Darfur conflict is 'warning to world' of climate change peril

Desertification could drive tens of millions of people from their homes, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, a UN study warned on June 22. The United Nations report estimates that 50 million people are at risk of displacement in the next 10 years if desertification is not checked. The 46 page report is a result of a United Nations-sponsored conference last December of 150 experts from 40 countries. "There is a chain reaction. It leads to social turmoil," Zafaar Adeel, the study's lead author and head of the UN University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health, said. "Desertification has emerged as an environmental crisis of global proportions, currently affecting an estimated 100 to 200 million people, and threatening the lives and livelihoods of a much larger number," the study said. It said 50 million people were at risk of being forced from their homes by unchecked desertification in the next decade -- equivalent to the population of South Africa or South Korea. "The largest area is probably sub-Saharan Africa, where people are moving to northern Africa or to Europe," said Adeel. "The second area is the former Soviet republics in central Asia," he told Reuters. Adeel said it was hard to isolate desertification from other factors making people move, such as poverty or armed conflicts. Sudan's Darfur region was an example, he said. But their highly controversial analysis failed to win over some regional experts. Darfur peace campaigners say that climate has a limited role compared with the actions of a brutal Government intent on genocide. More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur's four-year conflict. Two million more have been forced from their homes by fighting that pits government forces and their Janjawid allies against rebels–drawn largely from settled farming tribes–who believe that their people have been neglected by the Khartoum Government. Eric Reeves, a US academic and leading authority on Darfur, said that there was no doubt the region had suffered from global warming, but he added that climate change was being used as an excuse by the UN to explain its inability to halt the killing. In the Washington Post, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, argued: "Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand - an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change." The June 22 report links the conflict to clashes over scarce resources, including water and land. It concludes that there is evidence of long-term climate change in several parts of Sudan, with rainfall irregular and markedly lower, especially in the Darfur states. In North Darfur, in particular, precipitation has fallen by a third in the past 80 years. The report also says that desertification is Sudan's biggest environmental problem, with deserts having spread up to 120 miles southwards since the 1930s. It forecasts that future climate change could reduce crop yields by 70 per cent in the hardest hit areas. "Ignoring these environmental issues will ensure that some political and social problems remain unsolvable, and even likely to worsen, as environmental degradation mounts at the same time as population increases," the report said. In turn, the Darfur conflict has exacerbated Sudan's environmental degradation, forcing more than two million people into refugee camps. Deforestation has been accelerated while underground aquifers are being drained. Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said that environmental factors would increasingly be the cause of conflicts around the world. "Sudan's tragedy is not just the tragedy of one country in Africa–it is a window to a wider world, underlining how issues such as uncontrolled depletion of natural resources like soils and forests, allied to impacts like climate change, can destabilize communities, even entire nations," he said. A recent study by Christian Aid, a charity based in Britain, found that 155 million people are currently displaced by conflicts, natural disasters and development. By 2050, an additional billion people may be forced to leave their homes because of climate change, said John Davison, the author of that report. "All of our concerns...about immigration bypass the huge crisis that is already occurring in the developing world, which is already bad," he said. "If you add climate change to the mix, there's a danger of it spinning out of control."