[Radix] Grim forecasts of the harvest of war - African refugees explain why they fled

[Patrick Meier]

 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/journalismcompetition> Grim forecasts of the
harvest of war - African refugees explain why they fled

   - Peter Martell
   - guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>

 Ask Sudanese farmer Abdul Abubakr if he fled his home because of the
weather, and he'll return you a puzzled look. To him, the reason he's in
Cairo is simple.

"All I had was destroyed," the 30-year old said, who left the war-torn
Sudanese region of Darfur a year ago after fighting between government and
rebel forces.

"Life was always hard, but I could not stay after that," Abubakr added, who
survives on the part-time work he can find as a building labourer.

Yet it's the weather - or the growing uneven distribution of water linked to
climate change -that environmental experts and leaders are increasingly
pointing to as a root cause for conflicts such as Darfur.

Strong links have been made between land degradation, desertification and
conflict, problems exacerbated by the pressures that population growth puts
on the environment.

Last year UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, while acknowledging the complex
range of ethnic, social and political causes behind the Darfur conflict,
said its origins lay in an "ecological crisis, arising at least in part from
climate change."

He's not alone. In April, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned global
warming could make Darfur "only one crisis among dozens of others".

Such direct connections between climate and war may seem far from clear to
those caught up by them such as Abubakr, and reducing any deeply complex
conflict to a single point opens up criticism of simplification.

But the experts' statistics make grim reading. A detailed 2007 study of
Sudan by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) found "almost unprecedented"
levels of climate change in north Darfur, with rainfall there dropping by a
third in the past 80 years.

It's created the conditions for conflicts to be "triggered and sustained" by
political, tribal or ethnic differences, UNEP concluded.

The gloomy report also predicted that climate change could re-ignite other
historical flashpoints within Sudan, and threaten security elsewhere in
Africa where water resources and grazing lands are increasingly under
pressure.

Such talk of "water wars" are a worrying forecast. Climb the stairs in the
apartment block opposite the elegant wrought iron gates of Cairo's British
ambassador's residence, and you'll come to an office packed not only with
Sudanese, but also Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans.

Offering pro-bono legal aid and advice to refugees arriving in Egypt, the
offices of the African and Middle East Assistance (AMERA) are very busy
place.

Centred at the crossroads between Africa, the Middle East and the
Mediterranean, Egypt is estimated to have one of largest urban refugee
population in the world – and its growing.

Their clients come mostly from the Horn of Africa. But it's a long-troubled
region and - like Abubakr - you'd be given strange looks if you expected
those who've fled their homes to say they did so due to climate change.

War, poverty, government repression, dreams of a better life: the list of
motives is long.

"I left Somalia because the war," according to Mohammed Abdilrahman, who
said his home and computer business in the capital Mogadishu was destroyed
in clashes between militias fighting Ethiopian troops backing the
transitional government in the capital Mogadishu.

"Climate change? Its political change that is needed, I know that, to make
the Ethiopian troops withdraw," he added.

But if lack of rain did not cause the conflict in war-torn Somalia, a
lawless nation without effective government since 1991, the weather is
certainly not helping it either.

Abdilrahman added that drought is not only making coping in the conflict
more difficult but is feeding wider fighting by provoking disputes over
grazing.

"In the countryside the people have nothing, no water for their animals," he
added. "They are desperate, and they will fight to survive."

In April, aid agency Care International warned that poor rains in the arid
region of Somalia, as well as northern Kenya, could leave an estimated 14
million people facing a food emergency. Many are already struggling to
recover from a crippling drought two years ago.

"Spells of drought in the Horn have become longer, as predicted by climate
change experts," the aid agency said in a press release.

"Conflict in both Somalia and Kenya has recently escalated. All of these
factors have contributed to the poverty and vulnerability that underpin the
current precarious situation."

Efforts to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty, as well as to ensure
environmental sustainability, are all part of UN Millennium Goals.

Against a backdrop of rising global food prices, the UN agency tasked with
minimising the threat posed by natural disasters, the UN International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), has said that addressing drought and
unsustainable water management are "essential" to finding a long term
solution.

For the steady stream of refugees arriving in Cairo from across the Horn of
Africa and Sudan such efforts are already too late. If predictions are
right, however, there could be many more that will follow.


-- 
Consultant & PhD Candidate
The Fletcher School at Tufts University
http://fletcher.tufts.edu/phd/students/Meier.shtml
http://irevolution.wordpress.com <-blog

Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI)
Doctoral Research Fellow
www.hhi.harvard.edu
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