As of April 2017, over 2 million people have been displaced in the Lake Chad Basin due to the Boko Haram insurgency, and over 5 million in total have been displaced “by the depletion of the lake due to climate change” according to the Nigerian President, Mohammadu Buhari, at the Conference of the Parties 21 (COP21), held in Paris in 2015.
The proposed project entails a two-fold research study aimed at collecting empirical climate change data and understanding climate change related policy as well as climate change induced migration.
As such, the first component of the research will consist of an in-depth desk study of existing climate change trends and policies in place.
The second component will employ the existing Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) capacity in both Cameroon and Niger to collect targeted information on evidence of climate change, displacement trends, vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms.
The overall goal is to produce a comprehensive regional study of the Lake Chad Basin, serving as a baseline of information on climate-related migration, prevailing vulnerabilities and gaps in order to inform humanitarian policies and actions.