Climate Change and Continued Conflict in the Sudan
DEVELOPMENTS
Without a concerted effort by the international community to curb the harmful effects of climate change in Africa, droughts and famines will increase the likelihood of ethnic and regional conflict. As the German Advisory Council on Global Change warns,“Without resolute counteraction, climate change will overstretch many societies’ adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree.”
The Darfur region in the Sudan starkly illustrates this point. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes that in the 1980s, crucial rains in southern Sudan became less frequent. Regional farmers became protective of what little water they had and began to fence in their properties to protect their lands from animal herds. Up until that time, regional farmers had gotten along reasonably well with Arab herdsmen, who were primarily nomadic. In 2007, the United Nations Environmental Program reported, “a very strong link between land degradation, desertification and conflict in Darfur. Exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conflicts to be triggered and sustained by political, tribal, or ethnic differences.” The report continues “[Darfur] can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from ecological collapse.” Although an underground source of freshwater the size of Lake Erie was discovered in Darfur, past efforts at water management in Sudan have been poor.
BACKGROUND
The conflict in the Darfur region centers on tensions between the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) against the Government of Sudan (GOS) military and Afro-Arab militia groups known as the Janjaweed. The Janjaweed largely hail from the Rizeigat region in Northern Sudan, while the SLM/A and JEM rebel groups are comprised of non-Arabs from the Zaghawa, Fur, and Masalit ethnic groups. Despite the presence of African Union peacekeepers, the U.S. State Department estimates that hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and over 2 million people are displaced, with 250,000 people taking refuge in neighboring Chad.
Since independence from Great Britain in 1956, Sudan has undergone decades of conflict. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between North and South Sudan ended a long-running civil war in 2005, and provided for two referenda. The first, scheduled for January 2011, allows for southern Sudanese to decide whether or not their oil-rich region should secede, and a second vote is scheduled for the people of Abyei to decide “whether to retain the area’s special administrative status in the north or join Southern Sudan.” If South Sudan seeks independence, it will be landlocked and will have to negotiate with Khartoum to export its oil. International observers claimed that the recent presidential and parliamentary elections, which kept in power President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, were flawed and corrupt.
Moreover, one report endorsed by many international nongovernmental organizations illustrates that “the elections did very little to put in place a sustainable framework for a more democratic Sudan. Repressive laws remained in place, or were revised in ways that did not fully address human rights concerns, in clear contravention of the CPA and Sudan’s 2005 Interim National Constitution.” Underlying this context are continued tensions over the country’s water supply. Agriculture accounts for 80% of livelihoods in Sudan, 40% of the country’s GDP, and 97% of total water use. Further, although Sudan “has the largest area of irrigation in all of Sub-Saharan Africa,” it is “poorly managed and maintained.”
Sudan’s estimated population is over 41 million with a 2010 population growth rate of 2.143%. By 2025, demand for water used for agricultural production will double, increasing the risk of conflict. According to a report compiled by the CNA Corporation with cooperation and input from U.S. military generals and admirals, “Access to vital resources, primarily food and water, can be an additional causative factor of conflicts, a number of which are playing out today in Africa. Probably the best known is the conflict in Darfur between herders and farmers. Long periods of drought resulted in the loss of both farmland and grazing land to the desert. The failure of their grazing lands compelled the nomads to migrate southward in search of water and herding ground, and that in turn led to conflict with the farming tribes occupying those lands. Coupled with population growth, tribal, ethnic, and religious differences, the competition for land turned violent.”
Global climate change undermines security and progress throughout the African continent. The CNA report continues, “Africa is increasingly crucial in the ongoing battle against civil strife, genocide, and terrorism. Numerous African countries and regions already suffer from varying degrees of famine and civil strife. Darfur, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, Western Sahara—all have been hit hard by tensions that can be traced in part to environmental causes. Struggles that appear to be tribal, sectarian, or nationalist in nature are often triggered by reduced water supplies or reductions in agricultural productivity.” Essentially, climate change is a threat multiplier. Non-state actors can exploit the resulting vacuums of stability. In Somalia in the 1990s, “alternating droughts and floods led to migrations of varying size and speed and prolonged the instability on which warlords capitalized.”
ANALYSIS
Any concrete steps to curb climate change will have to be undertaken by African states and the international community. While African states acknowledge problems such as poor water management and government instability, major powers in the international community must also take responsibility. Every major Western industrial polluter did not sign the Kyoto Protocols, which set binding targets on industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While international agreements like the one reached at the G-8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in 2007 to voluntarily cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% before 2050 are laudable, these agreements cannot be enforced. Similarly, domestic actions to curb emissions in the United States have essentially stalled in the U.S. Senate.
Until a concerted effort by the international community is undertaken, instability in Africa will continue. In Sudan, despite the promised January 2011 referendum, the need for vital natural resources will very likely trump any agreements signed in that country.
John Lyman is the Administrative Editor of Foreign Policy Digest.
