The Effects Of Climate Change On Africa 's Security Environment Essay

The further advancement of Global Warming will lead to armed conflict in the world because rapid climate change creates ecological disasters that force groups to migrate, the problems climate change create for military bases lead to international disputes over unfunded liability costs; increases in global climate disruption directly correlate to an overall increase in the collective violence within impoverished nations.

In Tropic of Chaos, journalist Christian Parenti travels and explores high poverty areas within Kenya, Afghanistan, Brazil, Colombia, and North Mexico in which he contributes an ecological and economic analysis arguing that climate change is inflicting destruction on the world. This book demonstrate the links between the political, economic, social, and environmental factors that causes climate crisis. The interrelation of revolution and violence within the failed states, poverty and climate disasters such as famines and drought creates a “catastrophic convergence” in the poorest and disputed countries, as describes by Parenti. The author began with the story of shepherd Ekaru Loruman who lived in Kenya and was killed upon defending his cattle

  In Sub-Sahara Africa, during the last four decades thirty-five major armed conflicts have occurred, taking the lives of almost ten million people. There is a high correlation between the risk of conflict and a low ranking on the Human Development Index (HDI), due to the weak capacities and inability of these poor countries to guarantee the security of its citizens, rebellions and conflict have a high occurrence rate. United Nations has observed that conflicts

Throughout history, our world has constantly been bruised and battered by civil turmoil. Today, the civil war in Syria decimates the country; the Israeli and Palestinian conflict rages on; tens of thousands of people have been killed in South Sudan's ongoing civil war. It is not always easy to isolate what exactly ignites the flames of war, but, whenever possible, finding a workable, calm and satisfying solution to a potential uprising is preferable.

Each has its own separate identity and practices that often conflict with another dating back to the slave trade and the formation of colonial political boundaries and policies. These boundaries and policies intensified civil wars driven by historical ethnic hostilities that are prevalent today and influence human and economic activity. Millions of people have died as a result of the civil war in The Congo. Fighting continues between various over political control or control over natural resources like diamonds and gold. In addition many countries have suffered economic breakdowns as a result of demanding political unrest. These activities and environmental affects identified can cause climate stresses like extreme poverty. One major impact is frequent natural disasters such as droughts and floods that influence agricultural production. When climate impacts human and economic activities it further increases the vulnerability of a

Agriculture is one of key industries in both sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. In the recent few decades, agricultural production is under serious threat from severe drought, and the drought has triggered a series of chain-reactions involving important economic and social issues. To cope with various challenges, sub-Saharan Africa and Australia have already taken multiple approaches.

The end of the Cold War has had profound effects on Africa. On the positive side, it has removed the tendency of outside actors to become intricate in internal and regional quarrelling in striving towards their own goals. Diminished the often excessive levels and types of military aid, training, and outside military reinforcements available to African countries, also by making UN Security Council consent of multilateral peacekeeping measures more likely.

Civil war constantly plagues Africa and can be the cause of tribalism, rival warlords fighting for control, and foreign influence to name a few. I will start off with civil war due to tribalism. The

In Somalia, no one is spared from crisis. Children and health workers have been murdered and kidnapped. People fight over food and water, adding another burden to citizens of Somalia who are already struggling to get through resource droughts. In a country with no central government, little happens without trauma-force. As resources continue to diminish, conflict arises when there are very little resources and Somalis all want to have priority (Unicef, 2006). Before environmental resource scarcity in Somalia is discussed in depth, let’s take a closer look at the physical and human geography in the country, global climate change and its impact on Somalia’s vegetation, the evolution of Somalia during the colonial and imperial periods, and many Somali conflicts that cause to be in crisis (in no particular order), even today.

adverse impacts of climate change in sub-Saharan Africa, the region will remain vulnerable to the effects of climate change (FAO, 2009).

In the face of climate change Sub-Saharan Africa is confronted by two main challenges of food security and water availability for human and agricultural use. These challenges are projected to increase in the coming years compounded by extreme droughts and extreme flooding in some areas. Rain-fed agriculture is the main livelihood for a majority of small scale farmers in SSA. Their main farming systems focus on the “ major crops”(maize, wheat, rice and beans) However, strategies to cultivate these crops in the region are no longer sustainable due to reliability on finite resources, high input load and vulnerability to climate change. A key alternative strategy to adapt to a changing climate is the development and promotion of Orphan crop species

Furthermore, another source of the problem began with the gradual change of the climate in Darfur. Desertification, a process by which land becomes increasingly dry until almost no vegetation grows on it, becomes a major problem for the Darfur people. Land for farming becomes scarce. Living on desert is unsuitable for humans for obvious reasons: lack of food and, more importantly, lack of water. There is not much suitable farm land, therefore “the lack of fertile land caused the populations to compete with one another for land on which they could survive” (Xavier 18). Before desertification became a huge problem for the Sudanese people, they lived in peace. Honestly, “the hostility between Darfur’s Arabs and Africans are relatively new” (Xavier 20). This shows how the competition for survival helped fuel the terrible genocide in Darfur.

Climate change is becoming a focal point for security and conflict research. Research suggests that violent conflict is affected by climate change and this could become increasingly worse in the future. Barnett, J., Adger, W. (2007) suggest that climate change undermines human security by reducing the access to natural resources that sustain people’s way of life. Climate change also has the capacity to undermine states as well by cutting off the states ability to provide opportunities and services that help maintain life and which help to maintain and build peace in daily life. With access to natural resources diminishing and the state not being able to provide opportunities and services that help maintain life and human security this

National security, in the 21st century, has shifted from the focus on traditional threats (armed forces) (Siddiqi, 2013) to the integration of new threats and challenges, which have global consequences as the world evolves. Climate change has been increasingly identified as a serious contemporary security threat (McDonald, 2013), nationally and globally, instead of an environmental concern (Dupont & Pearman, 2008). This challenge presents a long-term global threat, with substantial human, national and transnational security repercussions (Wuebbles, Chitkara & Matheny, 2014). Furthermore, Wuebbles et al. (2014) acknowledge climate change as a threat multiplier, seen to exacerbate stresses (i.e. conflict, instability and poverty), enhancing the global importance of the issue as recognised as a critical national security risk. In perceiving climate change as a threat multiplier, this essay will recognise how the issues cumulative progression and consequences interacts with existing security issues, directly and indirectly challenging national security (Brown, Hammill & McLeman, 2007). Secondly, the long-term risk of climate change will be discussed, analysing the importance of implementing adaptation strategies for risk protection and vulnerability reduction. Finally, being a transnational security threat, global cooperation will be addressed, stressing the importance of internationalism and collaboration to protect against this evolving threat to national and

Syria and the greater Fertile Crescent are often thought of as the birth of agricultural societies, some 12,00 years ago. Recently, however, this area has experience the worst 3 year drought on record. The drought conditions exacerbated existing political, water and agricultural insecurity and caused mass agricultural failure, livestock mortality, massive rural to urban human migrations. Kelley et al set out to understand how these effects were the product of vulnerability and hazard severity by analyzing Syria’s liability to drought and the social impacts of the recent droughts leading to the onset of the Syrian civil war. The Kelley team completed their analysis through observations and climate models in order to assess how unusual the drought was within the observed records and the reasons why it was so severe.