communities’ ability not only to cope with the impacts of climate change itself, but also to efficiently address other economic, social, political, and security challenges (Koubi, 2019).
Case Study: The Lake Chad Basin
- The Drastic Draining of Lake Chad’s Water Resources
The draining of Lake Chad is today one of the most discernable symbols of the impacts of climate change in the African continent, and of the nexus between environment and security. Located in the hearth of the Sahel region, between the mid 1960s and the mid 1980s, Lake Chad lost approximately 90% of its total surface water area, equivalent to the size of 4,200 American football stadiums. If initially the cause of this rapid depletion was solely attributed to the unsustainable exploitation of the lake’s water resources, recent studies showed that the amount of water that was extracted for human activities was negligible compared to the lake volume change (Pham-Duc, Sylvestre, Papa, et al., 2020). As a matter of fact, while the construction of massive irrigation facilities and impoundments contributed to the draining of the lake, recent studies found intermittent droughts and the decrease in the number of large rainfall events as the main factors responsible for adversely affecting the lake’s volume, since they drastically reduced the flow of its feeder rivers. Although in the following years more favorable precipitation events in the Sahel region allowed the lake’s water levels to slightly recover, today its surface water area still accounts for 80% less than in the mid 1960s (Jedwab et al., 2021).
Before the drastic draining of its water resources, Lake Chad was the 11th largest lake in the world and the 4th in Africa. The importance of Lake Chad’s resources is indisputable: being located in the semi-arid region of the Sahara Desert, the lake has always been a vital source of fresh water directly supporting the livelihood of more than 20 million people coming from Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria (Onuoha, 2019). The four riparian states have always heavily depended on the resources of the basin that support economic activities such as fishing, agriculture, and pastoralism. Notably, up until the mid 1960s-70s, fishing activities on Lake Chad were prosperous since fishermen could count on a large variety of species and a rich annual fish catch, while the lake also provided water and grazing lands for pastoralists and herders. Moreover, the lake served as a key source of freshwater for drinking, irrigation, and sanitation. However, the draining of the lake’s waters has dramatically altered the resources of the basin and disrupted both its aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem. This situation aggravated further as a result of the rapid demographic growth that has put even more pressure on the increasingly scarce resources of Lake Chad. Indeed, between 1960 and 1990, the number of people living in the basin has doubled together with the total demand for the lake’s resources (Coe & Foley, 2001).
- Lake Chad Basin’s Security Context
The Lake Chad Basin is characterized by low socio-economic development indicators, low education levels, high poverty and government neglect. The interplay of all these factors has historically had dramatic impacts on the wellbeing of the region’s communities, which currently suffer from one of the worst humanitarian crises of the African continent. Today, more than 11 million people need humanitarian assistance, and one in three families is food insecure (UN, 2020).
The strong social-political grievance sparked by this situation has been a decisive factor contributing to the rise and reinforcement of violent non-state actors. In this regard, today, one of the main security threats of the Lake Chad Basin is represented by Jama’atu Ahlis Sunnah Lida’awati Wal Jihad (JAS), a Nigerian armed opposition group that emerged to protest corruption and inequality, and to advocate for a more Islamic way of life. The group soon turned to violence to meet its aims, especially conducting targeted killings’ campaigns firstly against government officials and security personnel, but then also against all civilians that opposed them. Commonly known also as Boko Haram, over the years, JAS has been able to grow stronger and to recruit soldiers by exploiting the vulnerability of local communities and their discontent about lack of jobs, food and opportunities. The group has by now also spread all over the basin, violently declaring control over several territories, and damaging key structures, such as hospitals, roads, and schools (Vivekananda, 2019). Apart from Boko Haram, it is important to stress that the region has been also characterized by other conflict dynamics. For instance, in Cameroon there was an escalation of insecurity in the form violence against Anglo-Saxon activists by security forces, bomb blasts, and the proclamation of independence of Ambazonia by secessionist groups, while in Chad there have been frequent clashes between farmers and nomads for land use rights and access to water resources (ICG, 2016).
Overall, across the Lake Chad Basin, the constant confrontation between armed groups, like Boko Haram, and security forces have created a lot of challenges to the development efforts of the region, obstructing the capacity of governments to address their countries’ issues and reducing the resilience of the populations. As a matter of fact, the conflict has led to social tensions, rivalry over the control of economic activities, and to a loss in the trust in political structures. (Adam, 2016). In this context, climate change is adding up by acting as a threat multiplier, further exacerbating the vulnerability of the basin’s communities.
