The Sahel region has been identified as one of the regions where climate change undermines security and plays a role in triggering violent conflict. This is a result of the region’s dependency on rainfed agriculture, land degradation, low levels of development, weak infrastructure, lack of social safety nets and high exposure to natural disasters and economic shocks.
A new report provides an overview of peer-reviewed literature on the links between climate change and violent conflict in the Sahel, Sahara and North Africa. The author puts contemporary developments in a historical perspective and indicates for example how, until the twentieth century “the Sahel was largely self- sufficient in terms of food security and even exported part of its harvest” but how “periodic droughts caused great hardship in the 1910s, the 1940s and between 1968 and 1993”. Four broad links between climate change and the possibility of violent conflict for North Africa and the Sahel are summarized:
- Farmer-herder conflicts
- Tension related to climate-induced migration
- Conflict over water allocation
- Impact on state capacity and the growth of armed opposition groups
Read more about these links and four entry points to address the fragility risks related to climate change here.
Photo credit: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid/Flickr