At a meeting about insecurity in the #Sahel last week, a senior diplomat remarked that climate change is the 'root cause' of the problems in the Sahel. This is a widespread belief but here's why we need to be careful about attributing insecurity to #climatechange. Thread/
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Many who believe that climate change is contributing to rising insecurity in the Sahel argue that the increasing irregularity of rains and desertification has made traditional livelihoods in pastoralism unviable and forced young people to join armed groups to make a living.
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Earlier this year, we interviewed 29 armed smugglers operating across #Niger. We also interviewed their fathers to understand what influenced livelihood decisions over the last 60 years. We found that the major shift out of pastoralism happened during the fathers' generation.
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The decision by smugglers’ fathers to divest from pastoralism and invest in a mix of agriculture and seasonal migration was a response to the severe droughts in the 70s and 80s and increasing opportunities in Algeria and Libya as their oil economies grew.
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The point to note here is that in the face of extreme droughts, young Nigeriens did not join armed groups but sought to diversify their activities and engage in wage labour.
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Today, young men in northern #Niger are again changing their livelihoods; instead of working in oasis gardens or migrating to Libya, some have decided to engage in people, gold, arms & drug smuggling. Here is a comparison of ave. monthly wages from common jobs in N. Niger.
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Instead of asking what is driving young people to join armed groups (the above graph makes the ans pretty obvs), we should be asking what is the political economy in Niger and regionally (W. Africa and Europe) that creates such huge differentials between smuggling and other jobs.
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So what's the problem with the focus on climate change to address insecurity in the Sahel? Surely any climate change mitigation project is a good thing? Well yes....and no.
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The focus on climate change depoliticizes analysis of rising insecurity in the Sahel. In N. Niger, it shifts attention away from the influence of national and international actors in shaping an illicit economy that requires armed protection.
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Assuming that climate change will increase insecurity can be used to justify a securitised response to climate change. This is bad news for addressing climate change. Military bases have terrible carbon footprints.
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Finally, the assumption that young men and women living in the Sahel will be more likely to join armed groups when climate-sensitive livelihoods become increasingly insecure risks criminalising a whole generation of West Africans.
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Caveat: There may be more of a link between climate change impacts and rising insecurity in other parts of the Sahel but I'm not convinced by the evidence presented so far for Lake Chad and not enough empirical research has been done on this in #Mali.
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