Niger the beginning of the 20th century. What is now Niger was created from four distinct cultural areas in the pre-colonial era: the Zarma dominated Niger River valley in the southwest; the northern periphery of Hausaland, made mostly of those states which had resisted the Sokoto Caliphate, and ranged along the long southern border with Nigeria; the Lake Chad basin and Kaouar in the far east, populated by Kanuri farmers and Toubou pastoralists who had once been part of the Kanem-Bornu Empire; and the Tuareg nomads of the Aïr Mountains and Saharan desert in the vast north. Each of these communities,
Chad–Cameroon Petroleum Development and Pipeline Project transnational grassroots environmental network. The organization brings together and mobilizes social and environmental advocacy groups from all over the world to rally behind certain issues. While FOE has been involved in documentation and monitoring of pipeline project since its construction, the organization more recently developed a report in 2008 condemning a World Bank initiative for "New Climate Funds". Along with four other advocacy organizations, FOE stated that the World Bank had repeatedly engaged in projects, such as the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, that actually negatively affected the environment and only added to pollution. The Center for Environment and Development is a Cameroon-based