What Climate Change Means for the Sahel, With Beza Tesfaye

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is what climate change means for the Sahel.
Today's episode is the first in a series of episodes on The President's Inbox that will be released over the next six months that look at how climate change will affect life, society, and conflict in different regions around the world. The Carnegie Corporation of New York has made this special series possible.

Today's episode examines what climate change means for the countries in the Sahel, the geographic region in Africa that separates the Sahara Desert in the north from the tropics to the south. Sahel means border in Arabic. It encompasses countries like Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal.

Helping me to understand what climate change means for the countries in the Sahel is Beza Tesfaye. Beza is the director of research and learning for migration and climate change at Mercy Corps, a humanitarian aid organization. She is also a senior associate for the Project on Fragility and Mobility at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My colleagues at CFR's Center for Preventive Action have just released a paper Beza wrote entitled Climate Change in Conflict in the Sahel. You can find a copy of the paper at cfr.org. Beza, I apologize for the long-winded intro, but thank you very much for sitting down to chat with me.

TESFAYE:
Thanks, Jim. It's great to be here.

LINDSAY:
As we're sitting here talking today, Beza, delegates from around the world are gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the United Nations Climate Conference. It's known as COP27. But rather than talking about what those delegates are going to say and perhaps even do in Egypt, I wanted to look at how climate change is affecting one of the most vulnerable parts of the world. And to do that, perhaps you could sort of do a scene-setter for me, give me a better sense of what the characteristics are of the countries that make up the Sahel.

TESFAYE:
Sure. I think you touched on it a bit in the intro. Essentially, when we talk about the Sahel, it's a geographic region that's primarily defined by its physical characteristics. So it's an area of land that, as you mentioned, separates the Sahara Desert from areas that are more tropical, including Central Africa and the coastal countries of West Africa. And so the Sahel itself is primarily arid, semi-arid, characterized by savannahs and grasslands. And it is a configuration of different countries, but primarily when we talk about the Sahel, we're really looking at about six countries in West Africa that are largely former French colonies, so francophone countries, which include countries like Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal. What is really notable about these countries is that they are primarily large by land mass, so we're talking about large areas of land that are in some ways difficult to govern by central government. So you see issues of insecurity, of instability in a number of the countries in the Sahel.

LINDSAY:
As I try to understand the Sahel, Beza, obviously, you want to come to grips with sort of the nature of the economy, but also the nature of the political system. So maybe give us a sense of how successful these countries have been in terms of economic growth and achieving political stability.

TESFAYE:
Yeah. So I think one of the things all of us will remark about the region is that it's highly underdeveloped and has been impoverished or experiencing high levels of poverty. So the countries that are in the Sahel, primarily the economies rely on agriculture. And the form of agriculture that most communities practice in the Sahel is subsistence agriculture, so small-scale agriculture, which is primarily rain-fed agriculture. We don't see a lot of mechanized or developed agricultural practices in the region, and this is an area of vulnerability for a lot of the countries.

LINDSAY:
So there's not a lot of irrigation, as you might see in many American farms.

TESFAYE:
Not at all. In fact, only about 5 percent of the land in the Sahel is irrigated, so there's not a lot of ability to rely on irrigation as a means to mitigate some of the risks when there's variability in rainfall. But that's a potential that exists.

LINDSAY:
Right. And my understanding is that somewhere around 80 percent of the 100 million or so people who live in the countries that make up the Sahel are engaged in agrarian or pastoral lifestyles.

TESFAYE:
Yep, that's right. The majority of the communities engage in pastoralism, agriculture, farming, or fishing. And all of these livelihoods are, as you can imagine, highly dependent on natural resources, things like land, access to water. There's a lot of vulnerability here, again, given that the fluctuations with rainfall patterns can affect the viability of agriculture in this part of the world. And in fact, we've already seen that agricultural productivity and throughout Africa has been declining due to things like drought and variability in rainfall patterns. And that's particularly a risk in the Sahel.

LINDSAY:
Now, these tend to be countries that have high levels of extreme poverty of people living on $2 a day or less, correct?

