The lives and livelihoods of local communities in the borderlands of the Lake Chad Basin are disrupted by both climate change and conflict, which are mutually reinforcing. Conflict undermines social cohesion and public trust and degrades the ability of communities to adapt to the effects of climate change. At the same time, climate change adds additional stresses on food, land and water security, reinforcing the political and socioeconomic conditions that drive armed conflict. In the context of a long history of marginalisation, underdevelopment and weak governance in the region, this conflux can drive people to turn to armed groups in search of alternative governance structures, economic incentives and spiritual and social dignity and meaning.
Over the past decade, countries in the Lake Chad Basin have adopted a regional approach to respond to these developments. We conducted research to gain insights into how these countries have come together to try to improve stability, resilience and recovery in the face of climate-related threats to peace and security.
A regional strategy for stabilisation, resilience and recovery
In 2018, Cameroon, Chad Niger and Nigeria adopted a Regional Strategy for the Stabilisation, Recovery and Resilience of the Boko Haram-Affected Areas of the Lake Chad Basin Region (RS-SRR). The first phase of the strategy ended in 2024 and a new adjusted strategy is being implemented from 2025-2030. This regional approach is a multi-stakeholder effort driven by the governors of the territories bordering the Lake Chad Basin along with traditional leaders and civil society. Other stakeholders at the national, regional and international levels provide political, technical and financial support. The strategy is complemented by a regional security cooperation agreement, the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF). The RS-SRR and MNJTF aim to address both the symptoms and the underlying drivers of instability through a joint, holistic approach. The United Nations (UN) and a number of donor partners are supporting the strategy via a Regional Stabilisation Facility, which is a financial and implementation mechanism designed to deliver rapid support to stabilisation, recovery and resilience; rebuild trust; and restore services in conflict-affected regions. The World Bank’s Lake Chad Region Recovery and Development Project also contributes to implementing the strategy.
Our initial rapid evidence assessment found that the first phase of the RS-SRR achieved a significant political milestone by bringing together political, humanitarian, development, civil society and community actors to develop a shared understanding of the problem and adopt a common strategy.
Our initial rapid evidence assessment found that the first phase of the RS-SRR achieved a significant political milestone by bringing together political, humanitarian, development, civil society and community actors to develop a shared understanding of the problem and adopt a common strategy
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It was impressive in its ambition to address the underlying drivers of the instability holistically. It managed to link local communities and civil society with provincial authorities, national governments, sub-regional organisations, the African Union AU) and international partners. It has contributed to the revitalisation of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) – a body established by the countries in the region to manage Lake Chad and the sustainable use of its resources – and, more broadly, helped to mobilise regional commitment to cooperate in resolving shared challenges. One only has to compare the RS-SRR with attempts to establish similar initiatives in the Great Lakes or Horn of Africa to understand how unique the Lake Chad regional strategy is. This is because of the way the RS-SRR is anchored at the level of governors, traditional leaders and civil society, as well as in its ability to mobilise political, security and financial support across the regional, the AU, UN, international financial institutions (IFIs) and other international partners.
The strategy has also contributed to security and enabled broader stabilisation and recovery. We found that the activities of the regional programmes implemented under the strategy facilitated the construction of road infrastructure, rehabilitation of state facilities and renovation of basic facilities like schools, hospitals, marketplaces and other infrastructure that were damaged or abandoned due to the activities of Boko Haram. The recovery projects undertaken under the auspices of the strategy have also helped bring some refugees and internally displaced people back to areas where relative stability has improved.
In addition, the regional programmes helped improve humanitarian access to the affected areas, despite some disruptions to aid delivery, which contributed to better data for early-warning systems. Overall, the strategy has demonstrated how regional-level funding and financing facilities can help stabilise regions that are often neglected, while bringing more international and regional attention.
The missing link to climate
At the same time, the effort, energy and funding have not been sufficient to make a significant impact on local communities across the region. In essence, while it was the right strategy, it ultimately lacks adequate scale, reach, and scope.
