Climate Home - Nick Jubber*
If rainfall decreases, and temperatures rise, as the IPCC's 5th Assessment suggests, resource competition across the Sahel is only likely to intensify
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| A herdsman on the Séno-Gondo plain of central Mali cares for his goats - a job that is getting harder as populations expand and climate impacts intensify (Pic: Nick Jubber) |
Suleiman is a Fulani herdsman on the Séno-Gondo plain of
central Mali. One day he set out with his younger brother and his
family's cattle towards an inland lake near the village of Gorti.
On the way, they crossed the edge of a recently harvested millet
field. The farmer ran out, shouting at Suleiman to keep his animals away
from the crops.
'But you've already harvested the field,' said Suleiman. Still,
tensions were high and the farmer was anxious about a portion of the
field where the millet had yet to be culled.
He called to his neighbours, who surrounded Suleiman, wielding axes
and sticks. When Suleiman staggered home, later that day, he was covered
in bruises and wounds, and had to be treated at the local medical
outpost.
This is the kind of incident that prompts talk of a 'climate war'.
From Nigeria to Sudan, the imbalance between growing populations and
dwindling resources is levering conflict in the Sahel (the semi-arid
buffer zone between the deserts in the north and the savannas of
sub-Saharan Africa). In Suleiman's case, climate is key: as local chief
Ali Hajji says, 'this used to be a land of plenty'.
But droughts in the Malian Sahel between the 1960s and 1980s reduced
vegetation and water availability, forcing herders to roam further, and
prompting farmers to spread their crops more widely.
In 2007, the Nobel Prize chairman, Professor Ole Danbolt Mjos,
labelled the Sahel as the setting of 'the world's first climate war'.
Although this claim is loaded with too much drama for most experts,
there is a significant roster of voices supporting the contention that
conflict in the Sahel is significantly driven by climate (including UN
secretary-general Ban-Ki Moon, the UN Environment Programme and the
IPCC's 5
th Assessment Report on
Africa, which asserts that 'climate change will progressively threaten
economic growth and human security.'
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| Droughts in the Malian Sahel between the 1960s and 1980s reduced vegetation and water availability, forcing herders to roam further (Pic: Nick Jubber) |
But is 'climate war' an accurate title? 'War' suggests a series of
interconnected battlegrounds, some form of military strategy and
specified goals.
What is alarming about the Sahelian conflicts is their organic
growth: under comparable circumstances, a Hobbesian struggle breaks out,
and the result is bloodshed.
Defining this 'war' by 'climate' is also contentious, given the
variety of contributing factors. These include the dispersal of Colonel
Gaddafi's weapons in Libya, which has increased access and affordability
of small arms in countries such as Chad, Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
Land privatisation is key, so too governmental policies on
agriculture and land tenure, development projects such as dam-building
on the Niger river, embezzlement of drought relief funds, population
growth and issues of political representation.
As ecologist Hélène Claudot-Hawad points out, 'in the Sahara the
modern states are viewed as machines for turning out minorities who are
relegated to the margins'. This marginalisation, as much as climate,
impels the conflicts today.
No war has a single cause. 'Climate war' draws attention to the role
played by drought and desertification in the diminution of resources.
It also directs analysts beyond political sloganeering to the
practical phenomena that enable political leaders to marshal their
recruits.
In Mali, for example, the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s abruptly
lowered the flood level of the Niger river, prompting rice farmers to
move closer to the river-bed. As a result, Tuareg herdsmen were unable
to feed their animals from the nutritious bourgou-grasses flanking the
river.
'In a very short time,' according to ecologist Charles Grémont, 'the
multiple ties with the people and resources of the Niger valley that had
long been fundamental to the history of the southern Tuareg were cut
off.'
It is from climate-based developments like this that the present-day armed conflict in Mali can be traced.
For observers of the Sahel, the growing intersection of conflicts is alarming.
Fulani herders in Nigeria have been accused of transporting weapons
to Boko Haram; Arabic and Tuareg clans have linked up in Northern Mali;
and across porous borders, the arms business has proven as successful as
the long-standing trades in narco-trafficking and people-smuggling.
There are too many variables to label this simply a 'climate war';
rather, it is a series of conflicts deeply coloured by climate.
Mitigation and adaptation, as set out at the UN's 2015 climate summit in
Paris are essential elements in reducing these conflicts.
If rainfall is likely to decrease, and temperatures to rise, as the IPCC's 5
th Assessment suggests, the resource competition is only likely to intensify.
Without more holistic engagement and an increase in the quality and
output of investment, these conflicts are likely to proliferate more
widely, intersect more tightly, and increase their impact outside the
region.
*Nick Jubber is a writer and a traveller. His latest book, The Timbuktu School for Nomads: Across the Sahara in the shadow of jihad, is published by Nicholas Brealey
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