Climate Action & Sustainability
The lake is disappearing.
The land is cracking.
We are planting anyway.
Northeast Nigeria sits at the epicentre of one of the world's worst climate emergencies. For communities already living with conflict, desertification is not an abstract threat — it is a daily reality. Future Prowess is responding where the crisis is most acute.
90%
of Lake Chad lost since 1963
3 km
desert advances per year
30M+
people depend on Lake Chad
#1
climate-conflict hotspot in Africa
The context
Climate change didn't cause the conflict. But it makes recovery impossible without it.
Lake Chad once fed tens of millions of people across Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad. At its peak, it covered 25,000 square kilometres. Today, after six decades of climate change and water extraction, less than 2,500 remain. The lake is still receding.
The consequences in Northeast Nigeria are not theoretical. Fish stocks have collapsed. Farmland has turned to dust. Pastoralists, pushed off traditional grazing routes by advancing desert, have come into violent conflict with farmers over what land remains. Climate scientists now identify the Lake Chad basin as one of the most significant climate-conflict nexus points anywhere on earth.
Future Prowess has been working in this landscape for nearly two decades. We understand that peacebuilding, education, and economic recovery in Northeast Nigeria are inseparable from environmental recovery. A child cannot concentrate in class if her family has no food. A widow cannot sustain a business if the land she farms turns to sand. Climate action is not a separate programme — it runs through everything we do.
90%
of Lake Chad lost since 1963
Once the seventh-largest lake on earth. Now a fraction of its former self — and still shrinking.
3 km
desert advances per year
The Sahara is encroaching southward at three kilometres annually across Northeast Nigeria.
30M+
people depend on Lake Chad
Farmers, fishers, and pastoralists across four countries whose livelihoods are disappearing with the water.
#1
climate-conflict hotspot in Africa
Resource scarcity from climate change is a documented driver of the conflict that tore this region apart.
What we do
Five climate initiatives — rooted in community
Every initiative is designed for the specific conditions of Northeast Nigeria: low resources, high resilience, and communities that understand this land better than any external expert.
Large-Scale Tree Planting & Land Restoration
We are working with communities across Borno State to plant trees on degraded land — selecting indigenous species that stabilise soil, restore water retention, and provide shade, fuel, and food. This is not symbolic greening. It is the beginning of a multi-decade land recovery effort rooted in community ownership.
10,000+
trees planted to date
Climate-Smart Agriculture
Drought, unpredictable rainfall, and soil degradation have turned farming into a gamble in the Northeast. Our climate-smart agriculture programme — integrated into the Women & Families livelihood training — equips smallholder farmers with drought-resistant crop varieties, water-conserving irrigation techniques, composting, and sustainable land management practices.
15 ha
of sustainably managed farmland
Environmental Literacy in Schools
Children growing up in Maiduguri are living through the consequences of climate change — without the language or framework to understand it. We have embedded environmental literacy into the Future Prowess school curriculum: teaching students about the Lake Chad crisis, desertification, biodiversity, and the actions — individual, community, and systemic — that constitute a response.
2,000+
students in climate-aware classrooms
Community Adaptation & Resilience
Top-down adaptation plans fail when they are designed without community knowledge. We work with local leaders, women's groups, and farmers to document lived climate vulnerability — shrinking water access, erratic planting seasons, pastoral conflict — and feed this evidence into subnational and national adaptation planning processes.
Borno, Adamawa & Yobe
states covered
Sustainable Livelihoods & Green Enterprise
Economic desperation drives deforestation. We counter this by building sustainable income pathways that reduce pressure on fragile ecosystems — fish farming, beekeeping, solar-powered micro-enterprises, and cooperative land stewardship models that give communities a direct financial stake in environmental health.
Fish ponds + solar
green enterprise pilots active
Community voices
The people living this
The rains used to come in June. Now we wait until August, sometimes September. By then, half the planting season is gone.
Modu Kachallah
Smallholder farmer, Jere LGA, Borno State
We planted twelve trees on our compound last year. My children know the names of each one. They water them like they water themselves.
Hauwa Grema
Participant, Future Prowess Women & Families programme
Lake Chad is not just an environmental story. It is a peace story. When the fish disappear, the guns come out.
Community Elder
Monguno, Borno State
SDG alignment
Partner with us
Climate funders: this is where your investment has compounding impact
In Northeast Nigeria, climate action is peace action. Environmental recovery is economic recovery. Every tree planted, every farmer trained, every child taught to understand the land — reduces the conditions in which conflict grows. We are looking for funders and partners who understand that long game.