Climate, Conflict and Crisis
How climate change has fueled conflict between farmers and herders in Africa.
By now, most of us are keenly aware that climate change presents an existential threat to some forms of life on the planet, including us. But public outrage in North America has yet to match the level of danger climate change poses, and this may be due to the fact that our “self-extermination” is not imminent today, tomorrow or next month.
While most projections show some of the worst effects of climate change on the western world won’t kick off in earnest for decades, we’re already seeing impacts in parts of Africa and the Middle East when it comes to food production, access to water and armed conflict.
One of the most serious climate change related problems is an increase in migration as some parts of the world become less habitable. We have been witness to the steady human flow of climate refugees trying to make it across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. In Africa, we’ve seen these issues contribute to deadly conflict.
I am co-chair of the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization committed to preventing and ending deadly conflicts. Recently, our CEO, Robert Malley, addressed the United Nations Security Council on how climate change shapes conflicts. Without global action, he said climate change could become a slow moving version of the current COVID-19 pandemic. It is already shaping and will continue to shape the future of conflict, and we ignore that relationship at our peril.
Currently, among the hottest places on Earth is the Sahara Desert in Africa. Across the Sahel region and even as far south as Kenya, ICG has analyzed how climate-related factors have exacerbated intercommunal conflicts between herders and farmers. In northern Nigeria, there have been large declines in the length of the rainy season and an increase in desert or semi-desert conditions over recent decades. These changes have dried up many natural water sources, diminishing pastures and farmland. In the northern states most directly impacted, these conditions have worsened long-running fights between herders and farmers sharing the same resources. This has also pushed large numbers of herders to migrate south in search of productive land, resulting in more conflicts between them and central Nigeria’s sedentary crop farmers. This violence has stretched Nigeria’s military, and diverted its attention away from the Islamist insurgency group, Boko Haram.
Climate change and its connection to conflict is a complex subject and one in which it’s hard to draw straight lines of cause and effect. But that’s why the work ICG does through its unique on-the-ground analysis is so vital in helping policy makers shape strategies to combat this issue.
Ultimately, the only solution to all the adverse effects of climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But in the short term, we need to address the very real existing damage it is causing to food security, water access and deadly conflict in the hardest hit areas.
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].Climate, Conflict and Crisis
by Frank Giustra, Modern Farmer
May 8, 2020
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Can initially food be redistributed somehow?There is so much waste. What about building solar fields in Africa and letting them profit from the energy?
Sustainability is not sustainable. The climate has been changing since the dawn of time and will continue to change with or with out us. Our goal is to learn how to change with it.