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security issues. The importance rests in its challenge to dominant narratives which question the significance of climate change as a causal factor in violent conflicts and insecurity particularly, in the developing world. In view of this motivation, the study uses data from four recurrent cases of conflict in Nigeria to explore this connection.
The study aimed at the following: one, to establish the connection between climate change and resource contestations or violent conflicts in Nigeria; two, to examine the contributions of socio-contextual (cultural, institutional, economic, and systemic) factors in the transformation of climate-related scarcity and contestations in Nigeria; three, to demonstrate and amplify the connection between climate change-induced scarcity, migration and violent conflicts on communal insecurity; four, to examine the transformation, dispersal, and broader security implications of climate-induced scarcity and migration for primary and secondary host communities; and lastly, to make policy recommendations towards reducing climate- induced migration, communal conflicts and related security challenges in Nigeria.
Correspondingly, the study proposed five questions, including: (1) what is the linkage between climate change and natural resource contestation in Iseyin/Shaki in Oyo, Efon- Alaaye in Ekiti, Oke-Ero in Kwara, and Udeni-Gida in Nasarawa Local Government Area of Nasarawa, in Nigeria? (2) How do socio-cultural, institutional or systemic factors exacerbate climate-related conflict and insecurity in these communities, and Nigeria as a whole? (3) To what extent does migration serve as a conflict engendering intervening factor in the transformation of climate change-induced scarcity into security problems in Iseyin/Shaki in Oyo, Efon-Alaaye in Ekiti, Oke-Ero in Kwara, and Udeni-Gida in Nasarawa Local Government Area of Nasarawa, in Nigeria? (4) In what ways are the effects of climate induced scarcity dispersed to secondary host communities in cities and urban centres, and how are these effects replicated in other parts of the country? (5) How can the impacts of climate change-induced scarcity be mitigated at both physically depleted environments and migrant host communities to prevent or reduce conflicts thereby enhancing security, peace and development?
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processes from individuals, groups, community and particular event dimensions (Tellis, 1997). The study particularly explores the process tracing potentials of the case study method. The process tracing case study approach according to Porta and Keating (2008: 224) is “a procedure designed to identify processes linking a set of initial conditions to a particular outcome”. The importance of the process tracing technique as an indispensable element of case study method that is well acknowledged by scholars (see for example: George and McKeown, 1985; George and Smoke, 1979).
It is in this lens that Yin (2003) views the case study approach as an empirical inquiry which investigates a contemporary phenomenon in the context of its real-life expression—a method that is particularly necessary where there are no clearly defined boundaries between the phenomenon and the context within which it is taking place. Yin’s view is corroborated by Gillham (2000: 2) who describes a case study research as “an investigation to answer specific research questions which seek a range of different evidences from the case settings”. Given (2008: 68) similarly defines the case study as “a research approach in which one or a few instances of a phenomenon are studied in depth”. In the same vein, Bhattacherjee (2012) also saw the method as one involving the intensive study of phenomena in its natural setting in a single or more sites using multiple data gathering methods such as interviews, documents, observations, secondary data etc, in order to gain rich, detailed, and contextualized inference on the nature of the phenomenon under study.
There are four basic characteristics of a case study according to Merriam (1998). These include particularistic which speak to the specificity of context from which inferences are drawn; a descriptive style which indicates the attention paid to extensive detailing of facts relating to the phenomena; a heuristic focus which aims to advance knowledge of the subjects matter; and its inductive nature which tends to make generalisation of concepts derived from data obtained in the cases observed. The emphasis in a case study method is not to represent proportionally, but to explain a broad phenomenon on the basis of details derived from cases extensively studied (Tellis, 1997). It is as such seen as a valuable method for advancing fundamental knowledge of a wider domain of the understudied event or process. Hence, Stufflebeam, Madaus, and Kellaghan (2000: 283) argue that an underlying philosophy behind the case study methods is to improve knowledge rather than to prove.
