Weather Report: The Current State of the Climate Change-Refugee Nexus
A look at the realities of climate change the UN Refugee Agency’s operations in Africa face today.
By Amy Lynn Smith — Independent Writer + Strategist
You can hear it in their voices. They talk about the impact of climate change on the people in Chad and Maiduguri, Borno State, Nigeria, with a sense of urgency, sometimes sharp and edgy.
At times, they’re somber and troubled. At others, they’re on the verge of outrage, holding back frustration about the inevitability of what they see.
They’re worried, and with good reason. Climate change is making life increasingly hard for everyone in what’s becoming known as climate change hot spots — residents, refugee returnees, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are all suffering. But to those who are living there, the fact that authorities are declaring these “hot spots” isn’t news. It’s been their reality for some time now.
“Climate change is real,” says Abdulrahman Usman Bukar, a former Senior Program Assistant for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Sub-office in Borno State. “But they have so many other challenges in front of them — insecurity, displacement — that it’s becoming more like a day-to-day activity. They don’t even know it’s climate change.”
The situation is dire, no question. But UNHCR is developing strategies to address the challenges created by the climate change-refugee nexus — recognizing it as integral to its mandate. The solutions won’t come easily, but the people working on behalf of IDPs and refugees aren’t giving up easily, either.
Borno State: Approaching a boiling point
If you were to visit Borno State, Nigeria, and the surrounding areas, you’d recognize just how perilous the situation is for the people living there. Temperatures are rising as high as 40 to 45 degrees Celsius (104 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit) — mid-boiling point, Bukar says. The excruciating heat not only makes daily life almost unbearable, it makes it extremely difficult for people to tend their crops or livestock, if they even have usable land at this point. Needless to say, the extreme heat also makes it challenging for UNHCR personnel to assist those in need.
The fortunate people are those living in permanent residences where there’s some escape from the heat. But those living in temporary shelters or settlements get little relief.
The heat is just the beginning. Where there was once five good months of rainfall a year, now there are barely three, creating semi-arid or arid environments and Saharas where there was once arable land for farming and raising livestock. Obviously, this has negatively impacted food production, and is driving conflicts over arable land and water. According to Bukar, Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states all face a significant nexus of existing conflict with the increasingly harsh realities of climate change.
Borno in particular is vulnerable to famine because of intermittent droughts and deforestation: People need to cut down trees for firewood to cook, but the land is no longer suitable for growing new trees to replace them the way it once was. This is advancing widespread forced migration, Bukar says, into Cameroon or other parts of the Lake Chad region. But unfortunately, there’s restriction on movement, because if people stray too far from the zone where they live, they’re no longer protected and run the risk of being attacked or killed. So people are forced to live in one small area that’s still arable, but where resources are diminishing.
Although Bukar says the primary reason for displacement is insecurity in the region, climate change is only making matters worse, forcing people to relocate to areas where the impacts of climate change are a little less harsh.
But anywhere you go in Nigeria, there’s no escaping climate change. If there aren’t extreme temperatures, semi-arid land, or water shortages, there’s too much rainfall and flooding that’s forced people out of their homes. The wealthy can afford to buy their way out of rising heat, floods, and extreme hunger, leaving the most vulnerable behind to suffer circumstances no one should have to endure. UNHCR had to erect shelters for 300 households in August 2019 — totaling about 1,000 people — who were uprooted due to a flood in Ngamdu, Kaga LGA, about 150 kilometers from Borno. But at least UNHCR was able to help the people who needed assistance the most.
The human toll of climate change
Most of the work Bukar does is with IDPs, who are often living in IDP settlements and host communities. Unfortunately, UNHCR does not have a full mandate on IDP situations, because IDPs are the full responsibility of the state government. Still, UNHCR is doing everything possible to make sure people get the resources they need through the government or other humanitarian organizations on the ground. UNHCR’s personnel in the field are bringing hope to people who have every reason to feel a sense of hopelessness.
However the need is nothing short of desperate. For example, the international standard of water for people to live safely, especially in areas with extreme high temperatures, is 25 liters per day. Many people Bukar works with are lucky to get 10 to 15 liters a day, so that’s one problem UNHCR is working with the government and other agencies to solve.
Health is another significant concern. The high temperatures have prompted outbreaks of diseases such as meningitis and cholera, not to mention dehydration-induced heat strokes and heat exhaustion, all of which tend to be worse for low-income people, older adults, women, and children. The resources to provide health care are stretched too thin, making it difficult to ensure that everyone is getting the treatment they need — especially in settlements or shelters that have become overcrowded, making outbreaks of disease are even more likely.
Bukar says UNHCR and other agencies are doing everything possible to erect more shelters to decongest living conditions, but the extreme weather conditions in the area make even the simplest of tasks a challenge.
“We’re trying to educate people about ways to protect themselves and their health, and we can’t even find enough people to listen to us, because there aren’t shelters where you can just sit down and do any sensitization and awareness-raising sessions,” Bukar explains. “This really impacts the working situation for UNHCR staff and other agencies. Plus, resources are just overstretched.”
Although the UN has made climate change action one of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it’s only one of many challenges to be addressed in Borno and the surrounding areas, such as eliminating conflict, insecurity, and poverty.
