Climate Change and Conflict in the Sahel

The Sahel's arid climate, recurrent droughts, and humanitarian crises have raised concerns about the region's vulnerability to climate change. However, research indicates that the links between climate change and conflict are complex and indirect. Conflict in Niger and Burkina Faso is a complex phenomenon that emerges from the interplay of context-specific institutional, economic, social, and historical factors, with which climate change impacts can also intersect. The intersections of climate change and conflict can produce consequences that increase the likelihood of conflict over the use of limited natural resources, intensify existing conflicts, and trigger outbreaks of new conflict. In both countries, histories of droughts and food insecurity have created circumstances ripe for competition and conflict over limited natural resources. Niger and Burkina Faso are landlocked, very low-income countries that rely heavily on mineral exports for a significant portion of their revenues. Rapid population growth has further stressed rural livelihoods, adding to the complexity of the challenges these countries face in building resilience to climate change and ensuring security for their citizens. In both countries, there are few direct linkages between climate change and large-scale conflict. However, underlying sources of conflict that could potentially be triggered or exacerbated by future climate stress have been identified. In Niger, continuing periods of drought have led to diversification of livelihoods, resulting in a convergence toward agro-pastoralism that creates circumstances ripe for competition and conflict over limited natural resources. In Burkina Faso, incomplete institutionalization of the Rural Code has allowed many natural resource conflicts to continue unabated, adding to the confusion over who owns and has access to these limited, but essential, natural resources. Climate change has also led to internal migration in Burkina Faso, with flows from the central plateau to the more economically dynamic south-southwest and the more land-abundant east, where conflicts over scarce natural resources are likely to develop. In both countries, frequent, low-intensity, localized conflicts among farmers, herders, and others who depend on natural resources for their livelihood result in few fatalities but are persistent enough to hamper sustainable development and economic growth. In northern Niger, the effects of climate change, combined with unresolved grievances of the pastoralist Tuareg population, have the potential to produce more intense violence. To build climate resilience in a conflict-adverse manner, it is essential to strengthen institutions, both formal and informal, that can prevent or mitigate conflict over climate-affected natural resources. This can be achieved by establishing and mapping clear, verifiable pastoral territories, promoting and enforcing existing laws, strengthening local land commissions in Niger and reconciliation committees in Burkina Faso, and supporting efforts to develop the northern areas.