TESFAYE:
Yes, exactly. Precisely because of some of these challenges with development, a lot of the communities continue to be impoverished. And beyond questions of livelihoods, there's not a lot of sort of institutional support for communities as well. The state itself is not present in many parts of the countries.

LINDSAY:
So-called ungoverned spaces.

TESFAYE:
Yeah, exactly. There are places where it's very hard to find health institutions, schools, very basic services. Many parts are pretty much nonexistent because of the challenges with the states being able to govern and be present in all parts of the country.

LINDSAY:
Now, what about political stability or instability across the region? How would you characterize these countries as a group?

TESFAYE:
Well, particularly in the last two decades, there's been a lot of instability in the Sahel, and a lot of that has emanated from the situation in Mali. That's sort of the epicenter of the security challenges. So Mali, which, ironically, was considered to be one of the beacons of democracy in Africa, experienced a coup d'etat in 2012, and at the same time, there was a overflowing of insurgents, jihadists, from other countries like Algeria and Libya. And ever since 2012, there's been this growing insurgency in northern Mali, which has then spilled over to other countries in the Sahel, particularly Burkina Faso, and Niger that neighbor Mali.

So over the past two decades, countries throughout the region have really struggled to get a hold on this problem, and that has led to situations where governments have experienced further coup d'etas. So in Mali, we saw another coup in 2020. Burkina Faso has experienced two coups this year this year, and there was an attempted coup in Niger as well. So what we see right now is a situation of growing spread of insurgencies and especially violent extremist insurgencies and governments that are becoming authoritarian or have decided to suspend civilian rule as a way to kind of present themselves as being able to have a crackdown on the insurgent violence.

LINDSAY:
So that gives us some of the context. We're talking about countries that are impoverished, that have high levels of political instability, and have fragile state institutions and institutions that may not extend to much of the country. Now, let's talk about what we're seeing in terms of climate change in this region. Are we seeing signs of climate change, Beza? And if so, how is it manifesting itself?

TESFAYE:
Climate change, obviously, is a reality, and the science around it has been improving over the years, but there's still a lot of uncertainty around it. And the way it's going to be manifested globally is different. So different regions, different parts of the Sahel even might experience it differently. But generally, if you look at things like the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the assessment reports that they produce every so years, it talks about some of the likely trends in terms of climate change for different parts of the world. And for the Sahel specifically, some of the predictions are that there will be gradually increasing temperatures. And in fact, this is something that we have seen over the past few decades. In fact, over the past 40 years or so, average temperatures in the Sahel have increased by one to three degrees Celsius.

LINDSAY:
Which is about four degrees Fahrenheit or so?

TESFAYE:
About, yeah.

LINDSAY:
Let me just ask a question because a number of people would hear that and say four degrees, that's not that big of a difference. Why would four degrees Fahrenheit or one to three degrees Celsius be significant?

TESFAYE:
Well, keep in mind, first of all, that this has happened over a relatively short period of time. So if we were to project into the future, if we're looking at the next 40 years or so, the expectation is that temperatures will increase compared to pre-industrial levels by three to five degrees Celsius. I'm not sure how much that is Fahrenheit, I think up to seven degrees or so Fahrenheit, but imagine, that's a significant increase in a part of the world that is already quite hot. And there's a ton of research that connects this type of change to anything from effects on agriculture productivity, for example, some crops can't be sustained at certain temperatures, to even research around the impacts of temperature increasing on propensity towards violence. And actually there's some interesting research around this even in the US, that under hotter temperatures there's a likelihood that people can be more aggressive. So there's a lot of implications, and I think a lot of it we're not even kind of aware of or we haven't fully grasped. But needless to say, this is a troubling trend for the region.

LINDSAY:
Okay. So one major trend is we're seeing and have seen increases in the average temperature in the region. But you mentioned that there was a second major trend in terms of climate. What's that?

