Abstract
Struggle over land and scarce resources have resulted in perennial and growing violent conflicts amongst arable crop farmers and cattle herdsmen in various parts of Nigeria. This study analyses the relationship between climate change and patterns of herders-crop farmers’ conflict in Zamfara state, Nigeria. Data for this study were acquired via semi structured questionnaire and Key Informant Interview. Purposeful sampling method was used to select six communities, while 260 farmers and 67 pastoralists were chosen as sample size for the survey based on Krejcie and Morgan’s formula. Descriptive statistics such as percentages, arithmetic mean and Likert rating scale were adopted to analyze the data for the study. Results from the findings indicated that farmers and herders in Zamfara state were within active years of economic and productive age (24 to 44 years). Nearly,75% of both farmers and pastoralists in the study communities professed there is high variability in rainfall pattern and increase in temperature. Three-quarter of the respondents confirmed that the nature of the conflicts was assault involving the use of arms; whereas two-fifth of the respondents affirmed that the conflict occurs during harvest and the planting seasons. The study concluded that climate change is the bane of incessant resource use conflicts in the study area. Thus a clearly formulated government policies and implementation framework that would boost climate change information forecasting and dissemination, adaptive capacity and ranch management will salvage the conflictual relationship subsisting between farmers and herders in the study area
Highlights
Farmers and herdsmen conflict has been ongoing over the years across West and Central Africa (Mikailu, 2016) cited in (Luke et al, 2019)
Myriads of studies have identified resource use such as land and water use, crop damage and obstruction of traditional migration routes as the key causes of disputes between the farmers and the herding pastoralists. These issues are directly and indirectly connected to climate change, which is defined by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (2011) as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods
364 copies of questionnaires were administered to both pastoralists and farmers in the study area. 327 copies were returned representing 88% response rate, which is excellent for analysis
Summary
Farmers and herdsmen conflict has been ongoing over the years across West and Central Africa (Mikailu, 2016) cited in (Luke et al, 2019). In 2016, GTI reported that more than 1,200 people lost their lives to herder‘s attacks This made the Fulani herdsmen the world's fourth deadliest group (GTI, 2016; Mikailu, 2016) cited in (Luke et al, 2019). Myriads of studies have identified resource use such as land and water use, crop damage and obstruction of traditional migration routes as the key causes of disputes between the farmers and the herding pastoralists These issues are directly and indirectly connected to climate change, which is defined by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (2011) as “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. It can be seen as a “social organization based on livestock raising as the primary economic activity”
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