The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published a Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment on 22. June 2007. The report presents the findings of fieldwork, analysis and extensive consultations carried out by UNEP in Sudan between December 2005 and March 2007, as well as detailed recommendations for follow-up action. The topics under investigation include natural disasters and desertification, the impacts of population displacement, urban environment and environmental health, industry, agriculture, forest resources, freshwater resources, wildlife and protected areas, marine environments, governance and international aid. In addition, the report analyses the complex but clear linkages between environmental degradation and ongoing conflict in Darfur, as well as historical conflicts elsewhere in Sudan. Since the interlinkages between climate change and conflict seems to be most obvious in Sudan, ECC editors asked the project coordinator, Dr. Andrew Morton, about past and future trends in this environmentally and politically sensitive region.

ECC-Editors: Against the backdrop of your comprehensive assessment, do you think it is appropriate to refer to the Darfur conflict as the first "climate change war", as more and more media and also decision makers are doing?

Andrew Morton: No it is not appropriate. The Darfur conflict has many underlying causes and aggravating factors: environmental factors including climate change are just one set. Conflict is actually not the most common social outcome of environmental degradation, whether caused by climate change or for other more common reasons such as over-exploitation. The most common outcomes are actually enduring rural poverty and population displacement to cities: conflict only arises in the presence of other aggravating factors such as inequality, a lack of rule of law and ready access to firearms.

ECC-Editors: As the report points out, most of the trends, such as deforestation and the degradation of arable land will continue in the future. Is it feasible in the near term to improve environmental governance and the sustainable resource use in such a way that conflicts could be avoided? What does UNEP regard the first and foremost priority to stop these conflict-triggering trends?

Andrew Morton: To answer your first question, it is completely feasible to improve environmental governance and natural resource management and thereby help alleviate rural poverty: this has been proven with many successful case studies across Africa and elsewhere. What is needed for such projects to succeed in general is strong local and governmental support and long term funding.
For Darfur in the near term, such work can only be implemented on a small scale in limited areas: like all large scale and long term development work it needs a secure and stable social environment to succeed and the ongoing conflict makes such work problematic. In the interim period, before peace hopefully returns to Darfur, the UN including UNEP is starting to address this issue and other recovery needs through a number of preparatory or foundational projects. This work can be done in the camps and other slightly more secure and stable areas.
To answer the second question: for the UN the number one priority for conflict prevention is actually not environmental management: it is instead the establishment of a culture where the rule of law helps manage the tensions that can arise from any source, including competition over scarce and declining resources. 
Specifically for environmental issues in Darfur UNEP consider the top priority to be environmentally sustainable rural development, with a focus on conservation of pasture, soil and soil quality and tree cover. In practice this means the introduction of measures such as reduced livestock numbers, improved agricultural practices, reforestation and finally generation of alternative (non-agricultural/pastoral) livelihoods and out-migration to reduce demographic pressures. 

ECC-Editors: In the report it is mentioned that the overall environmental situation in neighbouring countries is similar to that in Sudan. How can we avoid similar conflict trends emerging in those regions?

Andrew Morton: Unfortunately, very similar conflict trends are already observed in Chad and in the Horn of Africa. Again a combination of good governance and improved natural resource management is the recommended solution.  In theory, sustainable development programmes should be able to partially pre-empt conflict in areas of high risk: in practice the challenge for the international community is to identify those high risk areas and provide sufficient financial support at the same time as supporting the necessary humanitarian response for areas where conflicts have already broken. At the strategic level, given the predicted impacts of climate change and the resultant concerns for the environment and food security along the Sahel belt, this region should be a priority for investment across all of central/northern Africa.

ECC-Editors: Thank you very much for the interview.

Dr. Andrew Morton is the Sudan Project Coordinator at UNEP’s Post-Conflict Branch. Contact: andrew.morton@unep.ch

The report "Sudan Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment" is available for download at http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications.php?prog=sudan

Published in:ECC-Newsletter, August 2007