The Place of Climate and Environmental Change Governance on Migration, Displacement, and Conflicts in Nigeria

Increased humanitarian challenges in Nigeria in the past thirty years have been linked to the onset of climate change and environmental conditions. Obvious inadequate institutions for the management of acute physical stressors such as droughts, floods, increased demand on land, loss of traditional fishing dams, and unchecked desertification have intensified?the vulnerability of people and communities in rural areas of the country.

?Reduced capacities for adaptation by communities to these climate stressors were further compounded by the incidence of poverty, conflicts, and?banditry which have devastating consequences for the coping mechanisms of the people. Complex interactions of socioeconomic and environmental?in an environment without proper states safety nets and supports over a long?period?have resulted in the increased choice of displacement and migration as coping mechanisms and with sudden shocks (Akrofi et al. 2012, O’Brien et al. 2009).

Climate and environmental change have become one of the greatest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century (Peterson & Feldpausch-Parker,?2013). African Union Commission recognized this major threat to inclusive development at the Symposium on Climate Change, Pan Africanism, and African Renaissance” at AUC Headquarters Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, on August 16, 2013.?Since the 1980s extreme droughts have?impeded several African states' ability to sustainably grow food and rear livestock, leading to high competition for use of land and water resources by pastoralists and farmers in most regions. The need to adapt agricultural production to meet changes in land and water regimes have become important for farmers to meet basic food and income needs for the households (Kebede et al. 2011).

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Climatologists generally accent on the fact that the earth has become more endangered by frequent and persistent climate and environmental changes in the past 50 years. Global research on climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation (IVA) deals with the challenges and implications of climate change on people and the environment. The World Bank’s Groundswell Reports and the United Nations Reports maintain that only a strict global regime of proper climate responses and management mechanisms coupled with generally committed development actions could prevent the internal migration of over 216 million people globally by 2050.

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Climate change experts reason that the Sub-Saharan African region?is?progressively?vulnerable?to climate and environmental change. Lack of physical?planning and environmental management plans, political?corruption in the land management system, and high incidence of unfavorable weather conditions in the past 30 years have increased exposure to devastating environmental changes in Nigeria,?introducing newer stressors, expanding extant constraints, thereby overcoming local adaptive resilience. Experts have continued to point at climate change and conflicts as major purveyors of economic migration and displacements within the African States in the new millennium. The UNCHR acknowledges the negative effects of climate and environmental changes on global migration and displacement. The UNCHR reported that over a 21.5million people were forcibly displaced globally between 2008 and 2016.

Migration or displacements have become the general survivalists' response to the loss of the primary source of income, and the presence of real threats to life and livelihoods. Experts argue that uncontrollable environmental challenges reduce access to traditional resources, which in turn influences economic migration?to a perceived better environment. In a world with limited?progressively diminishing natural resources, ungovernable spaces, and low infrastructural facilities, these movements?inevitably throw up conflicts and disputes (Brown. et. al 1995).

?Having studied your proposals, we observed the need to incorporate the following as additional thematic areas of programming challenges to aid?migration in the African States:

1.?Migration and Displacement Reduction Policy:

l?Climate Change early warning and disaster prevention and response management system.

l?Adaptation, Coping, and Resilience training for pastoralists and farmers operating within regions susceptible to the high incidence of climate change

l?Supports access to markets and basic infrastructures in rural communities

l?Supports capacity development for Civil Service Organisations and States policy makers in driving sustainable programs for Migrants and displaced persons in proper resettlement

2.?Support for State in Global warming and climate change policy governance

l??Increase supports for capacity development for policy and legal structures to assuage hostilities between host communities and settlers in Africa.

l?Supports programs and gendered policies that ensure quick assimilation processes for migrants in new communities. The long-term camping method should be discarded for assistance for direct settlement among within host communities.

l?Host communities should form part of programming for migrants integration and settlement

l?Increased support for infrastructural development in host communities

l?Increase supports for reforestation and migrants' return options to participate in reforestation programmes.

These are deemed important because current migration patterns in Nigeria and Ghana show the cities of Lagos, Ibadan, Accra, Tema, and other coastal cities in West Africa are currently growing by over 3% annually due to the inflow of migrants from climate-affected Sahel regions.

These movements are being supplemented by uncontrolled inter-border economic migrants from Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Benin Republic, and other contiguous states which is?apparently non-sustainable given the state of the infrastructures installed in those migrant's destination cities.

Increased stress on infrastructures, employability, and competition for land has increased in recent years in most of these cities, especially the suburban areas. These are silent wars that might implode if rational policies are not introduced urgently. The failure of states in the Sahel to harmonize proper and rational policies on migration and displaced person management has led to over 20 million displaced in Nigeria in the past 10 years.

