Risk Brief: North Africa & Sahel

CLIMATE-FRAGILITY RISK BRIEF NORTH AFRICA & SAHEL This is a knowledge product provided by: Climate-Fragility Risk Brief: North Africa & Sahel Authored by: Oli Brown, Climate Security Expert Network Expert review by: Ms Barbara Bendandi, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD); and Dr Hammou Laamrani, the League of Arab States. PROVIDED BY The Climate Security Expert Network, which comprises some 30 international experts, supports the Group of Friends on Climate and Security and the Climate Security Mechanism of the UN system. It does so by synthesising scientific knowledge and expertise, by advising on entry points for building resilience to climate-security risks, and by helping to strengthen a shared understanding of the challenges and opportunities of addressing climate-related security risks. www.climate-security-expert-network.org The climate diplomacy initiative is a collaborative effort of the German Federal Foreign Office in partnership with adelphi. The initiative and this publication are supported by a grant from the German Federal Foreign Office. www.climate-diplomacy.org SUPPORTED BY LEGAL NOTICE Contact: [email protected] Published by: adelphi research gGmbH Alt-Moabit 91 10559 Berlin Germany www.adelphi.de The analysis, results, recommendations and graphics in this paper represent the opinion of the authors and are not necessarily representative of the position of any of the organisations listed above. The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on included maps do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by adelphi or any of the funding parties. Date: April 2020 © chrissie kremer/unsplash.com Editorial responsibility: adelphi Layout: Katarina Schulz, adelphi © adelphi 2020 © chrissie kremer/unsplash.com RISK BRIEF: NORTH AFRICA & SAHEL - INTRODUCTION 3 Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 4 2. CLIMATE CONTEXT 6 3. REGIONAL RISKS AND RESILIENCE 8 3.1. Farmer-herder conflicts 10 3.2. Tensions related to climate-induced migration 11 3.3. Conflict over water allocation 11 3.4. Impacts on state capacity and the growth of armed opposition groups 12 4. GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS ON CLIMATE SECURITY 13 5. NATIONAL AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENTS 13 6. ENTRY POINTS FOR ADDRESSING CLIMATE FRAGILITY RISKS 14 REFERENCES 16 ANNEX 17 RISK BRIEF: NORTH AFRICA & SAHEL - INTRODUCTION 4 1. INTRODUCTION Africa has been identified as the region where climate change is most likely to undermine security and trigger violent conflict (Scheffran, et al. 2019). This effect may be most pronounced in the Sahel, an area with a history of violent conflict and climate vulnerability, itself a result of the region’s poverty, low levels of development and reliance on livelihoods, such as rainfed agriculture and migratory livestock herding, that are highly sensitive to droughts and floods. This risk brief aims to provide a concise overview of peer-reviewed literature on the links between climate change and violent conflict in the Sahel, Sahara and North Africa (see section 8 for a list of references used). It makes no claim to be comprehensive but endeavours to provide a balanced view of the current state of knowledge as a way of triggering further debate.1 The area under discussion is a huge swathe of land comprising all or part of 17 countries2: roughly 6,000 kilometres from west to east and 3,000 kilometres from north to south – from the Atlantic in the west to the Red Sea in the east to the Mediterranean in the north. It is politically, ethnically, linguistically, economically and climatologically highly diverse. Whereas Sahelian countries all rank low on UNDP’s 2018 Human Development Index, North African countries have generally higher levels of development. Levels of hunger and malnutrition reflect this distribution: all the Sahelian countries, with the exception of Senegal, are listed as being of serious concern on the 2017 Global Hunger Index, which is produced by the International Food Policy Research Institute. By contrast, hunger in most of the North African countries is of either low or moderate concern, with the exception of Libya, where data were insufficient (IFPRI, 2017). Meanwhile, an estimated 345 million people across the region lack access to electricity. Chad, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger all have rural electrification rates of 5% or less (IEA, 2016). The countries also have wildly different water ‘budgets’ in terms of the quantity of renewable freshwater resources found within their borders – from just 20 cubic metres per person in Egypt (where the vast majority of the country’s water flows down the Nile from upstream countries) to more than 12,000 cubic metres of internal water resources per capita in Cameroon (World Bank, 2014). However, what many countries in the region do have in common is the experience of violence and fragility, either within their own borders or among their direct neighbours. According to the Heidelberg Conflict Barometer (2018), every country in the