NAIROBI – The unfolding climate crisis in sub-Saharan Africa is fuelling inter-communal skirmishes, causing forced migration and undermining the stability of the continent's political institutions, green lobbyists said on Friday.
The continent's ability to sustain peace, stability and cohesion is at stake amid recurrent climate emergencies, said Mithika Mwenda, executive director of Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, based in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
"Climate change has escalated conflicts and forced migration in the continent, with women, children, the elderly and disabled bearing the brunt," Mwenda said in a statement.
He called on African governments and multilateral lenders to sharply increase adaptation financing to enhance the resilience of local communities in the face of climatic shocks.
According to Mwenda, robust action on the climate crisis should be at the heart of efforts to secure a green, resilient, peaceful and prosperous future for a continent grappling with disrupted weather patterns, habitat loss, as well as food and water insecurity.
He said mass displacement in the wake of violent cyclones in the southern African region should be a wake-up call for governments to invest in solid buffers to minimise the impact of climate emergencies at grassroots level.
The sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment report, launched last Monday, sounds an alarm over the likelihood of conflicts and mass displacement in the global South, including Africa, as a result of extreme weather events.
Mamadou Oudrago, a green campaigner from Burkina Faso, noted that conflicts and forced migration of civilians have spiked in Africa's climate change hotspots, including the Sahel and the Horn of Africa region.
Climate change-induced conflicts over pasture and dwindling freshwater resources pose an existential threat to stability and peaceful co-existence in a huge swathe of sub-Saharan African region, he said.
Nomads and subsistence farmers in Nigeria, Togo, Mali and Burkina Faso have been involved in resource-based skirmishes, and the situation has recurred in Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic and Kenya, Oudrago said.
Nicholas Orago, a senior lecturer at the University of Nairobi's School of Law, said that African countries should enact legislation that would allow equitable sharing of dwindling resources to avert conflicts in the wake of climate change.
He called for compensation of climate disaster victims, adding that investment in adaptation and resilience programmes is key to taming inter-communal tensions amid widespread hunger, water scarcity and livelihood disruptions.
Xinhua