Climate Change and Peacebuilding in the Sahel
Publisher: Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice
Author(s): Tobi Petrocelli, Samanth Newport, and Dennis Hamro-Drotz
Date: 2013
Topics: Climate Change, Cooperation, Land
Lands across Africa's Sahel region are gradually drying up, turning to sand and dust. In other areas of this semi-arid belt that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, increasingly frequent and violent floods are wreaking havoc on livelihoods and the environment. Indeed, drought and desertification are forcing Sahelian pastoralists south in search of land and water, but vast swathes of grassland and savanna are already occupied by local farmers eking out a meager existence as they fear rising competition for increasingly scarce resources. The scale of hardship in the Sahel underscores the urgent need to better understand climate trends and to identify how such changes impact people's lives.