This is in part because the strategy has not given sufficient attention to the influence of climate change on insecurity in the region. Local communities experience the effects of climate change, such as flooding and desertification, as having a severe impact on their ability to sustain their livelihoods. Climate change has reduced agricultural productivity, and some extreme weather events have eroded livelihood systems. This has contributed to unemployment, particularly among youth. Women and girls have been disproportionately affected, spending more time sourcing water, food and fuel under increasingly difficult conditions, which in turn affects household stability.
The climate–conflict nexus in the Lake Chad Basin is not a simple story of climate causing conflict; it is a more complex and multidimensional interaction of stressors. Climate-related livelihood shocks reduce household coping capacity. Scarcity and displacement increase competition over land and water. Insecurity and weak governance enable opportunistic violence and criminality. The compounding effects create an environment where local disputes over grazing routes, farmland boundaries, water points, markets or services can escalate rapidly, especially where mediation capacity is weak or where youth feel excluded from employment opportunities. Together, insecurity and climate change heighten the vulnerability of affected populations, in some cases resulting in maladaptation, leading people to engage in smuggling and other criminal activities or to join armed groups as a coping behaviour.
To address these shortcomings, resilience and recovery strategies should explicitly prioritise the restoration of adaptive productive capacities such as farming, fishing, herding and small trading. In the Lake Chad Basin, such capacities often depend on the management of a variety of natural resources. Without access to productive assets, households remain vulnerable to climate stress and displacement even where violence has declined.
We found that women-led cooperatives make a critical difference in enhancing the resilience of many communities. Many women have adopted coping strategies such as mutual saving mechanisms, food sharing and other forms of mutual support, which have helped to prevent social breakdown. Integrating women’s perspectives into early-warning, dispute resolution and livelihood diversification initiatives would strengthen household and community-level resilience while addressing underlying gendered vulnerabilities.
Environmental peacebuilding through conflict-sensitive natural resource management – especially water access and control – should also be an important aspect of the strategy. Government and implementing partners should scale up support for natural resource management and local dispute resolution mechanisms in affected communities to strengthen social cohesion and societal resilience.
Environmental peacebuilding through conflict-sensitive natural resource management – especially water access and control – should also be an important aspect of the strategy
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Positioning climate change at the core of the strategy’s analysis and placing livelihood resilience and adaptive productive capacity at the centre of its theory of change on conflict prevention and stabilisation could reenergise the second phase of the strategy. They could also make it more relevant to both the population of the region and the stakeholders involved in its implementation and generate new opportunities for networking and mobilising resources.
There are a number of lessons we can draw from the Lake Chad experience that may be useful guiderails for other regions suffering from climate related insecurity. First, a shared vision or strategy is necessary but is not sufficient. To generate impact a strategy needs to be anchored politically at the local to regional level, and it needs mechanisms to mobilise resources and coordinate, track and assess implementation to facilitate iterative adaptation. Secondly, security actions need to be integrated with a holistic multi-sectoral approach that is anchored in community resilience, not state security. Third, security gains are not sustainable if communities are not able to live with dignity. Resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related stress on livelihoods and related cultural practices are thus critical for any strategy that aims to achieve and sustain stability.
Cedric de Coning, Andrew E. Yaw Tchie and Thor Olav Iversen are researchers at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Freedom Onuoha is at the University of Nigeria-Nsukka and Saibou Issa is at the University of Maroua.
This article was first published in the Global Observatory on 24 June 2026.
The Managing Climate, Peace and Security Risks in the Borderlands of the Lake Chad Region (CPS-Lake Chad) project is supported by the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme, and is funded by the UK International Development of the UK government.
Figure 1: Climate-hazard, political violence fatalities and internally displaced persons
Source: Climate hazards correspond to the accumulation of droughts, heatwaves, heavy precipitation, wildfires, floods and tropical cyclones over 7 years (2019-2025). Political violence includes battles, explosions and remote violence, riots, and violence against civilians. Graphics by: Jules Duhamel