“Climate change intensifies displacement but also poses national security risks for Nigerians,” Bukar says. “Once national security is at risk it also tends to give way for displacement, because of the depletion of environmental resources and then the destruction of socioeconomic activities induced by climate change and extreme weather events. That only worsens the issues we already face, like inequality and unresolved conflict and even cross-border trade.”
One of the biggest challenges with climate change in Nigeria is how unpredictable it is. One region faces drought while another faces flooding, with no end in sight. It’s not only troubling to Bukar, but up to the highest levels of the UN.
“The UN Secretary General says climate change is going to be the worst crisis the world has ever seen — worse than any humanitarian crisis,” he says. “But we’re already facing climate change and we have to stand up and act on it now, each one of us, individually, in order to make this change happen.”
Chad: Drought-driven displacement and conflict
Chad, where Lake Chad sits on the border with Nigeria, is facing similarly difficult and varying weather conditions, ranging from green pastures to the south to a virtual Sahara to the north. It’s also an area where UNHCR is doing everything possible to help mitigate the impact on the people living in the region.
The area surrounding Lake Chad is especially hard hit, says Edward O’Dwyer, Deputy Representative for Protection in Chad. It’s not a new phenomenon, but Lake Chad has been receding for quite a while now, and it’s just getting worse, forcing people to move elsewhere to survive.
“You can talk to older people here who remember when boats were moored along the lake,” O’Dwyer says. “Now you can see where the lake used to be, where the roots of the palm trees are exposed and you can see the trace of where the lake once was. The water has receded maybe 60 to 70 kilometers from where it was, just in the last 30 years.”
So even in the absence of conflict, he says, people were forced to move to seek livelihoods on the islands: They followed the water for fishing, agriculture, and land. But when the conflict with Boko Haram and extremists came into play in those areas, the people who followed the water to seek livelihoods had to return to their original homes for their own safety.
“They still have an attachment to that land, but there’s nothing there,” O’Dwyer says. “There’s only sand, and without water it’s very hard to make a living. So climate change has impacted Chadians and IDPs, and is causing displacement and insecurity for populations around Lake Chad.”
It’s also been a source of conflict in some cases. Ranchers as well as farmers are following the water — and sometimes fighting over it, he says, to the extent that there was an intercommunity conflict in one part of the country that resulted in the deaths of 100 people.
O’Dwyer says the receding waters of Lake Chad have had a massive impact on everything: wildlife, livelihoods, and even the health and well-being of the people who live in the region. Although the country’s population is relatively small, it faces great socio-economic hardships and simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to support its level of growth and development.
“You have structural problems in everything from education to health — and when we talk about health we’re talking about high levels of malnutrition, which is especially harmful for children because it stymies their entire development as people,” O’Dwyer explains. “Population growth in Africa is rampant and people are moving into the cities, but it’s happening faster than the development, making it a challenge to manage people’s well-being.”
Searching for solutions
UNHCR and its humanitarian partners are working diligently to develop solutions to meet the needs of Chadians — including IDPs — and refugees, such as the Sudanese who fled Darfur beginning in 2003. The refugee and IDP situation in Chad has been going on for so long, O’Dwyer says that donors are increasingly less interested in providing assistance, feeling like people of concern should be more self-sufficient by now.
In some parts of Chad, refugees are integrating well into their host communities — which is a positive sign it could happen elsewhere — but the northern part of the country offers less opportunity for self-sufficiency because, as O’Dwyer describes it, “There isn’t even a blade of grass growing,” because the land has become so arid.
With less funding, there’s no longer as much food or water to distribute, and humanitarian aid agencies are having to make some nearly impossible decisions.
“We have to target based on vulnerabilities and potential for being self-sufficient: Who should get food now and who shouldn’t?” O’Dwyer explains.
UNHCR and its partners have had to conduct massive socio-economic profiling of the population to make these decisions about potential self-sufficiency. People living in the south and, to some degree, the east, still have a green belt they can live on. But progressing to the north, it becomes increasingly difficult to make the case that anyone can be self-sufficient.
In the northern areas of Chad, which are semi- or fully arid — and the potential for the land to produce anything is extremely limited, if not non-existent — the refugees categorically refused to listen to any approach to socio-economic profiling.
Unfortunately, says O’Dwyer, there’s really no local plan in place yet to address the complex challenges of access to arable land and water management, let alone education and making sure people have enough to eat. All of this is compounded by the fact that the climate is wildly unpredictable and extreme.
“It’s quite bizarre that last year there was too little rain and this year there’s too much rain,” O’Dwyer says. “The minerals and anything that would nurture food has been washed away. You can’t even grow a daisy in some places, so something has to be done structurally to bring life back in there.”
Although Chad must solve many of its own problems internally, the UN is working to improve living conditions for everyone in the Sahel, which encompasses 10 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal. The goal is to scale up efforts to accelerate shared prosperity and lasting peace in the region. One of the priority areas of the UN Support Plan for the Sahel is building resilience to climate change and decreasing natural resource scarcity, malnutrition, and food insecurity. The plan also includes preventing conflicts and eliminating violent extremism as well as promoting inclusive, equitable growth.
“There are a lot of good ideas in this strategy that could benefit the entire region, including clean energy initiatives and getting back to basics with agriculture that could benefit the planet,” O’Dwyer says. “But we need to get it financed and move ahead with it very quickly.”
