Our work crosscuts five areas of activities:
- Building the evidence-base for understanding prosperity and peace pathways
- Co-creating locally appropriate prosperity-peace pathways: what is needed to achieve SDGs 1 and 16 locally?
- Local Citizens Labs: Chad, Niger and Nigeria
- Lake Chad Conflict and Environment Observatory
- Making it happen: evaluating opportunities and capacities for pathways implementation
Why the Lake Chad region?
There is a long-standing, and recently revived, state of
insecurity in the Chad, Niger and Nigeria Lake Chad
Basin areas in Africa, driven by both insurgent conflict
and extreme poverty. As such, these areas provide a
dynamic test bed of broad relevance for investigating
mainstream peace-prosperity nexus and pathways.
They are also among the least developed locations
globally, with Niger being the poorest country in the
2018 UN Global Development report; highly vulnerable
to acute water shortages and violent conflicts; and
characterised by weak local justice systems and a national governance structure that enshrines
inequality. Currently, how persistent droughts, increasing livelihood underperformance and
pervasive conflict economies have become entangled in the current challenges of insurgent conflicts
in the lake’s territory is poorly understood. There is a need to understand this to be able to identify
sustainable and inclusive peace and prosperity pathways that will benefit the many millions of
cultivators, pastoralists and fishermen who live in the region and depend on the lake’s resources.
Similarly, little is known about what happens after an insurgent struggle ends, in particular, how
strategies for conflict prevention/transformation, community reconstruction and livelihood
rehabilitation might prevent localised crime and grievances amongst former occupation or ethnic-
related enemies, or even amongst former allies. There is a need to better understand local
arrangements for positive peace negotiations and economic recovery action plans to enable the
development of evidence-based sustainable and inclusive prosperity solutions.
In the Lake Chad region, it is critical that Boko Haram-damaged communities start to develop simple but effective approaches for building social cohesion through the multiple opportunities available from a range of sources, including from international humanitarian and development actors. While scientific understanding of the politics and arrangements that shape the operations of these actors in the lake environment remains very superficial, there is a need to better define these to identify good practices currently in place that encourage coherent poverty reduction and social cohesion responses. The ongoing dialogue, information sharing and alliances amongst various stakeholders, including the regional stabilisation programme involving UNEP and the national governments of Chad, Niger and Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, to address insecurity, underdevelopment and environmental challenges in the Lake Chad region, offer a unique opportunity for innovative peace-prosperity research that supports policy and decision makers in sustainable and equitable prosperity planning.
The Prosperity and Peace Pathways Project is organised around three core themes: (B)uilding the evidence-base for understanding prosperity and peace pathways; (C)o-creating locally appropriate prosperity and peace pathways (what is needed to achieve SDGs 1 and 16 locally?); (M)aking it happen: evaluating opportunities and capacities for pathways implementation. These themes (B-C- M) are underpinned by our motivation to foster connections, spur innovations and drive transformation through a rich portfolio of engagement with science, society and the state.
In the Lake Chad region, it is critical that Boko Haram-damaged communities start to develop simple but effective approaches for building social cohesion through the multiple opportunities available from a range of sources, including from international humanitarian and development actors. While scientific understanding of the politics and arrangements that shape the operations of these actors in the lake environment remains very superficial, there is a need to better define these to identify good practices currently in place that encourage coherent poverty reduction and social cohesion responses. The ongoing dialogue, information sharing and alliances amongst various stakeholders, including the regional stabilisation programme involving UNEP and the national governments of Chad, Niger and Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, to address insecurity, underdevelopment and environmental challenges in the Lake Chad region, offer a unique opportunity for innovative peace-prosperity research that supports policy and decision makers in sustainable and equitable prosperity planning.
The Prosperity and Peace Pathways Project is organised around three core themes: (B)uilding the evidence-base for understanding prosperity and peace pathways; (C)o-creating locally appropriate prosperity and peace pathways (what is needed to achieve SDGs 1 and 16 locally?); (M)aking it happen: evaluating opportunities and capacities for pathways implementation. These themes (B-C- M) are underpinned by our motivation to foster connections, spur innovations and drive transformation through a rich portfolio of engagement with science, society and the state.
Building the evidence-base for understanding prosperity and peace pathways
Prosperity and peace are recognised in the academic and
policy circles as intrinsically connected, with prosperity
considered as a necessary foundation for peace, and peace
recognised as a precondition for prosperity. Yet limited
studies exist that comprehensively explore the interlinkages
between prosperity and peace through transdisciplinary engagements in regions experiencing
increasing climate, conflict and food insecurity risks. In particular, the specific characteristics of the
prosperity-peace nexus, such as the bidirectional linkages and nexus dynamics, as well as the role of
specialty agency (i.e., those who dynamically influence the nexus), remain under-examined. Due to
the broad connotations of prosperity and peace, and the diverse ways in which their related
concepts and theories are articulated, previous studies have typically examined and measured the
specific components/dimensions of prosperity or peace separately, but not prosperity as a
component of peace and vice versa.
