Sahel suffered droughts over past 40 years
Baku, 6 December (AZERTAC). New evidence of changing climate trends in the Sahel and West Africa and their potentially profound implications for food security and regional stability has been released today at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, adding to the pressure on governments to stay on a course to reach a new international climate agreement. A joint study has analyzed regional trends in temperature, rainfall, droughts and flooding over the past 40 years and their implications for the availability of natural resources, livelihoods, migration and conflict in 17 West African countries from the Atlantic coast to Chad. The analysis detects significant changes in regional climatic conditions, including an overall rise in mean seasonal temperature from 1970 to 2006 of approximately 1°C, with a greater increase of between 1.5°C to 2°C observed in far eastern Chad and northern Mali and Mauritania. The study shows that the frequency of floods and the area covered by flooding have increased in parts of the region over the past 24 years, for example with large areas of southern Burkina Faso, western Niger and northern Nigeria experiencing up to 10 floods during this period. The study was conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in cooperation with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations University (UNU) and the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), with technical input from the University of Salzburg`s Centre for Geoinformatics (Z_GIS). UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, raised the issue of food security as a potential risk of climate change during the debate on climate change and security in the UN Security Council in July this year. Mr Steiner said that with livelihoods and food security in the region heavily dependent on natural resources, further impacts of climate change on ecosystems could be dramatic. "This analysis underlines how competition between communities for scarce resources, especially land, water and forests, is already a reality in West Africa and that regional cooperation will be key to diffusing tensions, managing down the risks and curtailing the possibilities of increased conflict and environmentally-induced migration," Mr Steiner said. The project set out to analyze the historical climate trends in the region, identify `hotspots` and determine the potential implications for natural-resource led livelihoods, building on existing knowledge that the Sahel has long been subject to considerable climate variability unrelated to anthropogenic climate change. The study also concluded that migration can be seen as part of the solution, as seasonal and circular migration can be considered as a traditional adaptation strategy in the region. Many communities are already planning for the potential impacts of climate change and are employing innovative small-scale adaptation initiatives, such as cooperation between villages in the sustainable use of local land.
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