MOMBASA, Kenya, 19 Jan: Droughts, flooding and a shrinking Lake Chad caused in part by climate change is fueling conflict and migration in the region and needs to be better addressed, a report said Thursday.
\nHuman rights group Refugees International called for the issue to be central to a high-level international conference on the Lake Chad basin next week in Niamey, Niger\u2019s capital.
\nThe report found that shrinking natural resources due to adverse weather are heightening tensions across communities and displacing people. It said that around 3 million people have been displaced and an additional 11 million were in need of humanitarian assistance.
\n\u201cFor too long, insufficient attention has been paid to how climate change fuels violence and displacement,\u201d report lead author Alexandra Lamarche told The Associated Press. \u201cInternational responses to the Lake Chad basin crisis have singularly focused on the presence of armed groups.\u201d
\nA 13-year insurgency of the Boko Haram extremist group and other militant groups have destabilized the Lake Chad basin and the wider Sahel region. The basin is shared between Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria.
\nThe Lake Chad region is facing \u201cmuch more than a climate and ecological crisis,\u201d said Mabingue Ngom, the senior advisor to the executive director of the United Nations population agency. \u201cIt is a humanitarian issue touching on peace and regional development.\u201d
\nThe United Nations weather agency warned that Lake Chad basin \u201cis particularly vulnerable to climate change related extreme events such as floods and droughts\u201d and issued alerts that \u201cextreme events will likely become more abundant causing more frequent droughts and flooding with impacts on food security and general security in the region.\u201d
\nLamarche noted that the Logone Birni commune in northern Cameroon was particularly vulnerable to increasing violence as climate change worsens.
\n\u201cFighting over access to natural resources (in Logone Birni) forced 60,000 people to seek refuge in neighboring Chad in late 2021,\u201d Lamarche said.
\nThe Lake Chad basin in west and central Africa covers 8% of the African continent and is home to 42 million people whose livelihoods revolve around pastoralism, fishing and farming, according to figures from the Lake Chad Basin Commission.
\nThe U.N. environment agency notes that Lake Chad has shrunk 90% in 60 years, which climate change a significant contributor. AP<\/p>\n
Irrigation, the construction of dams and population increase were also to blame.
\nA provisional agenda of next week\u2019s summit seen by The Associated Press suggests that the \u201cadverse impacts of climate change\u201d will feature as part of peacebuilding and humanitarian efforts.
\nLamarche said the conference is \u201cthe perfect opportunity for international donors to commit to long-term solutions to address the nexus between climate change, violence, and displacement in the region.\u201d
\nThe meeting in Niamey will be the third high-level summit on the lake\u2019s basin. AP<\/p>\n
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MOMBASA, Kenya, 19 Jan: Droughts, flooding and a shrinking Lake Chad caused in part by climate change is fueling conflict and migration in the region and needs to be better addressed, a report said Thursday. Human rights group Refugees International called for the issue to be central to a high-level international conference on the Lake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}