TESFAYE:
Yeah. The second major trend is that rainfall patterns in the Sahel are likely to become more variable, and that means that, in general, some parts of the Sahel will experience more rainfall and some parts might experience less rainfall. And overall, the patterns of rainfall that people are used to are going to become more uncertain. And this is also concerning, even in places that might receive on average more rainfall than they are now. It's concerning because people can't really plan their agricultural sort of calendars according to what they've expected in the past. So for example, the rainy season that's supposed to start in August might start a little bit later than is expected. There's also, related to this, a trend of more extreme rainfall events. So flooding is a big risk, and it's actually something that we've seen in the past few rainy seasons in the Sahel where particularly communities that are close to rivers or close to bodies of water have been affected by heavy flooding, have lost crops, and this has caused additional significant damage to already vulnerable communities.

LINDSAY:
That strikes me as being a very significant point, Beza. I mean, farming depends upon predictability because if you plant too early, it gets cold, your crops die. You plant too late, they can't germinate in time. You need to get water at the right time. If you get too much water, you run the risk of your crops being washed away. I believe it was in Niger that, I think, 2020, they had excessively heavy rainfall that destroyed a fair amount of land and crops, which obviously has a big impact on a country that is largely agrarian.

TESFAYE:
Exactly. I think the fact that so many people's livelihoods depend on agriculture makes it a huge challenge given these changing rainfall patterns. And again, the issue of the majority of agriculture being rain-fed is a huge problem. Now, if there were means of thinking about irrigation, that could alleviate it in situations where there's a failure of rains. But flooding is also a big risk. And a lot of the communities are not prepared or don't have significant investments and things like disaster risk reduction to help them prepare in the event that there would be a flood or something that could devastate their farms.

LINDSAY:
Now, I should say that the recent increases in rainfall and extreme rain events that we're seeing in the Sahel is different from what the Sahel dealt with from the 1960s to the 1990s, where the major challenge was lack of rainfall, intense droughts which really harmed these economies.

TESFAYE:
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up. It's interesting to kind of compare because the Sahel has faced previous periods of hardship. In the 1960s, everybody talks about the great Sahelian drought. It was a significant catastrophe at that moment, where rainfall levels dropped well below the average and successive rainy seasons failed. This had huge implications. It led to famine. It led to things like the shrinking of Lake Chad. It wasn't until the 1990s that rainfall patterns started to go back to their pre-1960s average. But what we're talking about in the future is more uncertainty. I think the droughts in the 1960s, as devastating as they were, did come back, did lead to sort of a recuperation, a return to something like the past. But what scientists predict moving forward is that each rainy season each year could be as unpredictable as what we've seen in the past few years, and that poses a lot of challenges for the communities.

LINDSAY:
What would also seem to pose challenges to these communities in that they are facing unpredictable weather, whether that will in turn stress what is already very limited state capacity or resilience.

TESFAYE:
Yeah. I mean, in terms of adaptive capacity or ability to cope with some of these impacts, we don't really see much in the Sahel. I think we talk about adaptation, it seems like a vague term, but it's generally things like having alternative livelihoods or having investments in climate smart agriculture that could help some of these communities. And there is a bit of that, pockets of it here and there, but the investments in adaptation that are required to meet the challenge that is being posed for these communities are huge, and it's not there. First of all, the finance to be able to support that type of adaptation is really is missing. And I think that's a big problem for these countries.

LINDSAY:
Well, let's talk a little bit about what the impact of climate change looks like on the ground. My sense is that it's disrupting traditional social relations in many of these communities. There is a mix of agriculture and nomadic herding, but grasslands are changing, patterns are changing. Are we seeing rising conflicts between let's say farmers and herders?

TESFAYE:
There's a lot of stress on communities as we've been discussing because of the impacts of climate change, and not just because of that. Obviously, I don't want to reduce it to one factor, but it's obviously an important factor. There are other issues including the issue of population growth. There's a lot of land being demanded because there's a growing number of people in the Sahel. It's expected that the population of the Sahel is going to double from 100 million to 200 million in the next 40 years or so. So that's also an important factor. But sort of the impact of both of these trends on social relations has definitely increased tensions over access to resources, because again, a lot of livelihoods depend on them. And so what we do see in certain communities is that this has led to growing number of clashes and the lack of institutions or mechanisms to resolve some of these disputes over land tenure or access to areas where herders can raise their herds or farmers can access more land. That can boil over into conflict again when there's not a mechanism to resolve them peacefully.

