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How Does Climate Change Affect The Sahel

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Climate change in the Sahel
Climate change is a real phenomenon that is occurring throughout the world and causing problems that stress and cause a variety of problems and issues in society. Some effects of climate change are rising sea levels, increased average temperatures, loss of ice sheet cover, hotter more recurrent droughts and changes in precipitation. Climate change and land degradation have affected the Sahel region of Africa by causing a decrease in arable land and this will lead to conflict and cause millions to become climate change refugees.
Even though many countries worldwide have pledged to stop adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, global climate change is inevitable and temperatures will surely rise after 200 years of intense pollution …show more content…

In 2008 the United Nations send an advisor Jan Egeland to the Sahel and he brought three major risks to the Sahel. Egeland noted that due to climate change communities that depend on natural resources like farming and herding will be stressed, there will be more migrations and refugees due to climactic disaster and there will be a possibility of conflicts over the little remaining natural resources (http://postconflict.unep.ch/publications/UNEP_Sahel_EN.pdf). It is simple human nature to have an innate desire to live and pass on our genes. Therefore, once the populations living in the Sahel start seeing more intense droughts and famines, there will be an increase in conflict over natural resources. A prime example of the severity of these conflicts is the Darfur genocide. Darfur is located in the Northeastern African country of Sudan. During the 1080’s through 1990’s most of the Sahel went through intense droughts and severe weather patterns, which according to Colombia University researched Alessandra Giannini was not attributed to local Sahel activities like overgrazing or deforestation rather it was caused by “changes to the global climate.” However desertification, which is a major

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