The Effects Of Climate Change On Africa 's Security Environment Essay

In Somalia, no one is spared from crisis. Children and health workers have been murdered and kidnapped. People fight over food and water, adding another burden to citizens of Somalia who are already struggling to get through resource droughts. In a country with no central government, little happens without trauma-force. As resources continue to diminish, conflict arises when there are very little resources and Somalis all want to have priority (Unicef, 2006). Before environmental resource scarcity in Somalia is discussed in depth, let’s take a closer look at the physical and human geography in the country, global climate change and its impact on Somalia’s vegetation, the evolution of Somalia during the colonial and imperial periods, and many Somali conflicts that cause to be in crisis (in no particular order), even today.

His approach attempts to consider deeper causes of intrastate violence than traditional case-studies have done (Newman 2014, 63). Newman identifies four general types of civil war: ethnic, political-ideological, weakened or failed state, and resource-based (Newman 2014, 63-65). Most intrastate conflicts can be characterized by a combination of these classifications and their influences. Newman defines four loose requirements for a conflict to be considered using this model. First, a conflict must mainly occur within the borders of an internationally recognized state to be considered “civil” rather than interstate (Newman 2014, 62). Secondly, civil wars are fought between organized groups rather than individuals or unorganized affiliates (Newman 2014, 62). Governmental military forces fit this mold, but are not required for a conflict to be deemed as intrastate. Third, there must be evidence of sustained violence. Newman defines this threshold as 1,000 fatalities (Newman 2014, 62). Last, belligerents must be fighting with a political objective in mind (Newman 2014, 62). This requirement is given a wide range of applicability, as almost any objectives of a group can be defined as political. The Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s fits all of these parameters, and can therefore be analyzed using the typologic system devised by

Throughout history, our world has constantly been bruised and battered by civil turmoil. Today, the civil war in Syria decimates the country; the Israeli and Palestinian conflict rages on; tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan's ongoing civil war. It is not always easy to isolate what exactly ignites the flames of war, but, whenever possible, finding a workable, calm and satisfying solution to a potential uprising is preferable.

  In Sub-Sahara Africa, during the last four decades thirty-five major armed conflicts have occurred, taking the lives of almost ten million people. There is a high correlation between the risk of conflict and a low ranking on the Human Development Index (HDI), due to the weak capacities and inability of these poor countries to guarantee the security of its citizens, rebellions and conflict have a high occurrence rate. United Nations has observed that conflicts

Agriculture is one of key industries in both sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. In the recent few decades, agricultural production is under serious threat from severe drought, and the drought has triggered a series of chain-reactions involving important economic and social issues. To cope with various challenges, sub-Saharan Africa and Australia have already taken multiple approaches.

Each has its own separate identity and practices that often conflict with another dating back to the slave trade and the formation of colonial political boundaries and policies. These boundaries and policies intensified civil wars driven by historical ethnic hostilities that are prevalent today and influence human and economic activity. Millions of people have died as a result of the civil war in The Congo. Fighting continues between various over political control or control over natural resources like diamonds and gold. In addition many countries have suffered economic breakdowns as a result of demanding political unrest. These activities and environmental affects identified can cause climate stresses like extreme poverty. One major impact is frequent natural disasters such as droughts and floods that influence agricultural production. When climate impacts human and economic activities it further increases the vulnerability of a

In a Western perspective, Africa is perceived as a poor, insecure, and violent continent. Although this statement is ignorant and disregards the multidimensional issues that are in each of the 54 countries, security and violence is a general issue in most African countries. African countries have not endured an easy history, and their history continues to create present conflicts. Their violent colonial past has left certain countries with ethnic rivalries and left their legacies with agents of security. Although the colonial past of African countries have been the leading cause of many of their current problems, they cannot be blamed for everything. Additionally, there is a positive correlated relationship between the state and the violence

Civil war constantly plagues Africa and can be the cause of tribalism, rival warlords fighting for control, and foreign influence to name a few. I will start off with civil war due to tribalism. The

The end of the Cold War has had profound effects on Africa. On the positive side, it has removed the tendency of outside actors to become intricate in internal and regional quarrelling in striving towards their own goals. Diminished the often excessive levels and types of military aid, training, and outside military reinforcements available to African countries, also by making UN Security Council consent of multilateral peacekeeping measures more likely.

In the face of climate change Sub-Saharan Africa is confronted by two main challenges of food security and water availability for human and agricultural use. These challenges are projected to increase in the coming years compounded by extreme droughts and extreme flooding in some areas. Rain-fed agriculture is the main livelihood for a majority of small scale farmers in SSA. Their main farming systems focus on the “ major crops”(maize, wheat, rice and beans) However, strategies to cultivate these crops in the region are no longer sustainable due to reliability on finite resources, high input load and vulnerability to climate change. A key alternative strategy to adapt to a changing climate is the development and promotion of Orphan crop species

The further advancement of Global Warming will lead to armed conflict in the world because rapid climate change creates ecological disasters that force groups to migrate, the problems climate change create for military bases lead to international disputes over unfunded liability costs; increases in global climate disruption directly correlate to an overall increase in the collective violence within impoverished nations.

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

The article “Explaining the Severity of Civil Wars” by Bethany Lacina looks at why some civil wars are more deadly as compared to others by investigating a new data set that shows the number of combat deaths in civil wars from 1946 to 2002. The article looks at the statistics behind the deaths in the conflicts such as the era, the type of conflict ant the region that the conflict takes place in. The article also uses the strength of the state, the type of regime and cultural characteristics in a test to see if they are predictors for the number of combat deaths in a conflict.

Climate change is becoming a focal point for security and conflict research. Research suggests that violent conflict is affected by climate change and this could become increasingly worse in the future. Barnett, J., Adger, W. (2007) suggest that climate change undermines human security by reducing the access to natural resources that sustain people’s way of life. Climate change also has the capacity to undermine states as well by cutting off the states ability to provide opportunities and services that help maintain life and which help to maintain and build peace in daily life. With access to natural resources diminishing and the state not being able to provide opportunities and services that help maintain life and human security this

Furthermore, another source of the problem began with the gradual change of the climate in Darfur. Desertification, a process by which land becomes increasingly dry until almost no vegetation grows on it, becomes a major problem for the Darfur people. Land for farming becomes scarce. Living on desert is unsuitable for humans for obvious reasons: lack of food and, more importantly, lack of water. There is not much suitable farm land, therefore “the lack of fertile land caused the populations to compete with one another for land on which they could survive” (Xavier 18). Before desertification became a huge problem for the Sudanese people, they lived in peace. Honestly, “the hostility between Darfur’s Arabs and Africans are relatively new” (Xavier 20). This shows how the competition for survival helped fuel the terrible genocide in Darfur.