In recent decades’ climate change has been one of the major interesting research subjects due to the role it plays on the economy and the society as a whole. Understanding the role of climate change in our society is of vital importance, both for the economy and the society. Recent developments around climate change have heightened the need for more research; Climate change predictions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have identified Nigeria as a climate change-conflict prone country. Nigeria’s climate is likely to experience shifts and/or changes in temperature, sea level and rainfall in the twenty-first century. A causal mechanism links climate change with communal conflict in most parts of Nigeria, poor adaptive responses to climate shift could cause shortages of resources such as land, water and food. Shortages tend to create negative impact like hunger, joblessness and poverty. In the case of poor responses, the situation can open the door for conflict. Inadequate analysis about climate change has clouded the picture of how climate change can affect Nigeria’s resource base and environment.
This thesis examined theoretically and empirically the nexus between climate change and conflict in north central Nigeria. More fundamentally, the study analyzed and showed how climate change plays a role in the worsening incidence of conflict between Fulani herdsmen and farmers in northern Nigeria. Analysis of the study is anchored on the environmental and conflict theory. The study argued that much as it’s believed that the immediate cause of the conflict between Fulani herdsmen and farmer conflict is resource scarcity and the remote cause is climate change, which through desertification and drought has led to resource scarcity and worsened conflict between the two groups, ethnicity also emerged as a cause of the conflict between the two groups. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collate Primary data for the research. A well semi-structured questionnaire and key informant interviews were used to elicit relevant information. The information collected include possible adaptation strategies and constraints peculiar to the study area, perceptions on climate change, socio-economic and environmental characteristics of the study area and possible approaches to solving conflicts.
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