region with the exception of Eritrea was experiencing a violent crisis of one sort or another in 2018. Five countries (Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Nigeria) 1 An early version of this brief was a desk-based literature review, supplemented by structured interviews. This provided the background paper for a one-day Regional Dialogue on Climate Security in North Africa and the Sahel, which was held on 29th November 2019 in Rabat, Morocco. High-level representatives from governments across the region, from international and regional organisations (including the 3S Initiative, the G5 Sahel, the Union du Maghreb Arabe (UMA), and the African Union) as well as from European partners, participated in this meeting. The discussions during that event informed the final version of this risk brief. The brief has also greatly benefitted from a review by Ms Barbara Bendandi of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and Dr Hammou Laamrani of the League of Arab States. Any errors of fact or emphasis remain the sole responsibility of the author. 2 Groupings may vary,a but for the purposes of this paper the region includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in the North African Maghreb, as well as the Sahelian and Sahara parts of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Senegal. RISK BRIEF: NORTH AFRICA & SAHEL - INTRODUCTION 5 met the threshold for full war, and another three met the threshold for limited war (South Sudan, Cameroon and Mali). The OECD lists every Sahelian country, with the exception of Senegal, as either fragile or extremely fragile, and categorises Libya and Tunisia as fragile (2018). But the Sahel hasn’t always been known for its poverty, regular famines and political instability. Until the twentieth century, the Sahel was largely self- sufficient in terms of food security and even exported part of its harvest (Descroix and Lambert, 2018). Part of the explanation for this precipitous fall in regional fortunes has been the intertwined impacts of a fluctuating climate and land degradation.3 As Descroix and Lambert (2016) argue, the devastating 25-year drought in the Sahel between 1968-1993 contributed to the partial destruction of essentially rural Sahelian societies. The reconstruction of these societies continues today. 3 The degradation of arable lands has been a major concern for livelihoods and food security in the Sahel. However, there is no overall consensus about the severity of land degradation in the region. Earth observation data suggest an overall increase in vegetation that can be confirmed by ground observations. However, it remains unclear if the observed positive trends provide an environmental improvement with positive effects on people’s livelihoods (UNCCD, 2017). RISK BRIEF: NORTH AFRICA & SAHEL - CLIMATE CONTEXT 6 2. CLIMATE CONTEXT North Africa and the Sahel is made up of three distinct biomes – the Mediterranean, the Saharan and the Sudano-Sahelian, with correspondingly diverse climates. The Sahara is one of the world’s driest and hottest regions, with annual rainfall of less than 100mm and average temperatures around 30 degrees centigrade. Meanwhile, the southern Sahel receives between 700mm and 1,000mm of rain per year. By contrast, parts of Tunisia receive 1,500mm per year and about 2,000 mm of precipitation per year fall in the Atlas mountains in Morocco, where skiing is possible in winter. Climate fluctuations have shaped the region for millennia. During a much wetter period some 5,000 years ago, the area that is now covered by the Sahara was actually one of the first parts of Africa to be farmed (Benjaminsen, 2008). Meanwhile, the edge of the Sahara desert has, over the centuries, moved north and south in response to changes in average rainfall. However, human-produced greenhouse gas emissions are now forcing shifts in climate that are appearing far faster than any changes that have been observed in the geological record. Over the last 50 to 100 years average temperatures in Africa increased by 0.5 degrees centigrade (IPCC, 2014). The climate that the region can expect in future depends, in large part, on the level of continuing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) and their complex interactions with the interlinked factors (land cover, pollution levels, tipping points and so on) that combine to determine average temperatures and precipitation levels.4 Temperatures in the region are predicted to rise faster than the global average (IPCC, 2014). Although there are differences between sub-regional models, under a high-emissions scenario the mean average temperature across Africa may rise by more than 2 degrees centigrade by the end of the twenty-first century, increasing heat stress on people, plants and livestock. Under such a scenario it is possible that some currently inhabited areas may become unable to support populations. Meanwhile, sea level rise and possible reductions in the flow of the Nile could have significant impacts on Egypt, in particular the area of the Nile Delta (Alda, 2014).

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