Unpacking the Food Security Crisis in the Ecologically Fragile and Conflict-Ridden Lake Chad Basin: Interrogating NGOs' Response to the Climate Change-Security Nexus

Abstract

A 2018 United Nations report highlights the growing need for funding and assistance to the Lake Chad Basin (LCB). The food security crisis in the LCB is a blend of complex factors relating to the declining water of Lake Chad and protracted insecurity fanned by Boko Haram insurgency. Unfortunately, development agencies sometimes focus less on how the climate change-insecurity nexus is becoming increasingly consequential in explaining the LCB’s profile in fragility. This paper considers the extent to which international agencies and nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) respond to multiple crises, integrating both climate change and security facets in their analysis and response to the food crisis besetting the LCB. Findings from interviews in Cameroon, Chad, and Niger reveal that NGOs fail to sufficiently take climate change into account in their policies and strategies, in that many food assistance programs are climate change neutral in content and focus.