Attachments
OVERVIEW
Nigeria faces among the highest compound fragility-climate risks globally. It suffers from ongoing fragility and conflict that severely limit the state’s ability to respond to the country’s considerable climate risks. At the same time, environmental stress may be increasing the severity of land conflicts and food shortages in the country.
Nigeria’s ongoing crises highlight how compound fragility-climate risks can heighten populations’ insecurity by increasing their vulnerability to humanitarian emergencies and conflict. Nigeria’s crisis in the North, for example, reflects emergency conditions and famine risks that are not caused by climate factors alone but also by longstanding environmental stress coupled with poor national management of the security, economic, and social conditions in that region. Likewise, the escalating security situation in the Middle Belt involves a highly climate-exposed region where the state has provided only limited response to growing food insecurity and ongoing tensions between Fulani herders and nonFulani farmers over the use of land and water resources. Similarly, rising tensions in the climate-exposed Niger Delta reflect a longstanding secessionist movement driven in large part by disputes over state management of oil revenues, deteriorating environmental conditions and economic development challenges.
This brief summarizes findings from a broader USAID case study of fragility and climate risks in Nigeria (Moran et al. 2018b) and a USAID report on The Intersection of Global Fragility and Climate Risks (Moran et al. 2018a). Key findings from the global report are summarized in the box on the next page.
KEY FINDINGS
Fragility Risks: Nigeria experiences the highest fragility in West Africa and among the highest of all countries in subSaharan Africa. Nigeria has high fragility in all four spheres of state-society interactions—political, security, economic and social—struggling to deliver services, prevent corruption, ensure political pluralism and maintain security.
Climate Risks: Nigeria has more than 41 million people—24 percent of its population—living in high climate exposure areas. Its population faces diverse and extensive climate risks from storm surges along the entire coast, inland flooding and wildfires in the Niger Delta region, decreased rainfall in the southeast and Middle Belt, droughts and floods in the north, and flooding across the country along the Niger, Benue, Sokoto and Komadugu rivers.
Compound Fragility-Climate Risks: While Nigeria faces extensive climate risks, the severity of fragility and conflict in the country has hindered its response to these climate challenges. This is a critical connection since environmental stress—coupled with government mismanagement of environmental and other stressors—contributes to instability the country now faces from food crises and land conflicts, risking a dangerous feedback loop between fragility and climate risks. Nigeria’s ongoing crises—conflict and famine risk in the North, rising violence between herders and farmers in the Middle Belt, and simmering tensions over management of natural resources in the Niger Delta—each show interactions between fragility and climate risks. Nigeria must reduce fragility in all four spheres, as addressing its climate challenges will require 1) resilience initiatives in the social and economic spheres, 2) effective political processes to serve as a conduit between public needs and state responses, and 3) a stable security environment in which to operate.