Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim

Tackling climate change is a monumental task but Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim has taken up the task. Her project takes a look at Lake Chad, in the Sahel region of west-central Africa, that provides water for over 30 million people living in the four surrounding countries — namely Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.

She champions the causes of indigenous peoples, as she belongs to the Mbororo pastoralist people in Chad. Climate change, along with population growth, has exacerbated tensions between the nomadic Mbororo herders and settled farmers. The situation has deteriorated further because of the Covid-19 pandemic and widespread floods that began last October.

To manage the conflict, Ibrahim invites men and women, nomadic pastoralists and settled people to conduct participatory 2D mapping of the area. Natural features, such as ridges and plateaus, are mapped out on a board, which leads to the creation of an intricate 2D and 3D landscape model.

Ultimately, the maps will allow the conservation of resources with everyone agreeing, for example, on how to share corridors for animals and access to fresh water.

Apart from that, Ibrahim — who was named by Time in 2019 as one of 15 women championing action on climate change — has to deal with a society that is deeply patriarchal, nevertheless she is convinced that women are key to mapping resources because they remain close to nature and to home, using the terrain and powers of observation to solve problems.

Ibrahim compares women’s wisdom to apps on a smartphone. She brought together 500 indigenous herders to map natural resources in the region. While men documented mountainous areas, rivers and places considered sacred, women mapped the springs. The project caught the attention of the national government, which began using the survey to inform public policy. The Rolex Award will thus permit Ibrahim to scale up her mapping work in Chad and neighbouring countries.