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There will be no lasting peace in the region without climate security

Saturday December 12 2020
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There are calls for peace processes and agreements in the Horn of Africa to become more climate sensitive. ILLUSTRATION | JOHN NYAGA

By HENRIK MAIHACK
By MITHIKA MWENDA
By FLORIAN KRAMPE

Africa has shown itself to be a leader on climate-related security risks. Indeed, Kenya’s winning bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council included a pledge to ‘‘seek lasting solutions to security challenges caused by erratic climatic conditions’’.

The African Union, for its part, is one of very few regional intergovernmental organisations to explicitly address climate-related security risks within its peace and security architecture.

But what does all this mean in practice? How can we prevent peaceful societies from being undermined by the impacts of climate change and resource scarcity?

The Horn of Africa is a region prone to violent conflicts. It is also a region in which large populations rely directly on natural resources and natural systems for their livelihoods: pasture and water for livestock, fertile and well-watered arable land, healthy fish stocks, or productive forests. As a result, “Whatever changes appear in the pattern of the natural resources we use affects us in a very significant way,” in the words of Eskedar Awgichew Ergete, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Law Centre at Ethiopia’s Mekelle University.

This can have implications for security. Nicholas Orago, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, notes that: “What makes climate change a multiplier of conflict is that it impacts the natural resources people rely on for their livelihoods.” This can increase the risk of violent conflict in different but related ways. For example, competition over resources made scarcer by the impacts of climate change can exacerbate existing tensions in an area; so can the arrival of migrants displaced by flooding, drought or storms or violence.

Somalia has been a case in point in recent years. Pastoralists and farmers have clashed as traditional herding grounds have been ravaged by drought. Large numbers of people have left their land and taken refuge in camps and informal communities, where they have been prey to recruiters for the extremist insurgent group Al-Shabaab. These migrations have changed the demographics of some areas, undermining carefully negotiated power-sharing arrangements and efforts to build governance institutions, according to on-the-ground research.

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Nicholas Orago and Eskedar Awgichew Ergete were members of a Horn of Africa Climate Security Working Group, that held a series of meetings between 2018 and 2020. This diverse group included civil society representatives and senior academic climate and security ex­perts from around the Horn of Africa to discuss how regional, continental and international efforts to bring peace could adapt to the new reality of climate change and its impacts on security.

Based on a wealth of direct experience and contextual knowledge, the Working Group was unanimous in calling for peace processes and agreements in the Horn of Africa to become more climate sensitive.

This implies a step change in how climate security issues are dealt with. For example, it means that civil society representatives and climate change specialists from the region should be more strongly involved in conflict prevention efforts and peace negotiations.

Somalia offers a positive case study. A number of steps that greatly reduced the human cost of drought in Somalia between 2017 and 18 included the creation of a joint Drought Operations Coordination Centre. The centre has now become a permanent institution, and a cross-sectoral Recovery and Resilience Framework helps the government build long-term resilience.

UN Assistance Mission in Somalia appointed its first dedicated climate and security adviser in June this year. And looking beyond Somalia, the AU’s new dedicated climate cluster, a platform that seeks to integrate climate security into the AU’s work, is another encouraging development.

Moreover, violent conflicts in the Horn of Africa often transcend national borders. Against this background, cooperation on climate security must be between as well as within countries, as well as coordinated with the relevant regional processes of the AU, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, and civil society. What is needed is a collective climate security framework for the region.

Finally, local communities affected by the double burden of conflict and climate change need to be given opportunities, time and resources to participate in peace processes. It is precisely at the level of those communities that climate-related insecurity takes root, making it vital to understand their experiences, their vulnerabilities, their knowledge and their solutions.

Together, these steps offer the best chance to ensure that conflict prevention, peace processes and agreements leave societies, both in and beyond the Horn of Africa, better able to cope with the impacts of future climate change.

Henrik Maihack is the resident director Kenya office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Kenya Office; Mithika Mwenda is executive director of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance; Florian Krampe is a senior researcher in SIPRI’s Climate Change and Risk Programme.

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