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Climate Change Leading to Global Fight for Resources

Posted on: Thursday, 21 June 2007, 03:05 CDT

By Steve Bloomfield

Climate change has become a major security issue that could lead to "a world going up in flames", the United Nations' top environment official has warned. From rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean to the increasing spread of desert in Africa's Sahel region, global warming will cause new wars across the world, said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

"People are being pushed into other people's terrain by the changing climate and it is leading to conflict," he said. "Societies are not prepared for the scale and the speed with which they will have to decide what they will do with people."

The world was already experiencing its first war partly caused by climate change, he said. Dramatic changes to the environment in the Darfur region of Sudan helped lay the ground for today's conflict which has displaced more than 2.5 million people and killed at least 200,000.

A report to be published by UNEP tomorrow will make a direct link between climate change and the Darfur conflict. "It will be one of the most significant documents in terms of linking environment change and conflict," Mr Steiner said. "It will say that climate change is now a key dimension that must be considered in conflict issues."

The roots of the four-year conflict can be found in the devastating drought that swept Sudan and the Horn of Africa in the 1980s, the report will say. Since then, rainfall in Sudan has fallen by 40 per cent, a result, claim scientists, of global warming. Farmers began to fence off land to which nomads once had access. Clashes over shrinking resources between nomads, who tend to be Arab, and the mainly African farmers became widespread. The current crisis was sparked by a rebellion launched by three Darfuri tribes, and a ferocious counter-insurgency unleashed by Khartoum, but the dramatic changes to Darfur's ecology appear to have been a contributing factor. "What we see in Darfur is an environmental change phenomenon unfolding that puts pressure on local communities," Mr Steiner said. "Combine that with potential tensions and you very quickly get a potent mix within which increased pressure can result in conflict. The situation that emerged in Darfur will emerge in other parts of the world." He warned of a "world going up in flames" if countries did not "wake up", adding: "It is a major security issue that affects the whole geopolitical dynamics that we have today."

Earlier this year Britain used its presidency of the UN Security Council to lead its first debate on climate change and conflict. "What makes wars start?" asked the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett. "Fights over water. Changing patterns of rainfall. Fights over food production, land use. There are few greater potential threats ... to peace and security itself."

The two major areas of potential conflict, Mr Steiner said, are the Sahel region and east Asia. "In the next 35 years most of the glaciers in the Himalayas will ... disappear. You are talking of 500 million people being affected directly and another 250 million people affected downstream." Rising sea levels off the coast of Bangladesh are another potential area for conflict, he said: "India has already started building a wall to stop Bangladeshis coming across. The predicted half-a-metre sea level rise means 34 million people not being able to stay where they are now. Where will they go? They will break through the boundaries."

But Africa is likely to suffer most. Rising sea levels could destroy up to 30 per cent of the continent's coastline, while between 25 and 40 per cent of Africa's natural habitats could be lost by 2085. Conflicts caused by a scarcity of resources are already brewing across Africa. In Ghana farmers and Fulani herders clash over increasingly scarce resources. In the Mount Elgon region of Kenya more than 40,000 people have been displaced in battles for access to land.

According to the UNEP report on Darfur, the majority of those displaced by the conflict will never be able to return to their homes. "We have moved beyond a point of return," Mr Steiner said.

NORTH POLE

The melting ice in the Arctic has re-ignited the prospect of the north-west passage and sparked a scramble for the North Pole. The race has pitted Denmark against its Nato ally Canada, with Russia and the United States lurking in the wings

SUDAN

Underlying the Darfur conflict is a struggle between nomadic and pastoral communities for resources that have been made more scarce by climate change. The droughts of the 1980s are believed to have sparked a slow-burning ecological crisis that exploded into conflict at the beginning of 2003

GHANA

Clashes in Ghana between Fulani cattle herdsman and local farmers over water and land, have become more widespread in the past two years, as climate change expands the Sahara desert. Herders are reportedly arming themselves and a bigger confrontation might be brewing

KENYA

In the Mount Elgon region more than 40,000 people have been displaced as rival clans and ethnic groups fight over access to land. The conflict flared up in the second half of 2006 and politicians have been accused of stoking the violence by awarding land to their own tribes

MIDDLE EAST

Water resources could be the trigger that rekindles war between Syria and Israel. The Sea of Galilee is fed from the Israeli- occupied Golan Heights, where each Israeli settler is allotted seven times more water than the Syrian population

BANGLADESH

A predicted sea level rise of half a metre would leave 34 million people homeless. To try and prevent an influx of such refugees, India is building a 1,600-mile wall costing billions of dollars along the border. It is due to be completed later this year

Source: Independent, The; London (UK)

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