LINDSAY:
So as we look at this and we look at the potential for conflict, I mean, how significant is it? Do you think we're looking at a future in which conflict will steadily increase? Could it be worse in some countries than in others? Are we going to see waves and cycles? Something else?

TESFAYE:
I think the risk is there. That conflict can certainly increase because of the stress communities are feeling due to climate change. But the critical factor is really their ability to adapt. And so I don't want to be very pessimistic about this issue. I think there's a potential to avert all of these conflicts. If we address some of the underlying vulnerabilities that we touched on a bit, the sort of socioeconomic vulnerabilities, the fact that people don't have alternative livelihoods or that their livelihoods are profoundly affected by climate change, the fact that the state is not really providing additional support by way of social safety nets, for example, or other services that could help communities cope and adapt, the fact that resources aren't available for climate finance, these are all things that could be done that could mitigate the risk. But if those actions aren't taken, yes, then there is a potential that communities will become more likely to deal with them through conflict.

LINDSAY:
I want to talk about adaptation, but when we talk about adaptation, it can take place in two ways. One is adaptation in place, and I want to get to that. But first I want to talk about what has really been the history of human beings, adaptation by moving. The people in essence don't stick around, they go somewhere else, but that itself can be a source of tension. To what extent are we seeing climate migrants coming from Sahelian countries? And what are the consequences of that?

TESFAYE:
As you said it, Jim, migration has a longstanding history in the world, and particularly in the Sahel. Mobility has been something that communities exploit to be able to survive, in a sense. As we discussed from the onset, this is an area that is characterized by its environment, by the difficulties in its environment. So communities that have lived in the Sahel have, for centuries, moved in order to be able to access resources and usually, importantly, usually on a short-term basis. So they engage more in seasonal migration.

And to this day, when you look at communities in, for example, rural Niger, where I do a bit of work, you will have during certain periods of the year, if you go there, you won't find any young men, because the young men engage in this practice that they call L'exode, which means exodus in French. It is actually an exodus. These young men will go to towns or even other countries outside of Niger to take up some short term income generating activities, a lot of it in the informal sector. But it allows them to gain some source of income and then share that income with their families back home. And so without this source of income, a lot of the communities in rural Niger would not be able to survive. So it's important to look at migration as a form of adaptation as well in this context.

LINDSAY:
Let's talk then about adaptation in place. And we're looking at countries that are fragile politically, don't have a lot of resources, hence their ability to provide resilience is limited. And this is where the role of outside countries comes into place. Question number one, should countries like the United States, Western countries, countries like Japan, South Korea, Australia, should they be worried about what is happening in the Sahel? Do they have a responsibility, in your view, to do something to help people adapt, whether by migrating or by staying in place?

TESFAYE:
They absolutely have a responsibility. I think, first of all, that's something that it is commonly accepted, right, even under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, I'm thinking of the acronym, UNFCCC. There's this commitment to common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and essentially that has established this principle that countries that have been primarily kind of responsible for the situation we are in because of their contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions have a responsibility to support those that now are being asked to reduce their emissions and also the countries that are paying the price, that are most affected, countries like the Sahel. So I think it's already been established that there is this responsibility from industrialized countries to react.

Beyond that general principle, there's a lot of concerns, I think, that the U.S. has about the situation, rightfully, and the Sahel. It has led to significant increase in terrorism activity or the proliferation of these jihadist groups, including now groups that are affiliated with Al Qaeda as well as the Islamic State. And that, of course, poses a security concern for the US, but it's also led to significant increase in humanitarian need in the Sahel, which continues to grow. Over two million people, two to three million people now are displaced in the region, and there's a significant humanitarian shortfall because the needs are so high. So, in essence, addressing and preventing further conflict or vulnerability is essential. And the best way to do that would be to invest in things like adaptation in the Sahel.

LINDSAY:
I want to thank you, Beza, for saying industrialized countries, because when I listed countries who bore some responsibility, I did not mention countries like China or Russia, other countries which have greatly contributed to the heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere that are changing the climate. But let's talk about what all these countries who have an obligation, legally, I guess, in terms of the UN framework. What should they be doing to help countries in the Sahel? What are the strategies that work? What are the issues that countries should focus on? And I say that in the context of the very important point you made at the start, that climate change is stressing these societies, but they have lots of other challenges as well.

