UN report warns of climate wars
Pastor Dale Morgan
UN report warns of climate wars*
Darfur conflict is driven by climate change and threaten to trigger a
succession of new wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the
damage, UN report says.
· Drought and advancing desert blamed for tensions
· Chad and southern Africa also at risk from warming
Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Saturday June 23, 2007
The Guardian
The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and
environmental degradation, which threaten to trigger a succession of new
wars across Africa unless more is done to contain the damage, according
to a UN report published yesterday.
"Darfur ... holds grim lessons for other countries at risk," an 18-month
study of Sudan by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) concludes.
With rainfall down by up to 30% over 40 years and the Sahara advancing
by well over a mile every year, tensions between farmers and herders
over disappearing pasture and evaporating water holes threaten to
reignite the half-century war between north and south Sudan, held at bay
by a precarious 2005 peace accord.
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The southern Nuba tribe, for example, have warned they could "restart
the war" because Arab nomads - pushed southwards into their territory by
drought - are cutting down trees to feed their camels.
The UNEP investigation into links between climate and conflict in Sudan
predicts that the impact of climate change on stability is likely to go
far beyond its borders. It found there could be a drop of up to 70% in
crop yields in the most vulnerable areas of the Sahel, an ecologically
fragile belt stretching from Senegal to Sudan. "It illustrates and
demonstrates what is increasingly becoming a global concern," said Achim
Steiner, UNEP's executive director. "It doesn't take a genius to work
out that as the desert moves southwards there is a physical limit to
what [ecological] systems can sustain, and so you get one group
displacing another."
He also pointed to incipient conflicts in Chad "at least in part
associated with environmental changes", and to growing tensions in
southern Africa fuelled by droughts and flooding.
Estimates of the dead from the Darfur conflict, which broke out in 2003,
range from 200,000 to 500,000. The immediate cause was a regional
rebellion, to which Khartoum responded by recruiting Arab militias, the
janjaweed, to wage a campaign of ethnic cleansing against African
civilians. The UNEP study suggests the true genesis of the conflict
pre-dates 2003 and is to be found in failing rains and creeping
desertification. It found that:
· The desert in northern Sudan has advanced southwards by 60 miles over
the past 40 years;
· Rainfall has dropped by 16%-30%;
· Climate models for the region suggest a rise of between 0.5C and 1.5C
between 2030 and 2060;
· Yields in the local staple, sorghum, could drop by 70%.
In the Washington Post, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, argued:
"Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and
political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against
black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a
more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the
Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part
from climate change."
In turn, the Darfur conflict has exacerbated Sudan's environmental
degradation, forcing more than two million people into refugee camps.
Deforestation has been accelerated while underground aquifers are being
drained.
A peace deal signed last year by rebels and the Khartoum government
broke down, but this month President Omar al-Bashir said he would accept
the deployment of a joint UN and African Union force. He has reneged on
similar pledges, but UN diplomats are hopeful this one will stick.
However, the UNEP report warns that no peace will last without sustained
investment in containing environmental damage and adapting to climate
change. Mr Steiner said: "Simply to return people to the situation there
were in before is a high-risk strategy."
The G8 summit ended in Germany with consensus over the severity of the
climate change problem but no agreement on how it should be contained. A
common approach is supposed to be negotiated under UN auspices at the
end of the year.