Policies in Nigeria a nation of over 200 million people have failed to address the reduction of the challenges of desertification leading to the loss of over 60 percent of arable lands and the Chad Basin to the menace. Lack of local legal frameworks on land ownership and transfer, states’ response to conflict, and a corrupt law enforcement system has created triggers for communal conflicts in Southern areas of the country

The lack of state legal and law enforcement capabilities has created several conflicts between Migrants and settlers in the Southwest States leading to high mortality and creating future retaliatory conflicts.

Complaints of lack of equity and government favoritism of certain groups have necessitated the need for empowerment of local NGOs towards addressing the settlement of migrants. Interventions should also look at measures that could lead to the reduction of movements into urban areas. Rural areas should be prepared and used for resettlement purposes against the current use of the suburban environment.

?Most African States’ economies are predominantly agrarian and extractive industry-based, the huge dependence on natural resources?and rents on major economic goods?-which are currently under climatic attack- for survival, weak states?environmental laws, corrupt judicial regime, and lack of equity in land and?environmental governance?have?continuously triggered displacement, migration, conflicts,?inter-tribal wars, and?further displacements?in?the Nigeria state.

?Burgeoning youth population, increasing deforestation,?uncharitable and unstable environment, lack of institutional support for agricultural development, weak road infrastructure, lack of access to markets, and?insecurity have created low?economic growth potentiality in most rural areas in Nigeria. These challenges are?compounded?by pressures?of youth agitations for infrastructural development, power, employment provision, and social services?in this fragile environment enmeshed with a high incidence of conflicts over scarce?economic?resources?and worsening climate conditions.

Western migration claim aside, most African migrants are within their states and to more economically viable states within Africa. Unfortunately, despite huge awareness of environmental issues, most states are ill-prepared for the challenge of structuring an appropriate decision-making system for managing fallouts from these?changes. Deteriorating climate conditions and long-standing physical, social and economic vulnerabilities has being linked to increased rural-urban migration. This movement has resulted in increased?fragility and violent conflicts, a high number of displacement,?poverty, diseases, and?environmental conflicts?in Nigeria.

An International Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) 2019 report showed economic challenges occasioned by climate change created more than 70 percent of global 33 million IDPs. African states despite contributing less than 5 percent of global emission of CO2 and global environmental change (GEC) have continued to suffer more than 60 percent of global effects of climate change issues due to a lack of?sustainable locally designed institutions for climate and environmental change governance

?African states' citizens lacking proper resilience and states supported coping mechanisms are forced to adopt migration as a form of adaptation and coping strategy to the impacts of and threat to livelihood by climate change. Management of?climate change adaptation and coping mechanism should then become essential to state security. Given the choice of migration and displacements as a response to environmental?destabilization, conflicts, and insecurity. Management of implications on human security and humane treatment of migrants and displaced persons are essential in a fragile and violence-prone environment like Nigeria.

Towards reduction of the negative impacts of current north-south migration, it has become crucial to institute legal policy and frameworks that could help to rationalize risks to the rights, access to economic goods, and security of migrants and at the same time assure host communities of lack of risks to extant economic goods, security, and risks of conflict.

Lack of a?national?system for; prediction, planning,?and management of key issues surrounding climate and environmental change, land tenure, ownership system, and settlers and aboriginal rights have indirectly?enhanced and fanned new violent conflicts in the past 30 years?in Nigeria as the population continues to expands uncontrollably.?

Global support for migration programs has persistently criminalized inter-border migrations. Regulations based on restricting illegal African migrants into European cities have been in place within the European Union despite growing recognition of climate and environmental change as reasons for according refugee status. Migration studies have totally treated migration as a security and economic issue ignoring the effect of global warming on conflict escalation and migration in Africa in the past 30 years. The lack of formal status for climate refugees also befuddled policy formation and programming to support the migrants.

The foremost document linking climate change to migration was revealed in the Executive Order (EO) 1413, “Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration” signed by President Biden on February 9, 2021. Instituted the need for US institutions to?investigate the need to develop an active, flexible and strategic approach towards designing collaboratively migration policy that will take into cognizance?the challenges of the continental, regional, and local interests, aspirations, and work based on capabilities of all the stakeholders.

Challenges of huge cost?implications have limited most African states’ attempts at?solving Climate Change and Variability (CCV) mitigation and adaptation problems. ?The lack of concise management structure and commitment to climate actions by the African Union Commission (AU) and its 54 Member States are ominous. Despite the existence of climate management centers in the African Centre for Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD), the Regional Climate Centres (RCCs), and the Global Producing Centers (GPCs), the AU is yet to accord full recognition to climate and environmental issues as a major security and economic challenges to peace and inclusive development in African states.

Towards management of the existential threats to Africans, the introduction of a Continental Framework on Climate and Environmental Change Management, and Protocols on Resettlement of Environmentally Displaced Persons and Migrants in Africa has become essential.?The global movement on climate refugees adaptation and mitigation can only be successful when the threats faced by African Climate Refugees are well structured and managed through sustainable policy governance.