Weapons, Forests, Land and Rivers: How Armed Conflicts Drive Environmental Change in the Nigeria's Lake Chad Territory

Uche Okpara, University of Greenwich (United Kingdom)

Environmental degradation in armed conflict zones is extensively documented worldwide. Yet gaps persist in disentangling the specific mechanisms of degradation from evidence of regeneration during active violence, particularly across forest-land-water resources. This knowledge is critical for distinguishing conflict actors' direct impacts from affected populations' survival responses, and for understanding the challenges and opportunities of ecological regeneration arising from depopulated conflict zones. Here, I focus on the Nigeria's Lake Chad territory where insurgent attacks and military counteroperations since 2009 have reshaped conflict-environment relations. I examine how armed conflict has degraded forests, land and rivers; the mechanisms linking combatants, security forces and displaced groups to these changes; and the extent to which displacement enables ecological recovery. I employ a multi-method approach. First, I review newspaper reports, peer-reviewed literature and grey literature to develop a heuristic analytical framework linking armed conflict and environmental outcomes. This framework guides primary and secondary data collection: I gather primary data through focus group discussions, key informant interviews, and field observations during guided transect walks, while secondary data comprise event-level conflict records from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project and high-resolution satellite imagery from Google Earth Pro. I found (i) dual degradation mechanisms via direct militarisation by conflict actors and indirect insecurity-induced civilian extraction of natural resources amid disrupted environmental governance, and (ii) ecological regeneration in depopulated conflict zones where military cordons, abandoned farmlands and human absence enable fish stock recovery, fallow expansion and secondary bush regrowth. These findings advance conflict ecology by separating military destruction from civilian survival pressures while documenting regeneration amid ongoing violence — a potential peace dividend that is vulnerable to rapid reversal upon repopulation. Strategic action is therefore essential on two fronts: curbing degradation through targeted capacity-building in environmental governance; and harnessing regeneration by monitoring recovery trajectories in no-go zones around fishing, pastoral and farming areas showing signs of regeneration, and designating such zones as temporary protected reserves prior to reopening to secure short-term gains in fish stocks, fallow lands and bush regrowth against repopulation pressures.