The urgency to accelerate actions towards prosperous,
peaceful and just societies calls for a profound
transformation in the ways academic, policy and public
discourses frame and pursue prosperity and peace
goals: from a focus mainly on material wealth and
conflict avoidance, to one that emphasises sustainable
wellbeing, happiness, positive (inner and outer) peace
and harmonious living, especially in countries that
have less of prosperity and peace.
Under this workstream, the Prosperity and Peace Pathways project will establish the evidence base
for understanding prosperity and peace nexus and pathways by systematically (i) identifying and
analysing the drivers, dynamics and challenges of violent conflict; (ii) identifying cross-scale conflict
prevention and mitigation processes and how such processes can foster peace-prosperity; (iii)
unpacking peace-prosperity dimensions, challenges and implications for livelihoods; and (iv)
investigating the politics of knowledge on peace-prosperity relations in fragile settings.
Co-creating locally appropriate prosperity-peace pathways: what is needed to achieve SDGs 1 and 16 locally?
This workstream focuses on ‘co-creation practices’ and
ways to co-create prosperity and peace pathways in
crisis contexts. In doing this, we aim to deliver an
innovative model of collaborative (vertical and
horizontal) learning (experiential and experimental)
based around the development of Transboundary
Citizens Learning Alliances (i.e., Local Citizens Labs in
Chad, Niger and Nigeria), providing distinct triple-loop
learning labs' for understanding, co-creating and
evaluating peace-prosperity pathways, and offering a
nationally appropriate mechanism for localising peace-prosperity related SDGs.
Local Citizens Labs: Chad, Niger and Nigeria
Local citizens labs are the project’s strategic in-country citizens hubs for collaborative (vertical and horizontal) learning (experiential and experimental) and knowledge innovation in Chad, Niger and Nigeria. The Labs’ programme is framed around ‘co-creation practices’, focusing on co-creating pathways of change needed to provide desirable peace, prosperity and stability for the Lake Chad region. As we work to establish and coordinate research and learning spaces in each project country, the citizens labs will enable connection of local actors that are less likely to work together on climate change, peace and prosperity issues, enabling local resource users, community leaders and stakeholders, and peace and development actors to collaboratively unravel the foundations of citizens’ preferences and strategies for both human wellbeing and meaningful and non-violent interactions. In-country lab management committees work to co-design, facilitate and ‘co-own’ specific in-country collaborative learning and knowledge innovation processes, acting as beacons for local engagement and prosperity-peace pathways implementation. Our citizens learning labs aim to achieve two key goals:
- Support the development of deliberative scenarios that describe the potential future peace- prosperity status for the Lake Chad region, targeting context-relevant issues across different prosperity and peace dimensions and deriving desirable pathways of change.
- Serve as a network of one-stop shops for localising SDGs 1 (no poverty) and 16 (peace, justice and strong institution) in the region.
We are pursuing these goals by: THE CITIZEN LAB
- Working across a diverse set of local stakeholders to co-create and
promote visions of prosperity and peace, and pathways to achieving
both goals simultaneously. - Delivering core, context-specific and locally relevant teaching modules
for introduction in local schools. - Signposting and synthesising evidence for use in policy and practice.
- Promoting and maximising value from new, existing and novel data generated through our
Lake Chad Conflict and Environment Observatory.
Lake Chad Conflict and Environment Observatory
This work stream aims to develop and deliver a Conflict and Environment Observatory to foster enhanced decision making on connected climate, peace and prosperity agendas with impact stories from the Lake Chad Region. Violence and environmental damages in the region have created unprecedented challenges for decision makers and development actors who are constantly being asked to make many varied and complex peace-conducive and climate-friendly decisions in quick succession. The range and urgency of evidence they require is continuously growing – and it is not easily accessible. This presents a challenge in developing/implementing needs-based interventions to help vulnerable communities on the frontlines of interacting social and environmental disasters. Our Lake Chad Basin Conflict and Environment Observatory will achieve three goals:
- Track, document, monitor and evaluate the interactions of conflicts, climate risks and food-water-land scarcities in the Lake Chad region.
- Create new socio-economic, political, cultural, psychological/philosophical and ecological narratives on climate conflict events, including narratives on drivers, dynamics and challenges of violent conflict and opportunities for peace throughout the project life cycle.
- Generate new knowledge and capacity to strengthen resilience and improve environmental sustainability and peace
Our monthly factsheets provide reports on conflict and environmental events and trends across the region
We intend for the observatory to serve as a decision-support tool,
contributing to ongoing early warning and early actions systems in
the region, fostering peace-conducive recovery through link with
relevant national/regional government departments and agencies
and helping to create knowledge for climate-friendly peacebuilding and human development across
the region.
Making it happen: evaluating opportunities and capacities for pathways implementation
This workstream explores the opportunities and capacities of state actors and the institutional environments to implement the prosperity and peace pathways developed in this project, supporting capacity building for evidence-based regional policy-making and cross-scale implementation. We will map specific prosperity and peace indicators to monitor over the short-to- long term and possible drawbacks relating to the use of the pathways within the national policy space, and assess whether the pathways can lead to too much complexity and be difficult for actors to implement and how to address these. We will investigate whether past and ongoing development measures aligned with the cocreated pathways – asking what worked, what did not work and why, and what can be improved now.
