Climate Vulnerability: Nigeria Brings Conflict and Peace into Climate Fight
By: Abudu Olalekan
Climate vulnerability isn’t just about the weather anymore—it’s about security, too.
And Nigeria’s government says it’s now weaving conflict sensitivity and peacebuilding directly into the country’s National Adaptation Plan, known as the NAP. The goal? To tackle the kind of climate-linked tensions—like farmer-herder clashes, banditry, and resource conflicts—that keep entire regions unstable.
Dr. Salihu Usman, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, laid it out at a peer learning forum in Abuja this week. “You can’t plan for adaptation in a place like Nigeria without looking at conflict,” he said. “Climate change is already feeding into local tensions. If we ignore that, we’re missing the point.”
He’s not wrong. We’re seeing more extreme weather—droughts, floods, unpredictable seasons—and it’s squeezing livelihoods. When resources get scarce, tensions rise. That’s the cycle the NAP is trying to break.
Dr. Iniobong Abiola-Awe, who directs the Climate Change Department, put it plainly: “This isn’t just about reducing emissions anymore. We have to adapt. We have to adjust how we live and work—or we risk losing not just biodiversity, but our own security.”
And it’s not just a local conversation. Alec Crawford, from the NAP Global Network, noted that climate risks are now tangled up with conflict, displacement, and institutional stress across many African nations. “Adaptation plans aren’t just technical documents,” he said. “They’re about choices—who gets help, what risks we prioritize, and how government departments actually work together. In fragile settings, that’s incredibly complicated.”
Frankly, it’s a race against time. The government admits that if climate impacts keep accelerating unchecked, we’re looking at widespread loss—of homes, livelihoods, and ecosystems.
So the NAP, backed by the Green Climate Fund, is moving ahead with fresh eyes. They’ve already run climate risk assessments to pinpoint community vulnerabilities. Now, they’re building strategies through what Dr. Usman called “the eye of conflict sensitivity”—meaning every adaptation move must ask: Does this calm tensions, or stir them?
It’s a messy, urgent, very human challenge. But integrating peacebuilding into climate planning? That might be one of the smartest adaptations of all.
