Water-Energy-Food Nexus and Human Rights in the Lake Chad Basin: Analytical Study of North East Nigeria

This research analytically examines the human rights implications of the water-energy-food nexus in the Lake Chad Basin, focusing on communities in Nigeria's Northeast states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, where Lake Chad's dramatic shrinkage has compounded the humanitarian consequences of the Boko Haram conflict. The Lake Chad Basin encompasses one of the world's most acute intersections of climate change, resource depletion, armed conflict, and human rights vulnerability. The study draws on the rights to water, food, and an adequate standard of living under the ICESCR, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and the framework of climate justice to construct an integrated human rights analytical lens. An empirical mixed-methods design combines satellite-based environmental trend data from the Lake Chad Basin Commission with qualitative interviews of fishing communities, farmers, pastoralists, and humanitarian NGOs operating in the three states. The human rights impacts of Lake Chad's shrinkage are traced across interlinked domains of livelihood loss, displacement, food insecurity, and water scarcity. Findings reveal that the most vulnerable communities bear the most severe human rights burdens of environmental degradation while contributing least to its causes. The study argues that Lake Chad governance frameworks must be fundamentally reoriented toward human rights-based natural resource management. Recommendations include Nigerian advocacy for a human rights-based Lake Chad Basin Protocol, community adaptation rights funds, and climate displacement legal protections. Keywords: water-energy-food nexus, Lake Chad, human rights, climate change, Northeast Nigeria.