Image:
Refugee workers in the Sahel region where thousands of Malian refugees are fleeing violence in their country said this week they are witnessing firsthand the knotted challenges of food security, climate change and conflict in Africa.
Alice Thomas, climate displacement manager for Refugees International, said tens of thousands of destitute Malians are pouring into countries already hit hard by starvation, lack of water and crop failures. Speaking from Dakar, Senegal, after two weeks assessing camps in Niger and Burkina Faso, Thomas said communities have opened up their villages to Malian refugees.
But, she and others worried, it could be just a matter of time before the stress from thousands of newcomers -- and their livestock -- reaches a breaking point.
"When the refugees started coming to Niger in early January, they wanted to stay with the local communities, and the local communities opened their doors. People have so little in terms of food, and they shared what they had. They look at these people as brothers," Thomas said.
But she noted that the Sahel is heading into the lean season. A recent study conducted by a group of aid organizations found 70 to 90 percent of people in western and eastern Niger estimate their food stocks will run out before the next harvest.
Meanwhile, the political crisis in Mali shows no sign of ebbing. A particular point of tension, Thomas worried, is the U.N. agencies that are set up to ensure that refugee camps' food and water needs are met. No such infrastructure exists for the suffering surrounding villages.
"There is a lot of concern about whether the long-term presence, combined with lack of water and pastureland, are going to cause tension," Thomas said. "Are you going to see local communities getting less patient with the resources being spent on refugees?"
Changes loom 'outside the bounds of' normal experience
According to the U.N. High Commission on Refugees, more than 300,000 people have fled Mali since fighting erupted in the north in January between a Tuareg rebel movement and Malian government forces. Burkina Faso has accepted about 61,000 refugees; in Niger there are 41,000; and in Mauritania, 64,000. Meanwhile, the Algerian government has reported that about 30,000 Malian refugees have crossed into the country.
Security experts who study the region say the Sahel is at ground zero of the confluence between climate change and conflict.
Joshua Busby is an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas and one of the lead researchers in the Strauss Center project on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS), a $7.6 million grant funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
He noted that scientific models suggest the Sahel will have an additional 76 to 100 "heat wave days" -- that is three days in a row above 41 degrees Celsius (105.8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the middle of the century. Parts of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, meanwhile, could see 21 consecutive days of less than 1 millimeter of rainfall.
"These are very dry areas already, and people who are marginal farmers depending on rain-fed agriculture or pastoralists are kind of living on the knife's edge of survival already," Busby said. When coupled with existential challenges like a secessionist movement splitting a country in half, as is happening in Mali, environmental challenges take on heightened worries.
"I think we need to reassess our understanding of political volatility in this part of the world," Busby said. "We're going to start seeing physical changes outside the bounds of normal human experience in a region that has already experienced quite a lot of variance in weather. What that means on top of more critical instabilities are unknown, and I think it gives us some pause about how we extrapolate about the past patterns for the future."
See what we're tweeting about
10 Comments
Add CommentThese people are not our pets. They have brains. It's their choice to have a half dozen children or not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBecause of global warming and ignorant, fearful people in the rich world who contribute most to this man made climate devastation these people are doomed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere will be winners and losers and the losers, maybe 4,000,000,000 people will die prematurely due to drought, food shortage, small arms wars, machetes, clubs, stones and first world bariers such as mine fields, mortar rounds and boat sinking.
LETS NOT PRETEND that the rich world will take any responsibility what so ever for rich-man-made GLOBAL WARMING.
Yeah, it is all about how many kids they have, not about oh, the multiple gigatons of CO2 we put in the air that changed their climate. Or how about the $100 billion a year worth of weapons the US exports...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is mighty convenient to just call your neighbors dumbasses and tell them to fend for themselves. Funny how what goes around comes around though.
Yes of course, there has never ever been a war in the past over food. Nor has there ever been famine and other logistical issues for the victims and refugees of a war. In fact, humans have never had a war ever until climate change arrived and of course it is all the evil industrialized nations and their horrendous use of the automobile that creates thugs and tyrants in Africa and a population of males who are willing to run around raping, pillaging and killing everyone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, yes of course, there has never been rape, pillaging and killing off of populations until the evil industrialized world came on the scene.
Yet another example of warmists and their ridiculous logic and linking of unrelated events. Sorry, humans have actually warred over food and even lesser reasons and none of it was due to global warming. The industrialized west came into existence to get away from the ridiculous tribe concept and that a people are subject to king, dictator or idiot chieftain. It is not the wests's fault that africa has not caught up to the rest of the world. Should I point out that this kind of insanity in the article doesnt actually happen in the industrialized world? and sorry it is not because we stole something from these morons. They are the ones who keep allowing violent thugs run their countries. The people their outnumber the thugs, they could kill them off instead. But no lets blame it all on the global warming and the industrialized world.
SA editors are showing their bias again. This article is not science it is pure speculation that is not even realistic.
It's ironic that the WWF is creating thousands of real eco-refugees by forcing them off their ancestral homelands and burning their homes so that they can construct "ethical" coconut plantations and eco-playgrounds where locals are banned but uber-rich jet setters can slaughter elephants, lions etc... for a fat fee of course.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd hazard to say that the only real eco-refugees are the ones created by the eco-movement itself.
Der Spiegel did an expose on this.
All of you mindless eco-nuts should read where your hard earned $$ are going.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/wwf-helps-industry-more-than-environment-a-835712.html
How would you feel if Yellowstone was take over by the WWF, taxpayers were banned from setting foot in there, but the WWF constructed 5-star accomodation for only those wealthy enough to pay for the honor of shooting a wolf elk or bison. This is what the eco-movement has in minfd for you. They are already beta-testing it in Africa.
How many of you remember Biafra?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://lalitkumar.in/blog/biafra-famine-famous-photograph/
Or Bangladesh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
On & on back beyond biblical times but this time is different. Yeah right.
Really, this is too much - the article presents the horrible conditions for at lease several hundred thousand people - imparted by critically inadequate environmental resources and overpopulation, compounded by desperate local political greed, and we are then asked to worry about how these poor people will be affected by global warming nearly 40 years from now?!? Really - this is too much!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlternatively, we can detach ourselves from any emotive issues and analyze these poor peoples' conditions, since understanding their dynamics may become critical for our own survival in the future. Please see "Generic Indicators for Loss of Resilience Before a Tipping Point Leading to Population Collapse", http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6085/1175
Birth control pills and condoms...'nuff said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou do have a good point there. I would think the guy watching his son killed by local government thugs in his African nation, older daughters being hauled away to some arab sex slave compound in north Africa and then the poor guy watching the little food he can grow being hauled away by his chieftain has much more pressing concerns than some goofy global warming scam that has an effect 50 years from now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut then warmists are generally environmental wackos anyway and they really do not care how many humans die as long as some dumb ass insect, algae or animal survives.
Some of the comment in this discussion exhibit some of the most blatant racist and ignorant statements I have ever witnessed in a public forum. The fact that there is little to no intelligent discussion on the web site of the major scientific publication is an absolute shame.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this