Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet: Lake Chad (2026)

This Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet is focused on the Lake Chad region and the series of conflict- and climate-related issues that face the region. The fact sheet offers a range of recommended actions for the international community to address these issues effectively.

The ongoing insecurity in the Lake Chad region—which intersects Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria—cannot be understood in isolation from climate and environmental change. Climate change-related stressors—such as increasingly variable precipitation and drought—contribute to existing tension and conflict between different communities by exacerbating scarcity of natural resources, including land, water and food. Such pressures amplify the tensions between local community members, refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), and between livelihood groups such as arable farmers, fishers and pastoralists. Through its destabilizing impacts on livelihoods, climate change can further increase vulnerability to recruitment by violent extremist organizations, such as Boko Haram and Islamic State–West Africa Province (ISWAP) and other unidentified armed groups and bandit networks, that operate throughout the region.