Climate Justice and Gender Equity: Addressing the Silent Crisis of Environmental Displacement Among Indigenous Women During the Nigerian-Biafran War

This article employs feminist political ecology (FPE) and intersectional theory to examine the weaponization of environmental destruction against Indigenous Igbo women during the Nigerian-Biafran War (1967-1970).Through analysis of archival records, oral histories, and war literature, it reveals how scorched-earth tactics, food blockades, and oil-backed military strategies constituted gendered ecocide, systematically targeting women's subsistence economies, ecological knowledge, and cultural ties to the land.The study documents three interconnected acts of violence: (1) economic (destruction of agrarian systems forcing women into perilous survival economies), ( 2) embodied (weaponized famine and sexual trauma), and (3) epistemic (erasure of women's resistance in postwar narratives).Findings highlight Indigenous women's clandestine resilience through seed preservation, "affia attack" smuggling networks, and grassroots governance while exposing how postwar reconstruction policies perpetuated harm through gender-blind land reforms.The article concludes with reparative frameworks centering on land restitution, gender-sensitive climate adaptation, and methodological shifts in environmental conflict studies.It calls for research that amplifies oral histories and traces intergenerational impacts, arguing that true climate justice requires confronting the colonial-patriarchal systems that render Indigenous women's bodies and territories as battlefields.