Refugees flee conflict sparked by climate change in central Africa

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• Judy Woodruff:

  The climate crisis is a reality all over the world, but it is especially apparent in the parched landscapes of Northern Africa, where conflict follows close behind.

  In the last of our three-part series of reports from Chad, special correspondent Willem Marx looks at just how dire this crisis has become.

• Willem Marx:

  Far from home, but safe for now, this refugee camp in one country, Chad, houses a community from another, Cameroon. Among those living here is Haoua Ali Beta, who left behind the land she no longer really recognized.

• Haoua Ali Beta, Cameroonian Refugee (through translator):

  What actually changed is that, during our grandparents' time, the harvest was good. But, these days, farming is not good. You know, when you over exploit the land for many years, the land's fertility is depleted.

• Willem Marx:

  Like generations before her, Haoua's family had raised in grazed cattle, but a changing climate created a completely new challenge.

• Haoua Ali Beta (through translator):

  There is not enough rain, not enough rain, and the cattle cannot survive without water. The cattle had to move further away to get water. And that is where they settle.

• Willem Marx:

  Her community began competing with another local group for access to water. And Haoua says disputes soon turned deadly.

• Haoua Ali Beta (through translator):

  Men started killing each other. Villages and houses were burned. People were killed and burned. People were decapitated know. Women and children were killed.

• Willem Marx:

  Over three days of fighting last December, she estimates more than 150 people died.

• Haoua Ali Beta (through translator):

  They burned our houses. They burned our food. They burned our cows and sheep. They left nothing at all.

• Willem Marx:

  She fled with family members across Cameroon's border to Chad, where she currently survives on foraging, barter and handouts.

• Haoua Ali Beta (through translator):

  Of course, there are difficulties. When you leave your own home and come as a guest to another place, you should expect things to be different. You obviously have to accept whatever you're given.

• Willem Marx:

  Authorities built this refugee camp of 3,500 people in essentially six months after Cameroonians flooded into Chad late last year and early this year, the cause essentially climate change, because a lack of water created a conflict, a very violent conflict, between two different communities.

  Can you believe that, because of water, people are killing each other?

• Brahim Sakine, Cameroonian Refugee:

  Yes, because of water.

• Willem Marx:

  Water is what many people will kill for, Brahim Sakine told us. He was once a keen college student, but the spasm of intercommunity violence interrupted his studies.

• Brahim Sakine (through translator):

  What actually scared me right from the start was the fighting. Without warning, fighting erupted in Kousseri, my town. We saw some of the neighborhoods, one called Madagascar and some others, burned down right in front of our eyes.

• Willem Marx:

  His parents pushed the 22-year-old to leave, afraid he'd be killed if he stayed in Cameroon. Now living on his own for the first time, he's house-proud about what little he has, showing off his yard work and dinner preparations.

  Do you have more food or less food here?

• Brahim Sakine:

  There is less food, less than Cameroon. In Cameroon, we eat three times per days — per day, three times per day, but, here, two times.

• Willem Marx:

  Right now, in Chad, the U.N. estimates there are more than half-a-million refugees from several neighboring nations, including Cameroon. Escaping violence or persecution that is now increasingly linked to a lack of resources, like land or water.

• Brice Degla, UNHCR:

  Even if climate change is not a reason to grant the refugee status, we still notice that there is growing and growing situation where climate change is the root cause of the clashes between community.

• Willem Marx:

  Brice Degla is a manager at UNHCR, the U.N.'s refugee agency responsible, for the Cameroonian population in Chad.

• Brice Degla:

  People are moving. You have displaced population who are moving because of armed conflict. But we have also people moving within the country. Because they have lack of water. They can no longer crop in the area they used to crop because, actually, the armed conflict forced them to move out, because the reality of the climate forced them to not use the land, the small land they used to have to crop their own stuff.

• Willem Marx:

  In Chad's Western Lac region, water is visible by its absence as we cross a landscape of dried-out lakes to another camp beside a shrunken body of water, fresh paint a sign that little here changes, besides the date. Food assistance remains urgent.

  These people have always lived in Chad, but were forced from their homes by Boko Haram, a brutal Islamist movement. Chadian soldiers provide some security after several camp members were killed in an attack just 12 miles away and two days before our visit.

  One of the dead was a cousin of Golle Madram, a lifelong farmer forced to take up mat weaving to earn extra money for food. The camp's small local stream has run dry in the years since she arrived here, leaving her with few other options.

• Golle Madram, Displaced Chadian (through translator):

  Here, there is no lake or river to fish, and we don't have an irrigation system for agriculture.

• Willem Marx:

  Under a roof of U.S.-supplied cardboard scraps, she will not return home, she insists, whatever her current conditions.

• Golle Madram (through translator):

  There, we were killed. Even if there was no water here, I would still prefer to stay here.

• Willem Marx:

  You have no good choices, then.

• Golle Madram (through translator):

  Here, at least we live in peace. We don't get killed by Boko Haram.

• Willem Marx:

  Across Chad, there are hundreds, if not thousands of villages like this one, temporary structures built out of twigs and tarpaulin housing, what the U.N. calls internally displaced people. These are people who often arrive here from somewhere else. They start looking for food.

  They often struggle and then move on.

• Willem Marx:

  Climate change is causing displacement across the Sahel, the region just south of the Sahara Desert.

  But in villages like Bulagoo (ph), residents are being helped to stay. These palm tree branches are a new natural barrier, a resilience program designed to protect local food production. The result is a dip in the desert transformed in five years from dry, cracked land like this to garden of plenty.

  We're surrounded by greenery now, but, 30 years ago, this Wadi Bardi was abandoned by local people because sand from nearby dunes was encroaching. And what they did a few years ago to try and remedy that was to add animal droppings, along with organic matter from plants like this, mix it all together to create this kind of soil that's incredibly conducive for agriculture.

  Saleh Brahim Diker manages this project supported by a charity called IDEL. He spends five days each week living in the village, returning home every weekend. Maria Madamoo (ph), the wife of the village head, is one of many workers helping out, clearing weeds from a patch of pepper plants.

  This time of year is known as the lean season. It's another six weeks until this corn can be harvested, while the wheat was last cut in April, so the village's stocks are running low.

• Saleh Brahim Diker, Wadi Regeneration Project Manager, IDEL (through translator):

  It's this time of year that's more difficult than the other periods, because the production is still in progress. And now food purchases are more expensive.

  This time of year really is the most difficulty.

• Willem Marx:

  Solar power drives just one of the four water pumps that irrigate these fields. The rest rely on diesel. And prices have skyrocketed thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

  But Saleh says he hopes the work here will mean people will not in future suffer similar food insecurity and shortages.

• Saleh Brahim Diker (through translator):

  This year is a bit better than before. With each year, the difficulty reduces. And especially as there's an increase in production, food insecurity has fallen.

• Willem Marx:

  The farmers here in Chad, like many across this region, forced to adapt by forces far beyond their control.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Willem Marx in Bulagoo (ph), Chad.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So hard to watch.

  And in case you missed them, you can watch Willem Marx's two other stories on the food crisis and the security threats in Chad. That's online at PBS.org/"NewsHour."