- Framing The Nexus between Climate Change and Violence
As shown in the first section of this analysis, although there is still no evidence that environmental factors directly spark conflicts, the recent academic literature has theorized the existence of a strong correlation between climate-driven fragility and episodes of violence. In particular, what the literature on the climate change-security nexus suggests is that most of these conflicts are resource-driven (Moran, et al., 2018). The case of Lake Chad is an accurate example in this regard. As a matter of fact, considering that its resources have always been a vital support to the wellbeing and the economic livelihood of the populations of four riparian states, now that the lake’s surface has drastically shrunk, the economic and food security of the whole region is being adversely affected, in turn fostering instability, fragility and violence. To confirm this thesis, in 2021, the World Bank conducted a study attempting to analyze whether climate change in the Lake Chad Basin had any effects on violence and found the distribution of conflicts in the region to be correlated with environmental factors. In particular, the study found that higher-than-usual temperatures and greenness anomalies have a positive effect on conflict intensity and incidence (Jedwab et al., 2021).
Across the Lake Chad Basin, climate change and violence are tied together in a vicious circle where violence undermines the capacity to cope with climate change, but at the same time climate change makes it harder to address conflicts and foment violence. The dynamics of how this manifests are very complex.
Firstly, by heavily affecting the livelihood of the basin’s communities, environmental threats and resource scarcity encourage different conflict-prone dynamics. One of them is conflict around natural resources, especially land and water. Although this phenomenon is not new in the basin, recent studies show that with the shrinking of Lake Chad, local pastoralists, fishermen and farmers have increasingly acted as occupational groups, competing and, in some cases, even violently clashing among themselves to access the scarce resources (Onuoha, 2019). Such incidents occur even among communities pursuing the same livelihood activities. For instance, in Niger and Chad, there have been violent clashes between pastoralists of different ethnic groups in search of water (Vivekananda, 2019). Then, another phenomenon that was aggravated by the impacts of climate change and that has contributed to increasing the insecurity of the region is human displacement. As a matter of fact, with the region already facing a surge in demographic growth, the increase in the number of migrants and refugees has increased pressure in areas that are already resource-stressed. Studies have estimated that today the four riparian countries host more than 2.5 million displaced individuals plus many others that come from outside the basin (OCHA, 2019). The dramatic surge in the number of displaced people, by increasing the pressure on the limited resources of the basin, has aggravated the vulnerability of some groups, and it has in turn fostered further competition and violence between host communities. One direct consequence of the increased vulnerability of Lake Chad’s communities is recruitment by non-state armed groups. As a matter of fact, although climate change does not directly lead to higher recruitment rates, the challenges created by environmental threats adversely affect populations’ livelihood insecurity and economic perspectives. This is in turn exploited by non-state actors that encourage people to join their groups by offering valuable economic alternatives (Nagarajan, 2018).
Secondly, if environmental threats act as a multiplier of violence, it is also important to consider that this increased violence in turn affects the existing abilities of states and communities to cope with the impacts of climate change itself, as well as to promote development and peace (Vivekananda et al., 2019). For instance, in the past, populations that faced restrictions to the basin’s resources because of different conflict actors used to address the issue by shifting livelihood (growing different crops, mix farming, fishing and pastoralism) or moving to new areas. However, with the shrinking of the lake, this strategy has become less and less feasible. At the same time, the increased variability in the annual precipitation patterns has made the pursuit of traditional livelihood activities increasingly complex. In addition, violence and conflicts have undermined the resilience of the basin by affecting the cohesion within and between different communities and the governments, by increasing mistrust and suspicion. This brings serious repercussions on cooperation, as well as on the abilities of both governments and communities to cope with environmental and security threats and to promote development and peace (Nagarajan, 2018).
Conclusions
Today the Lake Chad Basin is contributing to a severe humanitarian crisis, caused by the complex interaction of different risk factors, including government neglect, low socio-economic development, high poverty, and the presence of violent non-state actors. In this context, resource scarcity stands as a variable that is affecting the region’s pre-existing political, economic, and social fragilities, and, by doing so, it is also fomenting local rivalry and violence. Indeed, although climate change itself is not acknowledged as a direct cause of conflict, the paper has highlighted how environmental factors – especially resource scarcity –, by heavenly impacting the livelihood of Lake Chad’s communities, are generating different conflict-prone dynamics.
As the impacts of climate change are expected to persist – if not aggravate – in the future, it is important to consider that also the conflict-prone dynamics that were described in this analysis could further intensify. As a matter of fact, if Lake Chad’s vital resources continue to shrink, local competition and pressure over access to them will increase, more people will be displaced, and recruitment by non-state armed groups will also probably increase. Altogether, these factors are likely to foment rivalry among local communities, in turn negatively affecting their mutual trust and threatening peace in the region. This increased fragility will have detrimental impacts not only on the governments’ efforts to cope with environmental threats themselves, but also to bring about effective development policies.
Thus, considering Lake Chad’s climate-induced risks altogether, they create a self-enforcing loop between livelihood insecurity, climate change, and conflict. As a matter of fact, climate change negatively affects livelihood and exacerbates pressure over scarce resources, while at the same time, conflict and violence undermines the resilience of local communities making them more vulnerable to climate change. If not broken, this vicious circle threatens to persist in the future, further obstructing development, stability, and peace. For this reason, it is of paramount importance that any future effort towards stabilization, peace and development also takes into account how climate change will impact the future dynamics of the region.
Bibliography
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