Climate Change Enters the Realm of Politics
Burgeoning dystopian prophecies, literature and accounts of climate change by an array of actors, including UN agencies, national governments, security pundits, scholars and development NGOs, insinuate climate change has entered the realm of politics which posits that it triggers violent conflict.
Even though the African continent contributes only about 3% to global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Resource Institute, it is continually viewed as the most susceptible to increased conflict risk associated to climate change due to its low adaptive capacity. A recent study by the University of Colorado similarly indicates that there is a statistically significant link between hotter temperatures generated by climate change and the risk of armed conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. Devastatingly, warming in this region is projected to be greater than the global annual mean with an average of three to four degrees in the next century. It is thus expected to affect the livelihoods of millions and permanently displace thousands.
Interestingly, while Africa has 60% of the world’s arable agricultural land, agricultural losses are gloomily forecasted to result in the loss of between 2% and 7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2050, average maize, rice and wheat yields are expected to decline by up to 5% respectively. These austere statistics coupled with numerous admonitions, are perhaps the evidence of a growing realisation of what is at stake for the continent due to climate change. In this vein, it is significant to analyse the climate change politics and how it affects Africa.
The Darfur Narrative
First, the Atlantic Monthly (Faris, 2007), followed by the UN Environment Programme report (UNEP, 2007) and then the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon (2007) openly admitted that the violence in Darfur is linked to demographic pressures, resource scarcity as well as climate change (Betsy Hartman, 2010). Arguably, these assertions are too simplistic and ignore the history of violence, as well as the inefficient state structures which not only failed to utilise the local social and centralised institutions to address problems of environmental stress in a non-violent manner, but worsened it by choosing to militarise crisis management interventions whenever political disputes arose.
Oversimplifying Darfur poses a danger to future climate policies considering it has gained traction as a climate-induced conflict; in April 2007 the UK government bringing forth the issue of climate change before the UN Security Council, citing the Darfur case (Harvey, 2007). The United States defense think tank Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) report entitled National Security and the Threat of Climate Change equally warned that global warming would prompt political instability in poor societies, resulting in mass movements to the United States and Europe eventually causing destabilisation there.