TESFAYE:
So I think... It's interesting we're having this conversation during COP. I think one of the key things that these countries can and should do is to live up to their commitments for climate finance and just climate action. So specifically, there's a commitment that high-income countries had made over 10 years ago now that they would fund adaptation and mitigation costs to the tune of a $100 billion per year between 2020 and 2025. Of course, 2020 came and that commitment wasn't met. It still hasn't been met. And I think this is something that a lot of countries, particularly in Africa, will be advocating for at COP and will continue to raise. But I think that's just one very basic recommendation here.

In addition to that, when we talk about climate action generally, one of the issues that a lot of African countries, including the Sahel have brought up as a pain point, is the issue of energy transition, right, and the fact that a lot of countries are being pushed to focus on mitigation efforts, almost to a point where any kind of programming or supports for projects that rely on fossil fuels are not going to be endorsed or supported by high-income countries. And that is really unfair because when you look at places like Sahel, the primary source of energy is wood. It's not even coal or oil, it's just, it's so basic.
And to expect these countries to go from that to relying on non-renewable and clean energy sources like wind and solar is kind of unrealistic in the short term. So there's a lot of sort of advocacy around a just energy transition. What that could look like in the Sahel would be allowing the Sahel to have time to exploit some forms of energy like natural gas in the short term while moving towards renewable sources. And that is really important because the way in which countries can move out of the challenging situation that they're in is through development, and development intrinsically will require an increase in energy usage. So these are two issues, climate finance and thinking about how to transition in terms of energy use.

LINDSAY:
To what extent should countries outside the Sahel be looking at the problem even more broadly and trying to help these governments develop state capacity, in essence, to help them gain the tools so they can help themselves? And is that even plausible to do given the political divisions and fragility of the existing governments?

TESFAYE:
This is critical issue as well. I think the underlying source of instability in the Sahel fundamentally comes down to governance. For years, we've really, we meaning the US and other governments as well as Sahelian governments themselves, have focused on a military approach to the problem, really trying to invest in eradicating this insurgency through increasing military spending. But that hasn't really worked out. And in fact, we see the insurgency growing, right? A lot of communities have aligned themselves with some of the jihadist groups. And to understand that, we have to dissect the root causes of the problem, and this is where it comes back down to issues of lack of support, lack of institutional capacity, presence of the state, so in turn, lack of support for communities in need. It also has to do with a sense of marginalization. A lot of communities in parts of the country that are peripheral have not benefited from some of the resources that countries have, like uranium, like gold.
So there has to be a focus on things like inclusive and even growth or distributed growth with some of these marginalized areas. And that comes down to governance. So the challenge right now, however, as you alluded to, is that there have been a number of transitions in power, coups, that have led to the rise of military-led governments that are not willing to engage with countries like France, like the U.S., and vice versa. So it's, I think, a very delicate and difficult situation to try to advance any kind of goals around good governments currently. But there might be opportunities around it, especially through work with civil society organizations through support to regional bodies that have more influence right now. But it's a critical component and I don't think we can not address governance as part of the future of the Sahel.

LINDSAY:
Beza, are there any other strategies or policies that you would like to see governments pursue to help the countries in the Sahel better deal with the very real challenges they face from climate change?

TESFAYE:
My main takeaway would be to really focus in on some of the underlying vulnerabilities that have led to insecurity and conflict, which include things like the lack of development, the growing humanitarian needs, and really prioritize addressing those, which will, in the long term, I think build a more resilient Sahel, resilient to both some of the conflicts that we have seen and also to the challenges that climate change will pose for the region.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Beza Tesfaye, director of research and learning for migration and climate change at Mercy Corps and the author of the recently released paper from the Council on Foreign Relations' Center for Preventative Action titled Climate Change in Conflict in the Sahel. Beza, thank you very much for talking with me.

TESFAYE:
Thank you, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And leave us a review. We love the feedback. You can find the articles mentioned in this episode as well as a transcript of our conversation on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with senior Podcast Producer Gabrielle Sierra. Mormei Zanke was our recording engineer. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla for her research assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.