Violent Extremism in the Shadows of Climate Change: The Case of Lake Chad and Boko Haram

Resource scarcity, instability, and violent extremist groups are becoming undeniably–yet indirectly–linked and have significant implications for West Africa. Research from scholars like Thomas Homer-Dixon has already reported a causative effect of environmental scarcity on increasing violent conflict. The people in the Sahel region heavily depend on subsistence-based lifestyles which are subject to rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and the sustainability of resources like Lake Chad. The reliance on these environmental elements, and the compounding effects of climate change, have made the region more vulnerable to instability. With weak governance that is unable to support local populations in this resource-scarce environment, existing violent extremist groups, notably Boko Haram and its factions, take advantage of the vacuum created by instability. Insurgent groups may leverage tensions sparked by environmental insecurity to justify their dissatisfaction with the current government system and persuade new members to join their cause with false promises of a better life. While climate change does not directly create or sustain terrorist groups, the climate crisis does worsen the living conditions for the local population, which allows extremist groups to take advantage of the instability, bolster the legitimacy of their cause, and recruit new members. 

Climate Change Impacts in the Sahel Region

Climate change has visible impacts across the globe, but, as a whole, the African continent faces the disproportionate brunt of the effects of climate change, including increasing temperatures and extreme climate events. Sitting between Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon, Lake Chad has been a symbol of the environmental degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Lake is vital to the region’s economy, with more than 20 million people relying on it for fishing, agriculture, and pastoralism. Many in the region use Lake Chad to support subsistence-based lifestyles, in which only basic needs are met through traditional methods of food production. These ways of life are imperiled by climate change, exposing the most vulnerable to even greater risks.  

In 2018, the United Nations Environment Programme released an article titled “The tale of a disappearing lake” which reported the alarming statistic that Lake Chad has shrunk by 90% since the 1960s. In subsequent reports about Lake Chad, satellite images of the changes in the size and water supply of the lake were used to call attention to the environmental crisis, and often cited how resource scarcity contributed to instability in the region. However, more recently, researchers found that the narrative Lake Chad is shrinking is outdated, and rather the Lake naturally fluctuates. Even if the lake does not shrink and rather fluctuates, climate change will exacerbate water scarcity issues and could have devastating consequences for the local populations. The attention and thought to the impacts of climate change on security and stability remain increasingly relevant. With millions relying on the freshwater Lake Chad provides for their livelihood, the negative impacts of climate change––whether it be increasing temperatures or extreme weather––will have an immense impact on the local population by creating a more volatile and unpredictable environment. Malicious actors can take advantage of the hardship the environmental instability may cause, and the states surrounding Lake Chad are already populated with violent insurgency and terrorist groups. This mixture of salient environmental impacts with preexisting insurgent activities creates a perfect storm, which could dramatically deteriorate the security situation in the region. 

Violent Extremist Groups by Lake Chad

The impacts of climate change are only part of the challenges to stability; violent extremist groups operate in the same, resource scarce and unstable environment. Understanding the emergence of Boko Haram and insurgent groups in the Lake Chad region requires considering the economic and social division between regions of Nigeria, where Boko Haram was first founded. Nigeria was colonized under British rule, a time period where traditional identities were challenged by the spread of Western education, Christianity, and English. Since the 1980s, poverty in Nigeria has been starkly divided by region, with the North experiencing a substantially higher rate of poverty than the South. The economic division can be attributed to several factors, including larger cities, economic resources like oil, and more universities. Alternatively, the northern states tend to invest less per citizen than the South, despite larger land mass and population size. Along this regional and economic divide, there is also a religious divide. Muslims live predominantly in the Northern part while the majority of Christians live in the South of the country. As economic differences between the regions in Nigeria became more apparent in the 1980s, it is conceivable that dissatisfaction with the quality of life in the north could cultivate dissatisfaction in the government and a feeling of resentment along  the religious divide, which then gave rise to armed insurgencies and terrorist groups.  

Boko Haram is a home-grown, Salafi-Jihadist Islamist sectarian insurgency movement in Northeastern Nigeria, just along Lake Chad. “Boko Haram” is commonly translated from the local language, Hausa, to “Western education is forbidden.” The name of the insurgent group is related to a common grievance against the imposed, post-colonial, Westernized education system, which many Muslims in the region view as incompatible with their beliefs. The ultimate goal of Boko Haram is to overthrow the Nigerian government and create a caliphate in Northeast Nigeria. While the group existed in various forms previously, it officially organized in 2002 under Mohammed Yusuf. In 2009, the group made its first substantial attempt to overthrow the Nigerian government by staging an uprising; the uprising ultimately failed after over 700 Boko Haram members died, including Yusuf who died in police custody. The failed uprising quelled attacks for only a short period before Boko Haram revived its perpetuation of violence and regional instability. Boko Haram reached international attention in 2014 after abducting 276 schoolgirls– about 90 of whom are notably still missing– which sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls movement. In 2015, the group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and rebranded under the name “Islamic State West African Province” (ISWAP), also sometimes called the “Islamic State in West Africa” (ISWA). This reorganization motivated a factional division, with some members continuing under the new name, and others reverting to Boko Haram. While the groups differ in terms of their treatment of civilians and organizational structure, they are both violent Salafi-jihadist groups that thrive on and propel instability in the region. 

Linking Climate Change and Violent Insurgency Movements in the Sahel

The impacts of climate change in the Lake Chad region affect resource scarcity, which violent extremist groups like Boko Haram take advantage of to justify their cause and legitimize their group. Environmental degradation affects local populations that rely on subsistence-based lifestyles by directly impacting and limiting their ability to provide for themselves and their community. The hardship may persuade these individuals to join extremist organizations, which offer them a sense of employment and fill the gap the government is unable to fill.  

Looking to the future, the countries surrounding Lake Chad are highly vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change; Chad is ranked the absolute most vulnerable globally at 187, followed by Niger at 185, Cameroon at 133, and Nigeria at 123. The negative impacts of climate change will ultimately contribute to resource scarcity in the region. The link between resource scarcity and violent extremism is nearly solidified by how these same counties rank in being impacted by terrorist activity. In 2024, the Global Terrorism Index recorded all four countries that border Lake Chad within the top 25 countries impacted by terrorism globally– Nigeria in the eighth spot, followed by Niger, Cameroon, and Chad in the tenth, twelfth, and twenty-first spot respectively. While correlation does not equal causation, the data paints an alarming image of instability in the Lake Chad region. The immense impacts of climate change in the Sahel region, coupled with the region’s lack of economic means, and the international community’s lack of support to respond to the root of these challenges, will continue to allow insurgency groups to feed off the current instability. 

Security in the Sahel and West Africa is a complex and multifaceted issue. Although climate change alone is not the cause of violent extremism in the region, the impact of climate change is causing significant resource scarcity, which allows for instability wherein insurgent groups can thrive. Between the impacts of both climate change and the insurgent groups is the local population. Among the four states that border Lake Chad, there are an estimated over six million affected individuals, a figure that includes internally displaced persons, returnees, and refugees. As instability in the region grows, so will the refugee population, and the economic constraint, creating a vicious cycle.  If there are neither marked improvements in the efforts to combat the impacts of climate change in the Sahel and West Africa, nor efforts to approach counterinsurgency from the lens of resource security, it is unlikely sustainable progress will be made. As the impacts of the climate crisis become more prominent globally, the international community should heed the warnings that come from the Lake Chad region and move swiftly towards cooperation in responding to the security issues holistically––resolving challenges at the root of their cause––and not only with a counterinsurgency or counterterrorism approach. 

Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: African Arguments