The Sahel: Climate Change and Consequences
Who lives in the Sahel?
CILSS countries alone are home
to around 58 million people, the majority of them are subsistence farmers,
sharing similar cultures and livelihoods even while their religions, languages
and customs vary widely. CILSS estimates
that more than half the working-age population in the Sahel is engaged in or
dependent on agriculture and is responsible for more than 40 percent of the
region's collective gross domestic product (GDP). Dryland crops such as millet, sorghum and
cowpea, and cash crops such as groundnut and cotton are the predominant
agricultural produce. The population is
growing very quickly in the Sahel. According to CILSS, there will be 100
million people in the region by 2020 and 200 million by 2050 - almost four
times the current population. Between them, the CILSS members cover 5.7 million
km2 of land. Sahel-like
terrain and climate is also found in non-CILSS members in West Africa,
particularly the north of Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Ghana.
Scientists have differing
opinions on whether the Sahel is going to get wetter or drier because of
climate change, but either way the outlook is bleak. The climate in the Sahel swings between
extreme heat and more temperate conditions, with rain only falling in four or
five months of the year, usually between May and October when the growing
season gets underway. For the rest of
the year, the landscape consists primarily of rocks, sandy plains of bushes, grass and
stunted trees. Scientists and
meteorologists say that over the past 40 years there have been increasingly
pronounced peaks and troughs in the region's annual rainfall. Some years are excessively wet and others too
dry for adequate crop production.
Whether the climatic patterns of the Sahel are caused by global warming
or are naturally occurring and cyclical
rainfall patterns - and indeed whether overall rainfall is increasing or
decreasing - are subjects of scientific dispute. The UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) says most climate models for the Sahel predict drier conditions for the
future. UNEP says that even if the Sahel
does get wetter, the warming of the
atmosphere will result in more water evaporating
than even the most optimistic scientists have estimated the region's rainfall
could increase by. The Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body of over 2,000 climate
scientists around the world tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change
caused by human activity. They concluded that the West African Sahel and
Central Africa will experience some of the highest temperature increases
anywhere in the world over the next few decades. Rainfall is just one part of what makes
climate change important in the Sahel. In
a region that relies heavily on agriculture, soil quality is critical. Land degradation caused by deforestation,
overgrazing, continuous cropping, desertification, and the use and preservation
of existing water resources are also crucial. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
says over 80 percent of the land in the Sahel is degraded.
What are the humanitarian implications?
Even minor changes in growing
conditions in the Sahel have major implications for people's food security and
nutrition. There are already extremely
high levels of malnutrition in the Sahel, even in years when rainfall is
adequate, with children under five bearing the brunt of hunger and disease.
Studies cited by UNEP state that because of changing rainfall patterns and
degraded land, Chad and Niger could potentially lose their entire rain-fed
agriculture by 2100, while in Mali cereal harvests might decline by 30 percent. Rain is a problem when it falls as well as
when it does not. Annual rainfall is
often now coming in short, intense bursts that destroy crops and seeds, and
even wash away whole villages. This happened throughout the Sahel in 2007, but
particularly in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad. Scientists believe the region is likely to
become much more flood prone.
Another
social problem is working-age adults are increasingly leaving the countryside
and migrating to urban areas - such as Bamako in Mali, Ouagadougou in Burkina
Faso and Dakar in Senegal - causing new urban sanitation, hunger and crime
problems. The World Health Organization
(WHO) has warned that increasing temperatures will lead to more epidemics such
as dengue and cholera. However, one
positive outcome for the Sahel is that the IPCC predicts that large parts of
the region will become unsuitable for malaria transmission by 2050. In the medium and long-term, the scale of the
forecasted climatic problems in the Sahel, coupled with the region's huge population
growth, indicate that humanitarian aid alone cannot meet the needs of the
affected people. The Sahel is likely to
be competing for limited emergency funds with increasingly frequent
climate-related natural disasters across Africa and Asia. In 2007, the UN Development Programme (UNDP)
asked donors from the developed world - which it says have focused on climate
change mitigation projects at the expense of helping countries already affected
by climate change - to provide US$85 billion for adaptation projects in
developing countries around the world.
