Climate change is increasingly recognised as a threat multiplier in fragile contexts, amplifying pre-existing tensions and exacerbating risks of violent conflict. In Africa, where millions depend on climate-sensitive livelihoods, environmental stress converges with weak governance, poverty, and insecurity to create highly volatile conditions. Nowhere is this dynamic more visible than in northern Nigeria, where desertification, erratic rainfall, and the shrinking of Lake Chad have profoundly altered the socio-economic landscape.
This environmental crisis has fuelled resource competition between farmers and pastoralist herders. Competition of scarce arable land and grazing routes has fuelled recurring violent clashes, particularly in states such as Benue, Plateau, and Kaduna. The International Crisis Group highlights that these conflicts now claim more lives annually than the Boko Haram insurgency. At the same time, climate-induced displacement and livelihood insecurity have provided fertile ground for extremist groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), which exploit local grievances to expand recruitment and territorial influence.
While the Nigerian government has launched initiatives such as grazing reserves and the Great Green Wall Project (African Union Great Green Wall), their effectiveness remains limited due to poor implementation, governance deficits, and escalating insecurity. Understanding how climate change intersects with violent conflict in northern Nigeria is therefore critical for shaping climate-sensitive peacebuilding strategies, enhancing resilience, and informing regional security responses.
Environmental stress and resource competition
Environmental stress and resource competition in northern Nigeria represent one of the most pressing contemporary security challenges facing the Sahel region, where extensive cultivation and overgrazing have been compounded by desertification, rendering large swaths of land in northern Nigeria unproductive. The degradation of natural resources has created a cascading crisis that extends far beyond environmental concerns to encompass questions of human security, social cohesion, and state stability. Climate change has emerged as a critical threat multiplier in this context, with temperatures rising 1.5 times faster than the global average across the broader Sahel region, intensifying existing vulnerabilities and creating new sources of conflict.
The most visible manifestation of this environmental crisis is the escalating conflict between farmers and herders, which has claimed more lives than the Boko Haram insurgency and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Since the Sahelian drought of the 1970s and 1980s, increased migration of herders into the humid forest zone of West Africa has caused a massive increase in the frequency of farmer-herder conflict. This migration pattern reflects deeper environmental changes occurring in northern Nigeria, where 350,000 sq km of the arid northern regions have turned to desert or nearly desert conditions, and this condition is progressing toward the south annually at a 0.6 km rate. The environmental drivers of this crisis are multifaceted, encompassing both climate-induced changes and human activities that have accelerated environmental degradation.
The Lake Chad Basin exemplifies how environmental stress creates security vulnerabilities on a regional scale. Lake Chad has shrunk by more than 90% since the 1960s due to overuse, mismanagement, and climate change, creating severe socio-economic impacts that extend across Nigeria, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. This dramatic reduction in water resources has disrupted traditional livelihoods, forcing communities to compete for increasingly scarce resources and creating conditions that extremist groups like Boko Haram have exploited for recruitment. The interconnected nature of these challenges demonstrates how environmental stress operates as a catalyst for broader security concerns, linking local resource scarcity to regional instability and transnational security threats.
The economic dimensions of environmental stress in Northern Nigeria are equally significant, as the region’s agricultural productivity faces mounting pressures from both climate change and demographic growth. On average, over 409,700 hectares of forest are lost per year in Nigeria, contributing to a feedback loop where deforestation accelerates climate impacts, which in turn intensify resource competition. Research indicates that a key driver of clashes between Nigerian farmers and herders is climate-induced migration of herders seeking grazing sites, highlighting how environmental stress transforms traditional livelihood strategies and social relationships. These changes have profound implications for food security, as both crop production and livestock rearing face increasing constraints, potentially affecting national and regional food systems in a country with a rapidly growing population that relies heavily on agricultural productivity for both sustenance and economic stability.
The link between climate vulnerability and violent extremism
The complex relationship between climate vulnerability and violent extremism in northern Nigeria reveals how environmental degradation creates strategic opportunities for groups like Boko Haram and ISWAP to exploit local grievances and expand their territorial control. While research shows no direct link between poverty and Boko Haram, and no clear evidence that climate change directly drives such groups, the reality is far more nuanced. Climate-induced stress acts as a threat multiplier that exacerbates existing socio-economic vulnerabilities, creating conditions that extremist organisations systematically exploit. Climate change is reducing the economic prospects of young men in this part of Africa and making them more susceptible to recruitment by violent extremists, reflecting broader patterns where economic desperation intersects with ideological manipulation.
The complex relationship between climate vulnerability and violent extremism in northern Nigeria reveals how environmental degradation creates strategic opportunities for groups like Boko Haram and ISWAP to exploit local grievances and expand their territorial control
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The Lake Chad Basin exemplifies how environmental stress becomes a recruitment tool for violent extremists. Youth constitute 60% of the LCB population, and many have turned to criminality as traditional livelihoods collapse due to environmental degradation. On the island of Koulfoua, Chief of the Canton, Mahamat Ali Kongoi said a near-total lack of economic development has made the area fertile ground for extremist recruitment. The shrinking of Lake Chad has triggered a cascade of socio-economic problems that insurgent groups exploit. Boko Haram, in particular, has fuelled distrust in local institutions by providing socio-economic support to the population. This strategy is particularly effective because the group offers tangible benefits that struggling communities cannot access through legitimate channels, reportedly paying its fighters regularly and providing economic support for the widows and children of those killed.
Displacement and poverty created by environmental change fundamentally alter the social fabric in ways that benefit insurgent recruitment strategies. More than 3 million people have been displaced across the Lake Chad Basin, creating large populations of vulnerable individuals who lack traditional community support structures and economic opportunities. The displacement crisis in the northeast has multiple dimensions. In Borno alone, where 1.9 million people have been displaced, insurgent groups like Boko Haram have exploited the lack of livelihoods to recruit fighters. Climate-induced displacement often drives people into areas where state presence is weak and extremist groups exert control, creating captive populations that are both vulnerable to recruitment and unable to escape militant influence.
Climate-induced displacement often drives people into areas where state presence is weak and extremist groups exert control, creating captive populations that are both vulnerable to recruitment and unable to escape militant influence
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The territorial dimension of extremist exploitation of climate vulnerability demonstrates how environmental stress can facilitate broader insurgent strategies that extend beyond simple recruitment. Local residents and researchers say that climate change also fosters conflict in the Lake Chad region, as extreme hunger pushes people to begin fishing and farming in areas controlled by extremists. This dynamic allows groups like ISWAP to position themselves as de facto authorities in areas abandoned by the state, collecting taxes, providing services, and controlling access to remaining natural resources. ISWAP is portraying itself as a guardian against abuses perpetrated by local chiefs, the gendarmerie, and custom managers, which have undermined the government’s reputation. The group’s ability to exploit governance failures in climate-stressed areas creates a self-reinforcing cycle where environmental degradation weakens state capacity, extremist groups fill the vacuum, and their presence further destabilises the region, creating additional displacement and economic hardship that fuels continued recruitment and territorial expansion.
Abraham Ename Minko is a senior researcher and policy analyst in Peace, Security, and Conflict Resolution.