Another primary feature which defines the case study approach is that it allows the researcher to focus on relevant subjective aspects of the phenomenon while integrating the multiplicity
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of context-specific processes and information that are necessary for understanding the phenomenon being studied (McMillan and Schumacher, 2001; Ritchie and Lewis, 2003). In this way, the researcher is able to collect all relevant data connecting social processes towards arriving at the best likely resolution of the questions posed in his research. Contextualised investigation which the case study guarantees also enables the researcher to develop new insights into hitherto unknown factors as the complex underpinnings of processes and their linkages in the interaction process of relations are discovered for more extensive analyses.
There are many advantages in the use of the case study. One that is particularly relevant here is that it makes for pliability which is essential for accommodating qualitatively, diverse forms of data collection including interviews, literature reviews, participant observations, and exploration of archival materials, thereby ensuring a robust examination of the phenomena being studied (Yin, 2003). As Walsham (1995) noted, the robustness associated with the case study approach gives room for researchers to gain access to the nitty-gritty of social phenomenon, the subtleties of, the changing, and often multiple interpretations that are the nature of social processes. It is as such, particularly useful in research issues in which emphasis is on the contextual dynamics of the subject of investigation and in which the investigator seeks understand events as they unfold.
Among the key arguments against the case study method is its low representativeness. It is as such seen by some as unsuitable for universal generalisation. Second is the complexity associated with its reliance on multiple data sets some of which are not amenable to scientific quantification and are vulnerable to subjective interpretation and bias by the researcher (Cornford and Smithson, 1996; Miles and Huberman, 1994), it has been argued that the capacity to generalize from a case study research can be improved by “looking at multiple actors in multiple settings” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000: 193). Yin (2003) corroborates this argument when he noted that the approach can serves for analytical generalisations in cases where the objective of research is to make generalisations from a particular set of results to theoretical propositions on a wider scope.
Given diversity of data explored in this study, the focus on capturing various levels and the contextual interplays from vulnerability to climate change, to migratory adaptation, to violent contestations, while also optimizing interpretative aggregation of participant experiences, the researcher is convinced that the case study method best serves the study’s purpose in gathering relevant data, and accommodating the diverse forms of analysis and generating
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results that are best reflective of in-depth exposition of the issue investigated. This conclusion is based on its suitability to: (a) the variety of participant and their perspectives that are crucial to a contextual understanding of the phenomenon; (b) the need to utilize various techniques in the collection of data; and (c) the advantages that flow from interactive socialized investigative approaches.
Four rural communities and 4 suburban locations are used as sites for data collection. These are: Iseyin/Shaki in Oyo, Efon-Alaaye in Ekiti, Oke-Ero in Kwara, and Udeni-Gida (Nasarawa LGA) in Nasarawa states. These cases are distributed across two geopolitical zones in Nigeria (Southwest: Oyo and Ekiti; and Northcentral: Kwara and Nasarawa). These cases are selected based on three important criteria, which allowed the researcher to isolate, as much as possible, less complicated cases of climate-related conflicts, from those in which connectives are confounded by extraneous fault lines. Sites are categorized into two, namely:
(1) rural host communities, and (2) urban or suburban host communities. Both of these communities serve as destinations for primary (environmentally displaced), and secondary (socio-ecologically displaced) groups.
In order to streamline climate-conflict connectives, preferences were given to:
I. Identified locations with repeated occurrence of Farmer-herder conflicts, and in which there is institutional awareness of this occurrence at the political level, as well as ongoing effort processes and at the political and communal level on the issue, to demonstrate the currency of such contestations in the area.
II. Those among parameter 1, in which, preliminary study shows that there are higher volumes of youth involvement in agriculture. This is important in order to unravel the secondary implications of dispersed vulnerabilities on youth retention, rural-urban migration, and potential effects on urban unemployment and associated risks.
III. Locations which conform with substantial presence of the two identified forms of herdsmen migration (i.e. transitory and sedentary forms of migration) and also reflect a regularity in migratory pattern on the western axis of the north-south migratory route as captured in literature, media reports, as well as researcher’s preliminary investigations (This is discussed in detail in Chapter One with relevant references on the incidence of migrant herdsmen/farmer conflicts).
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