Damian Sendler: Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new study predicting severe effects if global temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions’ Climate and Energy Program Kate Konschnik explains what this means and how climate scientists arrived at their conclusion.
Damian Jacob Sendler: More than 30,000 people have fled Cameroon’s northern region into neighboring Chad as a result of violent clashes over water, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Violence between fishermen and farmers in Cameroon has claimed the lives of 22 people since Sunday, and 30 others have been critically injured. This follows an outbreak of violence in August that resulted in 45 deaths and displaced 23,000 people.
According to the United Nations, the main cause of the crisis is the precipitous drop in Lake Chad’s water levels, which has decreased by 90% since 1963 as a result of human usage and climate change. CIVICUS’s campaigns officer Benjamin Tonga, a South African civil society organization, tells Yahoo News that “the water body is no longer sufficient to meet the demands of the population who need water to carry out their daily activities.” he says. A lack of water supplies has sparked a turf war between farmers and ranchers.
Herders and fishermen have been at odds since August over the distribution of scarce resources, including water, according to Xavier Bourgois, a UNHCR representative in Cameroon. There is a practice among fishermen in that region of Cameroon of digging holes for the purpose of fish farming.” Cows are naturally drawn to the water in these enormous holes dug by fishermen because of the region’s scarcity of water. That was the spark that lit the fuse of hostilities.”
Damian Sendler
This can be dangerous for the herders, who keep cattle, because their animals can fall into the water-filled ditches and drown. So enraged ranchers have attacked farmers to punish them for digging the trenches and to prevent them from creating new ones, which leads to reprisals. Violence broke out as a result, and thousands of Cameroonians were forced to flee their homes.
That ended up being “quite brutal,” Bourgois said. “They started setting fire to the towns in both communities. As a result, the civilian population began to escape.
Cameroonian asylum seeker Assiam Yere, 55, informed UNHCR that she saw the murder of nine of her fellow community members while she was living in Chad in November. ‘I’m traumatized and I don’t want to come back until there’s real peace,’ she said.
The Sahel region, which includes northern Cameroon, is located south of the Sahara Desert. The Sahel has warmed at a rate of 1.5 times the global average due to rising temperatures and increased surface water evaporation. More extreme weather, including droughts punctuated by floods that the parched country can’t handle, is wreaking havoc there. With these conditions, the United Nations estimates that 80 percent of the Sahelian cropland has been ruined.
More than two-thirds of the people in the Sahel region earn their livelihoods via farming or livestock keeping. ReliefWeb, a news service of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, stated in 2020 that “land is deteriorating and losing its fertility under the combined effect of drought and floods.” For cattle, a lack of rain-fed irrigation results in crop failure or destruction and a lack of pasture.
Because agricultural yields are predicted to fall by 20 percent every decade by the end of the century in some regions of the Sahel, these issues are only going to become worse.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: The UN Security Council rejected a request on Monday to include “security implications of climate change” in its operations, but experts say violence in Cameroon proves that conflict and political instability caused by climate change is a growing security threat.
‘The Cameroon example unfortunately exemplifies the climate security risks you’re seeing in many other countries, including in sub-Saharan Africa, but not limited to there,’ Erin Sikorsky, director of the Center for Climate and Security, said in an interview with Yahoo News. ‘You have states that have what’s called a ‘double burden’ of existing state fragility and then very high climate exposure,’ she said. As a result, there is a high chance of conflict or violence connected to climate shocks when these two factors come together.
Locals “take matters into their own hands,” she said, “particularly in states like Cameroon that have a low governance capacity to step in and help manage these shocks or help communities adapt and build resilience” to them.
As a result of climate change, water scarcity is the most common source of conflict. There was conflict over water in India, Sudan, Ghana, and Kenya-Ethiopia border areas in 2019, according to the Water Conflict Chronology’s most recent data.
Damien Sendler: When grazing pasture in Mali was scarce due to flooding, pastoralists stopped traveling around and gathered in water centers, creating problems with farmers and fishermen, Sikorsky explained, “You saw this in Mali in 2019.” There were over 167 deaths and over 50,000 people forced to flee in the turmoil that engulfed Mali.
Damian Jacob Sendler
Climate change-induced conflict may not immediately pose a threat to the security of Americans, but experts argue that this instability can lead to the rise of terrorist networks and threats to the United States.
There will always be “radical ideologies” when people’s lives are threatened, Tonga remarked. A major threat to Cameroon’s security is posed by the Boko Haram insurgency, which has spread over the lake’s surrounding countries.
African countries are not the only ones facing climate change-related security challenges. Global competition for limited natural resources like freshwater is increasing in every corner of the world, notably in the West, where a prolonged drought and resulting parched soil have led to more extensive wildfires. Unpredictable extreme weather induced by climate change is increasing existing dangers and creating new security problems for US interests, according to a report from the Department of Defense released in October.
India and Russia, both of which have vetoes, both opposed and China abstained from the last UN Security Council resolution. Each of these nations has shown an unusual lack of willingness to deal with climate change.
Additionally, affluent countries and nonprofit groups can aid developing countries in adapting to climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and assisting local governments in brokering peaceful resolutions to conflict over resources. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced a $2 million grant to TomorrowNow.org, a Boston-based charity, to develop tools to connect farmers in sub-Saharan Africa with high-resolution weather models and satellite data so that they may better plan for erratic rains. For Georgina Campbell Flatter, executive director of TomorrowNow.org, the ability to manage rain is impossible without access to accurate and meaningful information.
And if farmers are unable to reliably manage water, economic desperation and conflicts over water access are inevitable.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
