BenIAM in comments points to a report on Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment in Sudan by the United Nations Environment Programme. Chapter 4 (pdf), recommendable also for its pictures, says:
The scale of historical climate change as recorded
in Northern Darfur is almost unprecedented: the
reduction in rainfall has turned millions of hectares
of already marginal semi-desert grazing land into
desert. The impact of climate change is considered
to be directly related to the conflict in the region, as
desertification has added significantly to the stress
on the livelihoods of pastoralist societies, forcing
them to move south to find pasture.
That seems to be the central point of what the conflict in Darfur and neighboring Chad is about. Millions of people are moving away from land that turned to desert and conflict naturally arises when they ‘invade’ other people’s land. Economic shocks caused by a lack of a rainfall are the major cause (pdf) of civil wars in sub-
Saharan Africa.
The world has seen large scale population movements before. The Migration Period or Völkerwanderung in 300 to 700 A.D. in Europe was likely also the result of climate change. Desertification in western Asia and a cold period in northern Europe compelled people to move. Some equestrian pastoral people, ‘Barbarians’ or Huns were the Janjaweed of their times. They moved west and people living there were pushed further west themselves invading other people’s land.
Governments can not do much about such conflicts and pressure. One reason the roman empire finally broke down were these mass migrations. If people get hungry because their lands are overpopulated and/or desertify, they will move.
I therefore find it a bit callous when the ‘west’ cries about ‘genocide’ in Darfur and wants to charge Sudan’s president in front of the International Criminal Court. Omar Hassan al-Bashir may not be a good man but there is little he or anybody can do about migrating populations in a country with little infrastructure when one part of the people has no other chance of survival than to press into the land of another part of the people.
The ‘intentional community’ and so called peacekeepers are helpless in such situations too. There are no clearly identifiable sides in such conflicts. There are no good versus evil people in this only needs.
Yesterday seven peacekeepers in Darfur were killed when a gang of some 200 raided their convoy. Nobody is even sure who the attackers were or why the attack happened. Indeed peacekeepers can make the situation worse not because they fight but simply because of their additional catastrophic impact on scarce local resources and infrastructure. David Axe reports from eastern Chad were peacekeepers are supposed to protect camps with refugees from Darfur:
Arid eastern Chad has always suffered water shortages. In 2004, a quarter-million Darfuri refugees settled in the region, placing further strain on local water sources. Intensive labor by a wide range of aid groups — drilling new wells, building dams to catch rainwater, opening up channels to feed rain into underground reservoirs — has alleviated but not eliminated the problem.
Now EUFOR is deploying thousands of soldiers and tonnes of equipment, all requiring tens of thousands of liters of water per day — and water shortages have become a water crisis.
EUFOR flies in bottled water from Europe for its peacekeeping troops in Chad but this only creates different problems:
The water these French convoys bring in does not come from Chadian sources — it is shipped in from foreign sources, so in one sense it’s harmless to parched eastern towns. But the trucks must travel on roads never intended for such heavy use in order to deliver the water.
These roads are especially fragile where they cross the country’s thousands of dry river beds, or wadis. During Chad’s long rainy season, from roughly June to October, the Chadian government sets up roadblocks to prevent vehicles from crossing the wadis and damaging the roads. Those that absolutely must cross pay a fee.
But French army Staff Sergeant Alexandre Barbet, whose job it is to escort the convoys, says the French drive right on through without paying. "What are they going to do?" he asks rhetorically. EUFOR considers the fees bribes.
With such a behavior the ‘peacekeepers’ will soon be in violent conflict with the local people.
Are there solutions to mitigate the impacts of climate change?
There seem to be three thing we could do:
- Limit the effects of industrial living on global warming. I have little hope for that to happen at a scale that would have real effect.
- Find peaceful ways to settle people impacted like in Darfur in other lands. Refugee camps that get set up and protected are only short term solutions creating more problems. The people in such camps will never be able to go back where they came from. They also can not live in these forever. Eventually they have to settle somewhere where they can make a living. Where?
- Find technical solutions to prevent flooding of coast lands and desertification of inner lands. Can big projects like Lybi’s Great Man-Made River be an example? Could huge desalination plants at Sudan’s cost, probably powered by nuclear energy, create sweet water that could be piped into Darfur? Would that solve problems or create more?
Peacekeepers and ICC indictments are not solutions to the problems mass-migration caused by climate change and desertification creates. Humanity needs to come up with better ideas.
