Wrapped in a purple boubou (robe), Salou Moussa Maïga, 60, sits with his hands clasped between his knees and explains how climate change has fuelled violent conflict in Ansongo, Mali. As the president of a farming cooperative, he knows the cost of drought all too well. ‘The rain period has decreased considerably from years ago … we don’t have grass anymore,’ he told ISS Today. ‘Everything is naked.’
26 May 2016 – At a meeting today in the United Nations Security Council on the situation in the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa, senior UN officials stressed that climate change plays a direct role in the region’s security, development and stability by increasing drought and fuelling conflict.
Forging national unity has been a perennial challenge to Nigeria’s evolution as a country. Since independence from Britain 56 years ago, the country continues to weather severe existential storms that strike at its very core.
At its 585th meeting on March 30 2016, the Peace and Security Council of the African Union held an open session on Climate Change: State fragility, peace and security in Africa. The debate reflected the collective acknowledgement that climate change, peace and security in Africa are inextricably linked, stressing the need for all AU Member States to further build national resilience capacities.
‘No challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a change in climate’. Thus spoke President Obama, and most Western leaders have done likewise. Yet as the security policy community descends on Munich for its annual conference, climate change is likely to be a sideshow, again, despite the global attention that climate change received in the context of December’s conference in Paris.
Ask Agnes Namukasa about sustainably managing fisheries in Kachanga, the lakeshore landing site she calls home in Uganda’s Masaka District, and you will soon learn about toilets. From her perspective, community members won’t address conflict between government enforcers and fishers, competition among neighboring villages, or pollution threatening aquatic ecosystems until they can first organize to address their most pressing daily needs. And in Kachanga, where chronic childhood diarrhea and a host of other illnesses stem from poor sanitation, those essentials include public latrines.
Many Cameroonians who rely on the Logone River for their survival have been forced to flee inland, as rising waters, storms and flooding destroy their homes and fishing boats.
African civil society organisations championing for climate justice have criticised the Intended Nationally Determined Commitments (INDC’s) presented to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, calling them “weak, inadequate and not ambitious enough.”
The booming geothermal industry in Kenya illustrates how rapid transitions to renewable energy systems can risk generating conflicts if they are not done with sensitivity to the impact of transition on marginalised populations and to local ethnic and political dynamics.
Ongoing conflict in South Sudan has caused a myriad of problems for the world’s youngest nation. The potential of South Sudan is enormous. With rich natural resources and agricultural potential, and a young population, this is a country that should be thriving.
China’s economic slowdown is proving especially painful for countries that depend on Chinese investment. The Chinese are set to invest less in foreign countries this year, as their government takes steps to reduce the flow of its currency into overseas markets. Resource-rich countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, like Zambia, are suffering as a result.
The women sat quietly in a village church in northwest Zambia, the sun slanting down on their colourful Sunday outfits as they told how life had changed since their chief sold a tract of land to a foreign firm for a new copper mine, displacing hundreds of families.
More than 80 percent of the estimated 42 million people living in Central Africa’s Lake Victoria Basin depend on fishing or farming for survival. Given this overwhelming reliance on natural resources, the lake’s deteriorating condition – driven by climate change, agriculture, pollution, deforestation, overfishing, and industrialization – has far-reaching implications.